Ok, so I’ve been a SAHM for almost 5 years now. In the meantime I’ve also earned my Bachelors Degree in Government-Legal Studies with a minor in Sociology (but that was in December 2007—over a year ago, now). So I guess that means technically I’ve only been a stay-at-home-mom for a little over a year while before I was a full-time student and mother. I’ve decided to re-join the work force, but I have hardly any relative experience—besides a 5 month internship at a law firm almost 2 years ago. I’m afraid that I am going to have to except an entry-level job and make less than 30,000 a year because I have almost no marketable skills and have been out of touch for so many years. I feel as if I’ve lost myself in raising my kids and cannot sell myself in a way to get a job I deserve. I love my kids and staying home, but in this economy and our home situation I think I should go back to work.
I was looking through the usajobs.gov website and found one that had something like a military spouse preference. I thought that may give me a leg up, but I can’t seem to find any way to make that marketable. I mean, it’s not like I can list that on my resume or anything—or can I? Does anyone know how that works exactly?
I’d love some advice and insight. If anyone has been in a similar situation I'd like to hear about it.

Just to be blunt/honest ... why do you think you "deserve" more than an entry level job at $30,000 or less a year? You are entering into the job field with your new degree, and you have no prior experience. Even with military spouse preference, you are not going to get a job that you are not qualified for. Don't set unrealistic expectations for yourself, it's a good way to be disappointed plus you may miss out on the entry level jobs that are absolutely essential to starting your career.

Also, the same economy that is sending you back to work is sending millions of other folks back to work (or looking for new jobs after they've been laid off). Did you hear about the part time admin position posted on craigslist that received three THOUSAND responses and counting? Don't take this the wrong way, but be thankful for what you can get!

Here's some information from mil.com about mil spouse employment, including some info at the end that you can further research about spouse preference: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,178477,00.html

Well, to be equally as "blunt/honest", as you put it, I feel that I "deserve" more than 30,000 a year because I worked extremely hard to get it. I earned a 4 year degree in less than 3 years, graduated Magna Cum Laude and all the while I was a full-time mother and wife. Don't think that I feel like I deserve a hand-out, because I don't, I just feel that I should be able to get a job that pays better then what someone just out of high school would receive.

I feel for the people that are suffering more than me, but I still feel that I deserve a well paid job with benefits. I didn't get a Bachelor of Science degree to get paid minimum wage.

I appreciate your insight even if I don't agree with it, respectfully. I actually think your post gave me a drive to get a position I deserve because you made me think about why I feel I do deserve a well paid job. So, thank you for that.

PS: I hope all is well with your family in Georgia. You seem to have a wonderful family in your profile picture.

but you don't desreve it.. you have the exact same experience as that High school kid with no degree: NONE WHATSOEVER.

you are not the only person to have gotten their degree while juggling a family. Nor are you the only one to get good grades. or to do it quickly.. in fact it's pretty common for people in certain Military sponsored college programs such as STA-21 to get a degree in 3 years. one of our Mods, Catherine.. 4 kids; both she and her husband are attending school full time AND are getting their commissions.

every body must expect to start out at the bottom. why should you be handed a better paying job with no job experience and eeducation that may very well be already outdated?!.

Being motivated is certainly a wonderful asset in today's workforce, but unfortunately "working hard" may or may not get you a job like what you're looking for. You will be hard pressed to find a job above entry level that won't ask for any less than a year of work related experience, most above entry level will require 2+ years (depending on the field that you're looking at). And again, unfortunately, the sheer number of people to choose from for each individual open job out there in the world is HUGE, and having no work experience will put you at the bottom of the list.

I feel for you, I really do - I'm facing going back to school myself because I know that if something ever happened to by husband, with the current work situation, I would never be able to compete for a job without a degree. It's a scary thing, and frustrating - the common problem being how can I get experience if nobody will give me a job, but nobody will give me a job without experience. Congratulations on your hard work, I can only hope to do so well when I get started again with my degree this year. Thanks for the well wishes, and I wish them for you, too! I'm not saying to "settle" per se, but you may need to look at something like a part time job in the field your degree is in to gain experience and get your foot in the door (a lot of companies are promoting from within to avoid the expense of searching, adding to payroll/insurance & taxes, etc). Good luck!

quote:

Originally posted by Mrsjvb:
but you don't desreve it.. you have the exact same experience as that High school kid with no degree: NONE WHATSOEVER.

you are not the only person to have gotten their degree while juggling a family. Nor are you the only one to get good grades. or to do it quickly.. in fact it's pretty common for people in certain Military sponsored college programs such as STA-21 to get a degree in 3 years. one of our Mods, Catherine.. 4 kids; both she and her husband are attending school full time AND are getting their commissions.

every body must expect to start out at the bottom. why should you be handed a better paying job with no job experience and eeducation that may very well be already outdated?!.

Alright, for those of you who enjoy attacking me I give. Fine, believe what you want and I'll believe what I want. I really only got on here to gain insight and advice. I did not sign up to this forum to be verbally attacked. If you choose not to thoroughly read my posts, in which I distinctly said that "Don't think that I feel like I deserve a hand-out, because I don't", then I will choose not to read yours.

I did not, however receive a degree in a "certain Military sponsored college program". I went to Texas Woman's University full-time without military help. I do expect to start at the bottom, but the bottom of a profession that weighs in higher education and hard work.

Furthermore, that's great that those people you speak highly of are going to school together. I think that's awesome. I'm sure after they receive their degree they will feel the same way I do, though. And for your information I do have experience, not a lot, but as I stated before I completed an internship.

Let me clarify agian, I AM NOT ASKING FOR A HAND OUT. AND I AM NOT TRYING TO SPEAK POORLY OF ANYONE WHATSOEVER. I just have my standards, as I'm sure others do. PLEASE STOP TAKING MY WORDS OUT OF CONTEXT.

quote:

Originally posted by Mrsjvb:
in fact it's pretty common for people in certain Military sponsored college programs such as STA-21 to get a degree in 3 years. one of our Mods, Catherine.. 4 kids; both she and her husband are attending school full time AND are getting their commissions.

AND they're engineering degrees which many take 5 years to get ! LOL. I havent been accepted yet to comission....fingers crossed. Waiting on med stuff right now....ugh.

Numbers, why didn't you pursue internships? Those are a good way to get your foot in the door with companies. A kid straight out of school with internships has at least a bit more experience than you do (Hell, my husband is garunteed a comission right now and is still thinking of an internship this summer to get some "real" engineering experrience while here. Oh yeah, this on top of being active duty and being mandated to take classes over the summer). Also, your degree isn't in a hard to fill field. Technical degrees demand higher starting salaries than arts degrees. Not that you can't make more money down the line, but about monthly the WSJ puts out an article on which degrees pay the most from the start, and your degree is no-where on that list.

In a job market like todays you need to make yourself as competitive as possible. And sometimes to get what we want we have to start at the bottom.

All that said, yes you can put spouse preference on your application on USA jobs, and they will specifically ask you for that info. However, it only helps you if you're in a tie with another applicant. Someone else applies with experience, and that spouse preference gets you very little. Vet's preference is higher than spouse as well.

I will not be in the same position you are once I complete my degree, and neither willl my husband (esp since he's comissioning). Engineering degrees are still in demand all over, and I have tons of real-life engineering experience in the nuclear field to fall back on. Wolf creek power plant was offering me buko bucks to quit school because they love Navy nukes. AGain, it's all about degree earned and the experience you have.

I just re-read this. And I'm sorry. When I first responded I didn't see that you did an internship. Good on you for doing it, but the fact remains that your degree is not a ticket to much higher than you are being offered straight off the bat.

Catherine—thank you first of all for not verbally attacking me. And also for re-reading the post and seeing that I did complete an internship. I would do another internship, but I can’t really afford it right now. Not being paid and having to pay the childcare costs would put my husband and me in debt. Thank you, though, for the advice. That would be great to do it if I had the time and money.

Also, I think it’s great that you and your husband are pursuing an engineering degree. They do get paid well; as my dad is an engineer himself at BAE. I would have pursued it myself, but math and science defiantly are not my strong suits—that and it’s not that interesting to me. However, I do not have a BA, I have a BS, although, as you say, it is not specialized and may be hard to get a well-paid job to start. I could have gone either way to have a Bachelor of Science degree or a Bachelor of Art degree, but I choose to get a BS for the sake of being more marketable. I hope to use it as an advantage.

Furthermore, I do plan to start at the bottom. However, my bottom is making 30,000 or more a year. Someone may feel that is too high a standard, but I’ve looked and with my qualifications I can make anywhere between 25,000 and 45,000 a year starting. So, with that said, I feel I have picked a happy medium.

Lastly, I have a question. I already registered with usajobs.gov and saw the section to mark if I had a veteran’s preference, but did not see the military spouse preference. I even emailed the website about it and that’s how I found this website. All they sent me was a link to military.com’s spouse career section. So, do you know what and where I’m supposed to check, because I didn’t see it? Surely, I’m not the only one with this question.

Oh, and I know this isn’t some sort of magical job finder and realize that it’s only to help if someone with equal qualifications applies who is not a military spouse. (Maybe that’s why others thought I was asking for a hand out). Also, I certainly hope the veteran’s preference is weighed more heavily—after all they are the one’s actually sacrificed their freedom.

quote:

originally posted by 16804198:
I was looking through the usajobs.gov website and found one that had something like a military spouse preference. I thought that may give me a leg up, but I can’t seem to find any way to make that marketable. I mean, it’s not like I can list that on my resume or anything

Why not list it on your resume? Just put a line that states "Eligible for Military Spouse Preference."

Since your profile no longer exists (I assume because you are getting a profile with a name and not numbers), I can't tell where you are located so what area of the country are you looking for a job? A couple of other questions, what kind of job are you looking for with your degree and what did your internship cover? Are you looking to be a paralegal? If so, do you have a paralegal certificate?

I must say, on another part of your post, that there are very few people that I think deserve a job at a certain salary. It is admirable that you are looking toward the bottom third of the salary range that you have found for the jobs you are looking for. However, as to deserving anything, I feel that the only thing that you, or anyone else, deserves is the opportunity to try for a position. You did well in school. Congratulations. Now you need one or more glowing recommendations from your previous internship to get you a leg up on other candidates.

In bad economic times, it can be quite difficult to find jobs at the salary that one believes one should be getting paid. I went through this on a personal basis in 2003. I have a masters degree in IT but the computer industry pretty well tanked in 2003. As a result, just to keep a roof over my family's head and keep them fed, I took a job that paid me $15,000 for 8-1/2 months of work. Did I think I was worth more than that? You better believe it because I had 17 years of progressively increasing experience. But the facts were that I couldn't get a job at that time (unless I was willing to travel 3000 miles for a 6-month job) for anywhere near what I had been making before. Obviously the job market did not think that I deserved 5 times the amount that I made that year.

quote:

Originally posted by 16804198:
Furthermore, I do plan to start at the bottom. However, my bottom is making 30,000 or more a year. Someone may feel that is too high a standard, but I’ve looked and with my qualifications I can make anywhere between 25,000 and 45,000 a year starting. So, with that said, I feel I have picked a happy medium.

If the jobs are available. If the job's not available then your asking price is in-consequential. My FIL has an MBA and worked for Sprint as a higher-up for almost 11 years. He saw the writing on the wall, took his buyout, took a huge paycut, and now works at the FDIC as a GS-13 in Washington DC (family still in KC). Point is, if the jobs arent there, you have no room to make demands. If the field is flooded with applicants, as all fields are, you have to agree to take less at first because you're going up against people who have loads of experience and have to settle for less because they were laid off. I agree the BS is better, but only if the jobs exist for it.

I understand the frustration with having to make enough to pay for child care, I have four kids so child care is through the flippin roof(oddly enough, it may be cheaper to have a nanny) which is why if I take a job it'll probably be at a nuke power plant if I can't get back into the Navy. Otherwise, probably not working at all.

I'd put the spouse thing as a bullett in your resume if there's no way to check it for USA Jobs. I could have sworn there was.

okay to answer your orginal question-to get military spouse preference for a goverment job conus you the requirement are very narrow-the job has to be located with in reasonable commuting distance of your husband permenant duty station-you have to apply with in a certian time of his PCS to that duty station and all it does is give you 5 points in the weighting process.-- how that works-resumes submitted for government jobs are sorted by a a computer program that looks for key words from the job annoucement. The ones that match are then pulled out and scored based on how closely the persons qualifications match the announcement-then once they are scored-preferance points are added to that score-5 points for the spouse who meets the qualifications-10 for veterans-15 for disabled veterans. Top three scores are forwarded to be interviewed. The only time i have really seen it make a difference-i friend of mine and i competed for the same goverment IT job-she was awarded and interview and i was not-despite the fact that i was better qualified and my resume pointed out higher than hers-why-she is a 10 point veteran and gets the 5 spouse points. And you dont cite it on your resume-there is a place on the on line federal job application that you select that-and when they point you out-if the system pulls your resume-someone will call you to verify-ive been called five times on jobs to verify my perference.
I believe if you are overseas that preference serves you better.
the other obstylce you are going to face-unless you want to teach social studies-you chose a degree that is not terribly marketable to anyone except a have a degree any degree jobs or a paralegal job that will reguire addtional ceritification-you will not find many postions looking for someone degreed in Gov/Legal studies unless they want a legal assistant or you are expecting to go to law school. Most entry level jobs that want only a bachelors degree are looking for people in business, accounting, marketing or something similar. And yes-you are going to have to be satisfied with an entry level job just like anyother new grad-just because you are bit older and faced some challenges-employers want job experience-thats just an ugly fact of life.
ETA-the reason not to cite the military spouse thing on your resume-while its great for federal jobs-in the real world it can count against you.-no employer will tell you that-but thats the reality

quote:

originally posted by Orchidj5:
ETA-the reason not to cite the military spouse thing on your resume-while its great for federal jobs-in the real world it can count against you.-no employer will tell you that-but thats the reality

That is quite true because a non-federal employer would see that on the resume and assume that you will be leaving in relatively short time and you might only give short notice. The way around that is to have multiple resumes and only have that on the ones that you send out for federal jobs.

quote:

Originally posted by Catherine0830:
I understand the frustration with having to make enough to pay for child care, I have four kids so child care is through the flippin roof(oddly enough, it may be cheaper to have a nanny) which is why if I take a job it'll probably be at a nuke power plant if I can't get back into the Navy.

This can be a very good way to save some money. When my daughter was about six months old (eons ago since here daughter is now just a little older than that), we moved into a new house and went the route of a live-in nanny. She stayed with us during the week and went "home" on the weekends. I think her husband worked out of town. This was in 1991 and we were paying $100/week to have her maintain the house and take care of three kids aged 5, 2 and 6 months. Because of some issues (including going back to Mexico for a weekend and losing her green card), we evenually had to move away from a nanny. I wish that we could have continued on with her because day care for eight months that year was over $10,000.

There were also other benefits other than the obvious of how much daycare was costing. My wife and I were both extremely active in a social services organization. If we needed to go to a meeting or just work late, there was always somebody there at the house and we didn't have to go try to find a babysitter.

quote:

Originally posted by 16804198:
... I’m afraid that I am going to have to except an entry-level job and make less than 30,000 a year because I have almost no marketable skills and have been out of touch for so many years. ...

Many bases (all??) have volunteer programs and quite often childcare is paid for for a certain number of hours. You need to check at the Red Cross and Family Center for opportunities. This would be a no-cost/low-cost way to get some current experience and network with people.

Sad to say, but I found, after graduating from college (with a non-technical/non-licensed degree), and working the whole time in college student type jobs, most employers cared more about that it had been 5 yrs since I had worked as a secretary and "how could you possibly know how to use MS Word now?" - um I did write term papers for years. Anyway, I was viewed as someone who spent 4-5 yrs letting my work skills get out of date, versus someone who was motivated to do a good thing and get a degree, 3.74 gpa, Phi Beta Kappa, blah blah blah.

When I graduated with a BS in 1997, I expected doors to open for me. After all, I had been told all my life the way to get a good paying job was to get a college degree. It was a disappointment to find many employers held my 4-yr degree in little esteem. I found unless the degree certified you for something specific, like engineering, teaching, accounting, etc.... it was a small piece of the puzzle for getting professional employment.

I plan on returning to school next year once the details of the dependent transfer of benefits of the GI bill gets worked out. I have learned that the masters degree I will pursue (I have decided on an MLIS) will hold infinitely more value if I do some sort of internship or volunteer work very close to the end of the program.

Good luck. I highly suggest checking out on-base volunteer opportunities because of the child care reimbursement option.

I have to be honest with this poster. I wanted the same thing. It took me many years to obtain my 4 year degree. I did however work my way through this degree working at companies that I hated but they paid for college. I thought that I would be able to get a job paying at least 50 thousand dollars when I graduated. The reality is that it might not ever happen. The push to obtain at least a 4 year degree and get a good paying job is in full force. My parents did not obtain college degrees and always thought that if they did they too would have been making big bucks. At this point I will be happy to get a decent job paying a decent wage. To top it off we are military spouses who carry a stigma of not being able to stay in a job for long. I am now working on my Masters, but I am really think I might just take a graduate certificate and call it a wrap. Now don't get me wrong there are some that get the degree and a good paying job to follow. Those people are far and few between. I watched a show the other day that stated 4 year degrees are now overrated and I am starting to believe it. I wish I would have just went to a technical college, would saved a lot of money and probably would have a gotten a good paying job. Just my two cents.

OP - Good luck to you. My only recommendation, if you are looking at civil service jobs on base/post, is that you go and visit your local Civilian Personnel Office (CPAC/CPOC). They can explain in greater detail all the intricacies of military spouse preference (MSP); if you qualify for it, you may be able to register and get put on the MSP list (which means, if there is a job you qualify for and you are next on the list, you will be the person they will call). Just be aware that getting your foot in the door with civil service jobs can be quite a lengthy process (read: months, sometimes years).

With a degree, though, try out the government contractors on base/post. Some of them are more generalized in requirements and experience, so you may be able to land a job with one of them sooner AND get a good starting base pay.

Good luck!

A few months ago the Wall Street Jounral ran an article where they showed that supply and demand applies to degrees as well. The net effect of more people pursuing non-technical degrees is that their net value has gone down, especially in contrast to how fast education costs have risen.

On the other side, the result of more and more are deciding to get non-technical degrees whether they've convinced themselves they can't, or (in the case of many of the kids here) mommy and daddy's paying and they'd rather skate by so they can drink more is less get technical degrees. The result is that many of those holding technical jobs will retire and not enough people are available to replace them. Making the supply much lower than the demand, so the initial starting pay stays high.

Oh catherine, could you please go back and give the lecture to me when I was in high school?

Math was my favorite and best subject, and I thought about becoming either a math teacher or an engineer. Somehow, between HS and taking time off to work before college, I forgot all about that. Sadly, by now, 21 yrs after high school, I have forgotten math as well.

I hope it didn't come off as a lecture. I was just sharing what I read, and I find it sad. We spend our time saying you need a degree, only to find out that in some cases it doesn't hel much.

Colleges have it figured out. Convince kids they needs a piece of paper, no matter what, and keep jacking up the rates they pay for it. No other industry could get away with 200% inflation over 5 years.

As for math, you should try it, you may surprise yourself. It comes back fast. I took Calc in high school at 17, didn't look at it again until I took the class over the summer (and I'm 27). Because many companies pay big into endowments for tech majors, many schools (like KU) have free tutors and help just for techs. Also, there's lots of scholarship money in teaching.