I've sent you a PM.

Guy,

Some thoughts for you; When you leave the Army, leave the soldier behind too. You can take all the skills, qualifications, work ethic, self discipline etc with you but leave the soldier for week ends with your old mates and the occasional laugh with other ex forces you meet along the way.
You will get frustrated at times; people don't have the same way about them out here in the non military world, just roll with it, it's not "bad" it's just different.
Also, try to write your CV so that there are no service acronyms or jargon - it's hard to do but very few outside the forces know what you're talking about if you use TLA's (See what I did there?). Also, when you write your CV, think about everything that you do now, or have done and put them down on paper. You'll end up with four, five, maybe six pages that you can then use as a start for each application that you make for a job - tailor the CV to the job, even if it's a speculative application. If you like drop me a pm and I'll have a look at your CV when you're ready for some feed back,

Good Luck,

Jim

Guy, the transition is as simple or difficult as you wish to make it, I take people on work experience to give them an idea of how to work to a management system and our policy and procedures. The strength an ex serviceman has other than some of the points mentioned is he is used to working to strict guidelines and policy and procedures in a high risk environment be it training or on Ops. I currently employ six ex servicemen and/or reservists, they add real value and can be trusted to go the extra mile when required. That said I also have some extremely competent hard working members of the team that have not been in the services they compliment each other very well. If you need to gain some experience shadowing members of my team to give you an insight, we are predominantly in the NW and SE of England. All the best with your career change I am sure there are a number of people who will give you some sound advice. Regards Dave

Good luck on getting jobs.

I was 18 Years under the colours, regular and TA, left in 1996.

I have 5 Nebosh certificates and I'm working on another 2 at the moment including for IEMA, but having just secured a short term contract - now completed, I discovered that having a working knowledge of M$ Excel spreadsheets and M$ Powerpoint is also very useful.

I took the ECDL 10 years ago and I've managed to forget almost all of it, because I haven't used it, so having to create and populate an Excel spreadsheet was difficult, but I asked around and got help.

I'm now booking a couple of courses with Learning Direct to get a handle on Excel and Powerpoint.

Talk about a work in progress!

Hi all,

Thank you all for the excellent advice. I have found employers are seeking more experience and a diploma in NEBOSH so i think if i am going to go further down the Health and Safety route i will deffinetly be doing that.

I have recenlt found employment in a training establishment teaching apprentices engineerng skills and the NEBOSH has been a great help with the Health and Safety aspect of it.

Again thanks all for the excellent advice