Growing a MilSpouse Friendly Career

Heather Campbell as she hosts the first of many podcasts on MilHousing Nation. She is joined by fellow MilSpo Sonia Ramirez-Garza to talk all the things to help grow a MilSpo friendly career! From starting with your priorities, strategically volunteering to finding a work life balance that fits with your family, this episode offers plenty of nuggets to take away when you’re considering jumping back into the workforce.

Heather: Sonia is the 2022 Armed Forces Insurance JBLM Military Spouse of the Year. She is the
military spouse fellowship Program Manager at Hiring Our Heroes. Today we will talk about
building and growing a military spouse friendly career, and she is the expert. Sonia, please tell us
a little bit about you.

Sonia: My military spouse journey began in college. I met my now husband when we were going to
Sam Houston State in Texas. He commissioned in, and we started our journey at Fort Bragg in
North Carolina. We’ve been married now for fourteen years, and we have only lived at two duty
stations, which is very unlikely for an active-duty military family. We have spent most of our
time at JBLM in Washington, and we have been here for eleven years without PCSing, which
has been really great for our two kids. In that time, I have just learnt a lot about what it means to
be a military spouse and a lot of the challenges that we do face with our careers.

Heather: Tell us about the work that you do with Hiring Our Heroes and how you help support our
fellow military spouses.

Sonia: We didn’t know what our trajectory in this military lifestyle was going to look like. So, for us
as a newly married couple, the Army really meant we were going to move every two to three
years and that cadence slowed down, but the mentality that I had was that I needed to learn all
that I could about the community. I learned that I was really a part of a community of spouses
who needed a lot of resources and who were facing a lot of challenges. And I just have this very
much proactive approach saying where can we make and dig some roots in our community, how
can we really invest in the people around us, and how can we reach out to a broader network of
community leaders where oftentimes us as the military spouses do not get that luxury of knowing
all of the networking and all of the powerhouse leaders in a community when we move there. So,
when I was looking for an opportunity to be an advocate for military spouse employment and
issues, an opportunity became available with Hiring Our Heroes right here at JBLM, and I
jumped on it because I knew that my heart was really in it and it continues to be a place where I
can advocate for those spouses through the program as a program manager. What I can do
essentially is to bring spouses into our program, they apply and then to provide opportunities of
being that matchmaker between them and the needs they are looking for and a particular
employer that is in our community and the broader network in our nation. We can connect them
with any large corporations that are looking to really build out their military spouse hiring
platforms and programs. It has been just a whirlwind of fun, and just feel-good work because
every single day I am able to talk to spouses on a level where we completely understand each
other. I get it, I know what it’s like to be jobless, I know what it’s like to search for something
and not really know where I can find a place, and so this has really been a great opportunity for
me to serve all the spouses here.

Heather: I love how you put that—finding a place where you feel like you belong. Many of us had a
career prior to becoming a military spouse and then we often go through a season of being a stay-
at-home spouse with young children. I remember having this passion, drive, and purpose to use
my talents and knowledge for this other thing, but I was in a season of not working outside of my
home. We were in an ops-tempo that just really required most of my attention to be on the needs
of my family, and that’s such a hard thing to do, even as a military spouse. We “know what we
are getting into” but I hate that phrase so much; we know that we are signing up to serve
alongside our service members, we understand that we will go through seasons of not having
work but that also doesn’t mean that we walk away from it forever or that we want to. So, I love
everything that you guys have with Hiring Our Heroes and how you are able to connect military
spouses with local resources and also with those national resources to build careers that can
move with us potentially. Especially now, post-pandemic, we have so many jobs that were
recognized that they can be virtual, mostly virtual, or hybrid. And that’s such a gift to us military
spouses. I think we were kind of in the hybrid and virtual working space before the rest of the
world joined us in 2020. I love seeing how much it has grown and that we have organizations
like Hiring Our Heroes that make these connections. Tell us, for people who are looking to build
a career, maybe they don’t have a career per say, or what if what they trained in isn’t what they
want to do and they are looking for those skills and they are looking kind of where to start to find
a career that can move around… Where would you say that spouses should start looking for
those resources and ideas?

Sonia: I would start by saying that #1, the greatest thing you can do for yourself is to look inward
because what’s going to work for me is not going to work for you. Your story and your priorities,
whether it’s family priorities or other priorities, acknowledge that as you said there are seasons
of life and to just be honest with yourself, and say: “ok, is this the season when I am capable of
doing this but it’s also going to mean that I am going to have to find childcare and I am not
willing to do that right now, so maybe I am only willing to look for part-time flex opportunity”. I
think that doing that internal assessment and then coming to me to say: “hey this is where I draw
the line, this is what I am looking for”, and having that transparency and conversation around
priorities just gives me greater knowledge to say: “ok, whatever works for you, I am here to
support it, and I am here to steer you in the direction that’s going to offer you the best options
available”. So, with that, #2, I think because we are in such a supportive community of spouses
that it’s always great to, after you do that internal assessment and find out what you really want,
talk to other spouses, start asking around if there is somebody who is working in a potential
industry that you’ve always wanted to get into. Then find a way to reach out whether it’s via
Facebook or LinkedIn or have a phone conversation. Military spouses are the best community,
We are a part of such a supportive community, and reaching out is always going to pay
dividends. Just having that conversation and saying: “hey realistically what is it like as a day in
your role, and what kind of advice can you offer to me?” With those two things it would give
you a really clear indication of where to find yourself next. I am always happy to have that
conversation and say: “here are some remote roles we have available,” whether it’s in our area or
any part of the country. We can always help and, as you said, one of the silver linings to the
pandemic is that a lot of employers are realizing the value of remote work. I work remotely and
I’ve also in the pandemic had to leave an in-person position because there was nobody to watch
my kids. So really assessing those priorities and saying: “ok this chapter of my life is done, and I
am going to shift, I am going to reassess what’s going to work for now for my family,” and realize that that’s ok. I can do what I can now, and still grow incrementally in my career trajectory.

Heather: For me, it was really difficult entering a season of being a stay-at-home mom kind of before I
wanted to. Looking inward and setting those boundaries and saying: “ok here is what we are
willing to tolerate, here is what we’re willing to take on as a family” (we call ourselves team
Campbell at my house) so as a team, when I am adding more things to my workload, I am
automatically adding more things to my spouse and my children as well. My children are a little
bit older; they can help unload the dishwasher, but those are the kinds of ways that they have to
pick up the slack if I am putting more on my plate. So, I love the idea of looking first what can I
handle, what can I take on, and the networking. I agree, the military spouse community both
locally and internationally is so interconnected. I just want to mention that LinkedIn is offering
premium accounts for free to military spouses. Sonia, I want to know your input about using an
expertise for volunteering. For those of us who have a gap in employment, how would you
advise military spouses to get involved in their community in areas that interest them but also
spin that in a way that if they do step back into employment, they can say: “I haven’t actually
been doing nothing; here are all the things I have done for my family, for my community, and for
the military”. So, how would you recommend people use volunteer experience to also build their
career?

Sonia: This is such a nugget of goodness and gold because as a military spouse there are times when
we do have to really shift our career platforms and realize that this is what we can do right now,
and if that’s volunteering, then that doesn’t count for nothing. Volunteering is something that
very much can be appointed into real world as a real career type role. If you are even
volunteering for your SFRG, depending on the things that you did, it can very much fall into the
realm of program management and program design, and so what I would say to that is I myself
was a fulltime volunteer for a number of years when my kiddos were small. I would encourage
anybody to be strategic in your volunteering. Don’t just sign up for everything under the sun,
start to look at some ways in which you can engage either with your local community or your
military community, and fill in those gaps based on something that is relevant to what you want
to do. For instance, say you want to do accounting and finance ultimately as your career goal,
then you should be volunteering in that capacity either with your local community or in your
SFRG; you need to be filling treasury roles and really looking at how you could stay current in
your skills during that timeframe. Even if you have a gap in employment, what I would
encourage you to do is to also include that in your resume. You can have volunteer roles slated in
your resume, and again, be really strategic on how you are putting that information on your
resume to showcase your skillset during that timeframe. And the good thing about Hiring Our
Heroes too is that a lot of the employers that we work with are either military connected
themselves, they have either been a spouse or a veteran, and so they understand what the military
spouse resume looks like. They understand that there are going to be gaps of employment or that
there’s going to be a lot of entry-level roles at different locations, but what it does is having that
strategic volunteerism on there gives you the opportunity to have a conversation, and not just
having a wide gap. So, if you’ve been doing volunteering, include it, and if you get an interview
then that’s the time when you can shine and really say: “I am advocating for this time frame in
my life because I really worked hard”, and again volunteering is nothing to kind of put in a back
corner. It’s awesome if you do have a very strategic volunteer role.

Heather: I have been on both sides; I have done the strategic volunteering and I have overdone it.
When my children were little, I was signing up for everything that would get me out of the house
and if it involved talking to other grown-ups. I remember working in our installation thrift shop
with an infant strapped to me and two toddlers running around, and there were three of us
spouses, and in between us we had nine kids under the age of five. I am not saying that that was
the wisest decision that I have ever done, I definitely got myself into too many commitments that
didn’t align with my values and the needs of my family.

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