LEAN, MEAN, TRANSITION MACHINE
confident in my abilities. I communicate well, I write well, I made it to sergeant major, I was in military intelligence with a TS-SCI clearance, in the D.C. area. I thought it was going to be a breeze. Like I could just walk out, say ‘I’m available,’ and six figures would be thrown at me.”
He can laugh about it now, but he even applied for a job as director of security for the National Football League. Quinn’s transition in 2017 was not what he imag- ined it would be. “I went to my first job fair, prepped to the T as far as I knew. I had a two-page resume that I wrote over a period of weeks and put a lot of effort into, tried out my elevator pitch, wore my best suit, had business cards, everything. I did the research on all the companies there, and over a period of six hours, I watched everyone around me get asked to inter- view, except for me.”
Tat experience was a wakeup call for Quinn and was the first spark of what has since become a thriving business. “I just dove into LinkedIn. It just made sense to me,” he said. “I started reaching out and connecting with people in all differ- ent fields, all different companies, all over the country, and just asking, ‘Hey, what is your career field like? What’s your job like? What do you do every day?’ ” He was on a mission to market himself in a more effective way. “I started posting content, sharing things that I was doing, thoughts on leadership, writing articles, writing posts. And then I realized, well heck, I was one of the only people from the mili- tary on LinkedIn at the time.” So he did what a good leader does—he shared his knowledge and skills with his team. He started teaching other service members, first in his own unit and then others, how to share contacts, how to network, how to perform job searches, “and it just kind of steamrolled.”
NETWORK IN ACTION As his retirement date approached, Quinn kept expanding his network and shar- ing his insights (now under the hashtag #Quinnsights), and then something unex- pected happened. “One month before I retired, I was hired as the director of work- force management at a small, federal IT company.
“You’ve got to prioritize portable careers for military spouses. And I think you’ve got to prioritize them over veterans.”
I literally was introduced to the CEO from another CEO I met via LinkedIn. I went in to just have coffee and he made me a job offer on the spot. He created a director- level role for me.” Quinn worked there for about a year, learning everything he could in the role, and when he felt it was time to find the next opportunity, “I started acti- vating my network again.” Within four months, he landed an executive role at Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY)—a feat made no less impressive by his self-professed lack of qualifications.
“I ran People Advisory Services on the Army account for a period of time, and I led our change management training and communications work stream, on what was the government and public sector’s largest account, which was Army Audit
Readiness,” he said. “I mean, literally, I have a Bachelor of Science in liberal arts from Excelsior College. I have no PMP [Project Management Professional], I mean, I don’t meet any of the qualifica- tions on paper. I didn’t look like other senior managers on paper, but because I got on LinkedIn, because I had a network, because I got face-to-face and spoke with partners, they saw talent. Tey saw that bringing me to their team was going to bring value, and they told recruiting to hire me.”
MEETING A NEED DOD offers a transition assistance program for active-duty service members, called DOD SkillBridge. It allows service members within their last 180 days of service to work directly for outside employers
in training, internship or
apprenticeship positions, while retaining their military pay and benefits, for up to six months. “I found out late in my transi- tion about the DOD SkillBridge program, and it was too late for me to use it,” Quinn said. As word got out about the program, he started hearing from friends who had applied but weren’t placed in internships. One cohort “had 30 credible internships and 90 applicants, so 60 people did not get placed, and they had their hearts set on an internship.” When they reached out, Quinn told them to take matters into their own hands. “I said, ‘Well, start your own. Find a company that will accept you as an intern, file the paperwork, and you should be golden.’ And they looked at me like I was crazy.”
It was then he realized, “they don’t have connections at companies. Tey don’t know how to explain the Fair Labor Stan- dards Act, and how SkillBridge is not an unpaid internship.” And then there is all the paperwork, the legal review and more. “Tat was where HireMilitary was
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Army AL&T Magazine
Fall 2021
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