At the beginning of this year, I began serving as the newly minted Career & Employment Advocate for MSAN. With Turkey Day 2019 rapidly approaching, I cannot believe it’s already been a year since my MSAN journey first began.

I decided to reach out to MSAN around Thanksgiving 2018 by submitting a form on the MSAN website and said:

“Hello, I’m a career and personal development expert who specializes in helping vets and military spouses find federal employment. I’d love to help MSAN in any way I can. Happy Thanksgiving!

Jaime🍁”

Yes, I used a fall leaf emoji, and no you can’t judge me because it worked!

What I didn’t know before.

At the time, I didn’t know there was a vacancy for a career advocate when I made contact. I reached out simply because I am passionate about helping military spouses find employment, and because MSAN has a special mission to help NEW spouses integrate successfully into military life. If there was anything I could do, even if it was small, I wanted to help.

Little did I know what I was in for after signing the dotted line to become an advocate! I discovered that MSAN had surveyed thousands of military spouses who had ranked career and employment as the number two concern following only deployments (understandably). I also had no idea that Verenice (the president) had plans to make major overhauls to the employment program in 2019.

We’ve done a lot this year.

Only from reflecting and looking back from January to now, do I realize how much we’ve accomplished in such a short timeframe. For starters, we’ve formed three major partnerships that provide MSAN members free career services. Our new partners include:

Each of these organizations are power partners and provide unbelievably good career resources to military spouses for free. If you need to search for military spouse friendly employers, need career coaching, resume writing assistance, or even if you would like to attend a career fair in your local area, look no further than our partners.

We also just announced our newest partnership with The Paradigm Switch! We are so excited to be able to offer our mentors an advantage in earning scholarships for their volunteerism with the organization and in working with new military spouses on finding much-needed careers in STEAM.

Additionally, we’ve published an abundance of career-related articles and resources for you on the career page of our website and have conducted a number of Facebook live workshops introducing you to services and offering career education.

Just you wait, 2020.

While 2019 has been incredibly productive, 2020 will top it. I’ve got some maniacal career plans in the works (muah ha ha!) involving our partners in order to offer double the career workshops and resources for our members. Keep an eye out on the career page for upcoming articles, and cast your vote on career polls that we post on Facebook so we can target the educational material that you specifically need help with.

Connect with us!

For military spouses seeking additional career resources, check out MSAN’s Free Career Resources for Military Spouses article to explore branch-specific resources and more. Keep an eye out on our Career & Employment page for new resources and follow our social media groups to connect with fellow military spouses.

Did you ever wonder how to write your address on your resume when you’re PCS’ing? This article gives you the skinny.

MSAN LinkedIn Group We post milspouse friendly job openings here.

MSAN - New Military Spouse Support Forum Is our Facebook group.

MSAN Main Facebook Page Join our 13,000 members and counting!

If you have any questions or need career and employment-related guidance, please contact me at: jchapman@milspouseadvocacynetwork.org