Seize Your Superpower
Military-related students enter UCSB with valuable skills that employers and graduate schools seek, including discipline, dedication, resilience, responsibility, leadership, multicultural awareness, and foreign language skills, in addition to various technical skills.
No matter your career path, Career Services can help you discover and hone in on your skills and experience, as well as assist you with developing new tools to advance your career trajectory. We support you in reaching your professional goals and encourage you to use this page as a starting point to move forward.
Key Campus Resources @ UCSB
Discover Options: Military-Related Students
For complete information on assessing yourself, choosing majors, and exploring careers, review our starter tips to Discover Options in all careers as well as the specialized tips on this page.
Knowing Your Personal Assets
Having military experience equips you with a uniquely valuable skill set which is sought after by employers and helps you stand out from your competition. It is important to understand and reflect on these skills in order to apply them to your career and use them to your advantage in the pursuit of landing your dream position.
As you take inventory of your assets, here are a few questions to consider:
- Did you acquire foreign language proficiency? (If not, what other methods of communication did you practice?)
- Which technical skills did you acquire? This can include organization and management of part inventories, team cohesiveness skills, and more.
- Were you entrusted with any leadership roles?
- Did you serve abroad? If so, what cultural awareness and practices did you acquire?
If you are unsure what your personal assets are, or you want to learn more about implementing them in your career, Career Services offers various ways to Take an Assessment to help you understand where your skills lie and how to implement them in your career.
When you find a career path in which you are interested, put forth extra research to determine how the path reflects your personal assets. One place to start is to research employers that are owned by military-related individuals or support veterans.
Learn More
To learn more about the unique strengths you offer the workforce, read Military.com’s article on 10 Reasons to Hire Vets.
Connecting With Military-Related Professionals
Are you pursuing a specific field or industry? Chances are high that there is a military-related individual in the workforce who is pursuing a career path which you hope to break into, or who is working for an employer that you aspire to work for. This means that they have already experienced similar experiences as you, and they have accumulated valuable lessons regarding what it takes to thrive in the professional world.
Unlike other professionals in the industry, military-related professionals can provide you with personal insight regarding the challenges that you may face, and how to overcome them. To make connections, begin by asking friends, family members, professors, or others if they know professionals who you can connect with.
Learn More
To get started, read our tips on how to Do Informational Interviews, explore LinkedIn for UCSB alumni, and visit the Gaucho Network and military networking platforms.
