Instrumentation and Controls

Northeast
US Navy, O-3

My most recent position in the Navy was a communications officer on a submarine. I officially left the military on June 1, 2007, and started seriously looking for a new job when I returned from deployment during the last week of April. I had previously been in contact with Stephanie Moser prior to deployment, and we talked on two occasions over the phone. She was very receptive and interested in listening to what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, since I was only able to look in very specific areas, because my wife already had a job in the Philadelphia area.

I attended a hiring conference in Baltimore. The first day was presentations and interview preparation. On the second day, I had three interviews for three very different positions: a sales position, a consultant position, and then the engineering position with the Washington Group that I ended up accepting. Interestingly, I did not originally think that I wanted to pursue this type of position. Initially, I envisioned myself working in IT, however, during my job search and several interviews on my own within the IT community, I was very disappointed with what I found. Once I interviewed with the Washington Group, it was very clear that this is what I wanted to do. I appreciated Orion's conference format in this respect. Had I not had seen the Washington Group at the conference, I probably would not have interviewed with them.

Orion helped me feel comfortable with the preparations for getting a job and set me up with great opportunities. Two things about Orion set it apart for me. One was the conference format. Had I not been exposed to different types of positions in different industries, I think I would have accepted a job doing what I “thought” I wanted to do and would not have been nearly as happy. Second was that I had contacted most of the major recruiting agencies prior to deployment, and Stephanie was the only recruiter who made repeated contact with me over deployment. After six months of being on deployment and knowing that I had to find a job directly afterwards, I appreciated that she had kept up with me.