Project Manager

West
US Army, O-3

I am an Army Engineer Captain, and my last day of official service was in March, but I went on terminal leave in February. I first began searching for jobs while I was still in Iraq in August 2007, but, since I knew little hiring happens at the end of the year, I really started hitting the interviews hard in January. I first learned about Orion International through the mailings sent to our platoon.

I was working with several other recruiters when I remembered getting the mailer, so I looked up Orion on the internet and contacted them from there. My recruiters was Bob Berkholz. He was very professional and gave me a better package overall than other recruiting firms. Some firms were very detailed and personal but lacked the breadth of available jobs. Others had plenty of jobs, but it felt like a volume-processing operation. Orion was a nice hybrid between the two, since I feel I got a good amount of personal attention and follow-up, but the available opportunities were also of high quality.

Orion and my recruiters met my needs very well, and they were aware of what to look for, even when I was not sure what to look for. This was especially important, because I never attended an Orion conference. Bob contacted me about various opportunities. There was one job that was not initially too thrilled about, because I thought it was residential construction. I interviewed anyway, though, and got the job.

I had just done construction management in the Army, and, while I wanted to continue with project management, I did not want to keep doing construction. This was until Rosendin was explained to me better. I found out that the construction was in alternative energy (wind turbine farms) and that it was a traveling position. So I paused and realized that I had found a job in an emerging industry (which is really interesting), that requires a lot of travel (which is something that I was looking for), and where I would be a project manager (which fits with my experience). The fact that the compensation package was also good was icing on the cake at this point. When I start in a few weeks, I will be an Assistant Project Manager until I am through training, and then I will be the Project Manager for my own projects. It is an incredible opportunity, and I am very much looking forward to it.