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Claudia Petersen has made a stellar leap. She joined the Army right out of high school, served 10 years and separated as a sergeant in 2001. Now she’s a senior operations coordinator for KBR in Houston, earning a six-figure income.

She admits there were times she questioned the value of her military occupational specialty in the Army. But not anymore.

“My MOS was logistics,” Petersen said. “During my first year, the Army merged five logistics MOSs into one. I ended up doing jobs in my MOS and outside my MOS.

“What seemed like a drag at the time actually expanded my horizons and benefited me six years later. I’ve worked at all levels of supply, from the unit level to materiel management. And clearly I was given the opportunity to join KBR because of the skills I had gotten as a soldier.”

Petersen, a native of Laredo, Texas, said her first assignment with KBR in Kosovo — she was responsible for warehouse operations — was exactly what she did in the Army and a lot like running a stateside home improvement store. That assignment kicked off a series of upward career moves that led to her current management position.

After finishing the contract in Kosovo, she returned to Texas and was called to work in the company’s Houston support office as an operations coordinator. Her career still entailed working overseas, including time in Iraq.

Members of her Houston support office deployed to Kuwait to set up a company headquarters for providing logistical and support services to the Army — construction, food preparation, potable water, sanitation and other services.

“I volunteered to take part in that endeavor,” Petersen said. “Several months afterwards, I was selected to assume duties as the KBR operations manager for a specific camp in Iraq.”

Once Petersen completed her overseas assignments, she returned to the Houston support office, where she’s now the operations lead.

“I am responsible for 19 employees, to include their professional development and work prioritization,” she said. “My day primarily consists of fielding calls from the project overseas, answering e-mails, attending meetings, giving briefings, planning, organizing, writing reports and ensuring the day-to-day operations of the [logistics] project continue to run smoothly.”

In five years, Petersen has transitioned into a management job with a six-figure income. Her story is becoming more common as an increasing number of enlisted military personnel leave the military and move into, lucrative second careers.

Companies like KBR, a subsidiary of defense contractor Halliburton, land billons of dollars in government work and have positions in a variety of levels and locations. But six-figure incomes — or jobs that can lead to such salaries — aren’t limited to government contractors. Headhunters and recruiters consistently place former enlisted personnel in high-paying positions in information technology, medical fields, security and corporate management.

Harry Joiner, an Atlanta-based executive recruiter and founder of Marketing Headhunter.com, says the secret to landing these jobs isn’t just about the market — it’s about marketing yourself.

“You have to look for a job the way you’d run or improve a business,” Joiner said. “To grow, you have to market, cross-market and constantly work at acquiring new clients. To improve efficiency, you have to learn how to do more with fewer resources and run a tighter, cleaner, meaner business. You have to approach the job search the same way. That means get rid of abstractions and cook everything down to specifics.”

Joiner believes job seekers often try to sell themselves as being good at everything. Instead, he suggests they find a way to be great at something.

“The trick for anybody who wants a six-figure job,” Joiner said, “is to figure out how you impacted an area of growth or efficiency in your last job and tell that story with numbers. ... The résumé has to convey that. You reduced the lead time in the supply chain by X number of days or you increased unit performance by X percentage or completed the task ahead of schedule by X number of hours. You want to give employers the idea that you can plug and play into the company business from the get-go.”

In transition workshops, separating service members often are encouraged to create multiple résumés. But while Joiner agrees that targeting specific industries or job openings is a good idea, he takes it a step further.

“It used to be that if a company was selling aspirin, their slogan could be, ‘Attention, headache sufferers.’ But people see 5,000 commercial messages a day now, so in order to make your mark today you have to say, ‘Attention, young Texas mothers with migraines.’ … You can’t get the ocean, so you dominate a puddle.

“Most job seekers are afraid to pigeonhole themselves. I’m saying you have to. You have to be an expert. Decide what you want to do and be prepared to tell that specific story on paper.”

‘Jump on every opportunity’

Vearl Williams represents another success story. He went from serving in the military to serving as senior partner in an international firm in eight years.

In 1995, when Williams was considering leaving the Army after 23 years, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. A command sergeant major, Williams was used to supervising teams and coordinating missions to their completion. He didn’t want just any job when he retired from the service and turned down several offers until he got a call from Orion International. At the time, the company was in the business of placing junior military officers in civilian jobs.

“They were looking for someone to start a new company to place enlisted personnel in corporate positions,” Williams said. “They asked me if I knew of anyone who would be a good fit. I thought I could make an impact and it sounded like a great job. So I offered myself and they hired me.”

The $100,000 salary did not come right away. Williams took a low salary and was one of only four people launching Orion’s new company, Career Network. But that first year, it tripled in size and earned $1.6 million.

“By 1997, we continued to grow and had become profitable, so Orion brought us in as a division. In 1998, I made partner and became the operations manager in charge of the Texas office. I was running the junior military officer division, the enlisted division and the sales force.”

A year later, he was regional manager in charge of areas from Austin, Texas, to Cincinnati and Nashville, Tenn. Williams went on to become the training manager for the company, a position that dissolved when the economy took a downturn. He took over the company’s western region and in 2003, became the vice president of Career Network and a senior partner. Today, he oversees an annual placement of about 1,000 former enlisted personnel.

“The key is to jump on every opportunity,” he said. “You do the best job you can do in the position you’re in, but always keep your eyes on the horizon. This company operates on the principle of ‘up and out.’ Like a lot of companies, they don’t want you to hang around in the same position or you’re likely to get stale. If you jump on opportunities, no matter what they are, you can move up within a company as it grows.”

Williams suggests service members decide what they want to do a few years before separating in order to complete training or education in that field and have an immediate advantage. He also likened good job-search strategy to good real estate strategy.

“The great jobs are always about location, location, location,” he said. “Do not go back home to Idaho and start your job search from there. Start your search while you’re serving. Then let the military pay for your relocation when you get out and go to where the high-paying job is.

“Be sure your family is behind you. Then when the job opportunity comes, you can take it.”  

Tranette Ledford can be reached at Tledford@atpco.com.