A mistake made by officers, seeking a career post army.

Officers after serving in army can get a pay package anywhere between Rs 5 lacs to Rs 50 lacs (I know officers at either end) depending on how they position themselves.

What is wrong positioning?

Rule 1: Defence is not HR
Rule 2: Defence is not administration

Officers end up in these support units and would draw a salary of Rs 5 lacs. There support functions are the value maintenance activities in a corporate and generally considered to be the in the realm of non-value adds.

I make a distinction here - if an officer gets into training (generally part of HR) he would get into Rs 5 lacs + bracket.

Get into these functions only if you are getting in at General Manager / Director level and that means a salary in excess of Rs 12 lacs (if you negotiate well, it should be around Rs 18 lacs plus).

So where do defence guys fit in?

They certainly do not fit into legal, finance and sales.

The officers fit into

• Quality
• Risk Management (Operational - logistics / supply chain management, not financial or strategic)
• Risk Management IT
• Project Management
  
• Strategy
  

What an officer needs is to position himself to fit into them, because though the officer has the knowledge sub-consciously, it won't manifest in an interview till the officer is world-wise (techno - politico - social - econo wise).

Our limitation - We cannot talk about frameworks, about theories and their applications, about how the army experience can be translated to the benefit of the corporates.

For e.g. a question I was asked in my interview. "Which is the latest book you are reading"?
My reply - Crossing the Chasm.
Follow up question " We are a niche consulting organization - kind of a startup with a bouquet offering of services. Many of the services are something that the client is not even aware of - say sourcing consulting. What do you suggest should be the strategy if we have to cross the chasm"?

Another question: We are looking at establishing a process maturity model which will force the users to change the way the work is being done. What steps do you advise we take to minimize the adverse reaction to change? Since you were an army officer and talk leadership, what leadership steps do we need to take to make the change work.

What are the requirements of each domain?

• Quality- awareness of ISO and hopefully implementation of ISO standards, six sigma knowledge helps tremendously, process improvements, benchmarking, lean sigma - all help

• Risk Management IT - awareness of standards like COBIT, OCTAVE, etc. For fitting Risk Management IT which could pay around Rs 20 lacs easily, one needs to be IT savy. A few courses like CCNA, CISA would CISSP would launch the officer into IT Risk Consulting and he could pick up ethical hacking, penetration testing, vulnerability assessment with ease

• Risk Management - logistics / operations - any officer who is involved in inventory management, JIT, ROP, anything to do with movement / maintenance of resources coupled with knowledge of SAP or other tools could get around Rs 20 lacs plus
  

• Project Management - certification like PMP helps tremendously coupled with project implementation experience - projects could be construction - infrastructure - roads, highways, communication towers, buildings. The way I define project is that it has a definite start and end and has an objective to be achieved
  

• Strategy - this is for those guys who can talk about the future, understand as-is reality and create a roadmap for achieving the same. A tremendous amount of knowledge of the industry is the requisite. An officer should be able to connect the dots of the politico - social - economic and see patterns that others dont.

If anyone is interested in knowing more, please post your comments. I will not answer individual mails as the knowledge that we will share could be of value to others too. I have allowed anonymous posts on the blog if you so desire.