In 2016, I was living in Indiana and just recently sold the company I was in. For over two years, I had a led a small manufacturing company but it required more capital to fix than what my parent company was willing to invest. I was slated to start my MBA at the Kellogg School of Management the following year so I wanted to move to Chicago to reduce the commute. Without much luck on job postings (I didn’t know how to leverage my network effectively at that time), I turned to a military recruiter to help me find a job.

This is a 14 min. podcast from Kellogg Insight, where the faculty of the Kellogg School of Management brings their latest research and findings in an engaging format.

After my last 9 month deployment with the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) in late 2012, I decided to leave the Army. I had served on the Active Duty as a Paratrooper and a Green Beret for a decade, and my wife felt we should move on to a less hazardous lifestyle. For on and off the next year, I spent a lot of time processing my separation paperwork and attending mandatory transition briefings, and I soon found myself a few months away from an official transition date of 5 October 2013. Still, I had no clue what to do next.

My name is Freddie Kim, and I am a Veteran. Since I was 17, all I knew was the military. My career started out as a young cadet at West Point in 2000 and over the next 14 years, I was given the opportunity to lead Paratroopers and Green Berets in combat, both in the Philippines and Afghanistan. I became intimately familiar with the specifics of leadership and military training such as strategic and operational planning, small unit tactics, military decision making, weapons system capabilities, team building, and working with foreign armies. But as time came to prepare for my discharge from the Army in October of 2013, I was lost…