Q: I have spent more than 20 years in the United States Navy, holding positions from training women enlisting in the Navy, to classroom instructor, to administration and personnel supervisor. When I retired from the Navy, I was fortunate to be hired by a military contractor. Within a year, the jobs went to another state. I continued my college courses and received a B.A. in management. There still were no jobs, so I decided that I should get more education – a master’s degree majoring in human resources. Since then I have applied for more than 100 jobs, and I have not had any luck. Can you give me some tips for getting a job with my master’s degree? I don’t have enough experience in HR to work in the civilian market. – Betsy

J.T.: Without seeing your resume, my guess is that people look at the advanced degree you have and think: “Why would she want this job? She’s overqualified.” Sadly, more than 40 percent of the people who go and get advanced degrees in the U.S. end up in jobs that they could have gotten without the degree.

Dale: Well, that’s a jolly statistic to lift Betsy’s spirits. But here’s my question for you, Betsy – what’s your professional branding/positioning? We know you undervalue yourself – we can infer that from your comment about the civilian market. So I suspect that your approach when contacting prospective employers is to say, in effect: “Here are my degrees and my skills. Where would I fit in your organization?” That works in the military, where it’s someone’s job to match your skills to open assignments; however, in the civilian job market, the answer to “Where would I fit?” is a shrug and an “I don’t know” as your resume is set aside. Part of getting a job is doing the work of figuring out where you fit and where you could be of help to companies.

J.T.: In other words, you have failed to connect the dots. It’s time to figure out what elements of your previous jobs have most energized you, then use that knowledge to identify the kinds of positions that would let you do more of that type of work. Here’s what I suggest: Find and join your local HR organization (that is, The Society of Human Resource Managers, or SHRM). Attend its events and start to network. See if you can get help identifying some positions in HR that would make the most of your experience. From there, you can build a network as you figure out where your experience matches existing HR jobs.