The Transition Industrial Complex

Navigating the Sea of Grifters: Veterans Beware

There’s a moment, somewhere between optimism and desperation where you’ll seriously consider taking a job in Incest, Alabama, managing a Dollar General that shares a parking lot with a truck wash and a vape shop. Not because you want to. Because someone told you it was your best shot. And for a minute, you believe them.

Welcome to the transition industrial complex: a vast, shapeshifting collection of headhunters, LinkedInfluencers, "veteran-focused" staffing firms, and well-meaning-but-out-of-touch programs. Their mission: to help you. Or sell to you. Or sell you. Depends on the day.

They speak in certainty. They package it in patriotism. And they prey on one very specific kind of vulnerability:
You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you really want to.

The Duality of the Grift

Here’s the con:
They tell you you’re a unicorn. That your leadership experience, your maturity, your ability to operate in chaos makes you an elite candidate. “Corporate America is desperate for someone like you,” they say. “You’ll be running the place in a year.”

Here’s the twist:
When you start asking for a decent salary, or a location that doesn’t require a four-hour drive to the nearest airport, the tone shifts. Suddenly, you’re inexperienced. Green. Not ready for the big leagues. You need to pay your dues, even if those dues involve wearing a polo with a company logo and getting yelled at by regional managers named Todd.

You’re either a national treasure or a risk to be managed. Often in the same phone call.

The Resume Trap

You’ll spend hours rewriting your resume. Then days. Then weeks. You’ll get feedback that it “doesn’t show results.” You’ll try to turn “deployed in combat as a leader of Soldiers” into “led cross-functional team in high-stakes environment to achieve mission alignment.” You’ll hate yourself a little. But you’ll do it.

You’ll send out a hundred applications and get ghosted by 90 of them. The other 10 will send you automated rejections written by someone who’s never led anything more dangerous than a Zoom meeting. Through it all, you’ll start to believe that second talk track: that maybe you aren’t ready. That maybe all your experience doesn’t matter.

That’s when the headhunter messages you again.

“This job may not be ideal, but it gets your foot in the door.”

And because the alternative is another week of silence, you nod along.

LinkedInfluencers and the Cult of ‘Networking’

There’s a special place in hell for the LinkedIn personalities who turn transition into a performance. You know the type. Every post starts with:

“5 years ago, I left the military with no idea what I wanted to do. Now I’m a six-figure consultant with 18,000 followers and a purpose-driven career. Here’s how I did it—step one: send 50 connection requests a day.”

They sell certainty. They turn transition into a formula:
👉 Comment “Great insight, Charles!” on three posts daily.
👉 Post humblebrags disguised as vulnerability.
👉 Use buzzwords like “storytelling” and “personal brand.”
👉 Announce you’re “open to work” with a professional headshot and a caption about grit.

They’re not all bad. Some genuinely want to help. But the system they describe, a digital popularity contest masquerading as career strategy, isn’t built for people who spent the last decade focused on effect, instead of image.

You don’t need 10,000 connections. You need five real ones. You won’t find them by pretending to be someone else or following someone else’s formula.

You’re the Product

Here’s the thing most vets don’t realize at first:
You are the product.

Staffing firms get paid to place you, not to fulfill you. Some transition “coaches” charge for services you can get for free. Some nonprofit programs funnel you toward partner companies with entry-level roles that nobody else wants. Some of them are doing what they can with limited resources. Others are running a business with a pipeline full of confused, honorable, desperate talent.

You are not just a job-seeker. You are inventory.

That doesn’t mean every opportunity is trash. It means you need to vet the people who claim to be vetting opportunities for you.

What a Real Network Feels Like

A real network isn’t built in the comments section. It’s not measured in likes or profile views. It’s your buddy calling you out of the blue to connect you with someone they trust. It’s a mentor making an intro because they know you’ll represent them well. It’s slow, deliberate, built over time, and it doesn’t require you to play digital dress-up.

Some folks get lucky early. Some find their path through one of these transition programs. But for most of us? It’s trial and error. It’s getting ghosted. It’s biting your tongue on the third “tell me about yourself” in a week. It’s realizing that no one’s coming to rescue you, and then deciding to rescue yourself.

Stay Skeptical. Stay You.

If someone tells you they have “the formula,” walk away. Transition isn’t a formula. It’s a process. It’s messy and painful and nonlinear. Anyone selling you certainty is probably selling you something else too.

Be open to help. But be skeptical of hype.
Build relationships, not pipelines.
Remember: just because you’re lost, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

You don’t need to reinvent yourself as some cardboard-cutout corporate buzzword factory. You just need to hold onto what’s real while you learn what’s next.