Marine Corps Base Quantico -- If you’re a working military spouse, the constant upheaval of PCS is a struggle.

“Every time you move, you go down the totem pole,” Demetria Thomas, Transition Assistant Program Manager with Marine Corps Community Services Quantico, said. “It can be hard to develop and maintain transportable skills.”

MCCS is partnering with the Alliance of Creative Professional Women to present the 2nd annual Women in Transition Career Conference Oct. 10 aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico.

The free conference is designed for women who are looking for career advancement, transitioning from military to civilian, re-entering the workforce, or experiencing any other type of transition to gain the skills and confidence they need to find a job.

“There is so much need for this,” Johnson said. “Last year we learned that half a day is not enough.”

Thomas said she attended the conference last year when it was held in Maryland and was impressed.

“It was just so well-done,” she said. “I could feel that the women who attended were impressed, too. It was such an enlightening and empowering atmosphere, especially for women who’d been out of work for a long time. They didn’t have to feel ashamed. I thought this is something we’d like to bring to our area.”

Cindi Johnson, ACPW President, said the conference will give women the opportunity to have their resumes reviewed in one-to-one sessions and to learn about job search resources available in their community at no cost, how to overcome unconscious bias in interviews, how to solve the hidden code in job descriptions, how to successfully negotiate salary, and how to present themselves professionally both in person and through social media.

Workshops will be presented by ACPW, MCCS Personal and Professional Development, LDS Employment Resource Center, and the Career Network Ministry of McLean Bible Church.

A lunchtime networking component will allow participants to meet individuals in these job support and training organizations.

“We’ve learned that the way people find jobs and the way people are hired has changed dramatically even in just the last five years,” Johnson said. “People are doing Skype interviews now and maybe video resumes are down the road. It’s great for those who want to stand out, but for others it can be scary.”

The conference focuses on women because “there is so much need, and if we tried to include everyone, we’d focus on nothing at all,” Johnson said.

“As we’re all professional women [in ACPW], we recognize that we’ve all been helped at some point in our careers,” she said. “This conference is us giving back.”

Johnson said that while some job advice is the same for men and women, women do face challenges that men do not.

“It’s still true that, when we look at the aggregate picture, women are the ones who take maternity leave and sick leave to care for children, and when there’s a single family, it’s usually headed by a woman,” she said. We still need to help women feel confident.”

Women have a different style of leadership than men and research has shown it is effective, Johnson said.

“On the whole, women are more comfortable with collaboration, more mentoring, and less competitive,” she said. “But organizations are still figuring out how to value that.”

Military women transitioning to civilian jobs face additional quandaries.

Tiffany Ward-Bryant, administrative technician for MCCS Quantico, transitioned out of the military in June 2008. She said that it was difficult to condense her lengthy military employment history for private sector jobs and said others might find it difficult to translate the skills they developed in the military to civilian terminology.

“If you were a woman in combat engineering, it’s hard to move from that to sitting behind a desk,” Ward-Bryant said. “Or if you were a mechanic in the military, but you want to do something different when you get out, how can you translate those skills?”

No matter what career difficulties women are facing, Thomas said they will find the conference empowering and morale-boosting.

“This conference says ‘Come on in, we love you, and we want to help you!’” she said.

Those wishing to attend the conference can register at http://ow.ly/QWpTX or visit www.CreativeProfessionalWomen.org.

— Writer: auphausconner@quanticosentryonline.com