Mindfulness made simple
One of the most common things I hear as a Career Management Specialist is:
‘I don’t know where to begin.‘
This might be followed by a list of questions:
- What jobs would suit me?
- Would my skills transfer?
- Do I need more qualifications?
- What would I earn elsewhere?
- How do I explain my experience to employers outside emergency services?
- Should I stay or leave?
If you’ve spent years, and often decades, building expertise within emergency services, these questions are completely understandable.
Just as I wouldn’t know where to begin when responding to a serious incident, managing a complex investigation, or coordinating an emergency response, you shouldn’t be expected to automatically understand recruitment practices, labour market information, applicant tracking systems, or how to position your great experience for a new industry.
Research suggests there is value in seeking professional support during career transitions, with studies showing improvements in career decision-making, job search effectiveness, employment outcomes, and wellbeing.¹ ²
So what might specialist careers advice look like? If someone comes to me unsure of what they want to do next, we might work through a process to answer four practical questions:
- What do you have to offer?
Many people underestimate the breadth of skills they’ve developed throughout their careers. Leadership, stakeholder engagement, risk assessment, incident management, training, and decision-making under pressure are all capabilities valued across a range of industries. This is often where exploring transferable skills and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) opportunities can be useful. - What are your options?
Once we understand your skills and experience, we can explore where they might transfer, including industries, occupations, salary expectations, qualification requirements, and labour market demand. - Do you need anything else?
Sometimes additional qualifications or licences are required. Sometimes they aren’t. Understanding this early can help avoid investing time and money into training that may not improve your employment prospects. - How do you communicate your value?
The challenge is rarely a lack of experience. More often, it’s translating that experience into language employers understand through resumes, interviews, LinkedIn profiles, and job applications.
This is just one approach we might take to one specific career journey, but as specialists, there are countless tools in the toolkit we would draw from, just as you would have a robust skillset in yours. Seeking careers advice isn’t about lacking capability, it’s about drawing on the expertise of someone who works in this space every day.
If you’ve been thinking about what’s next but don’t know where to begin, you’re not alone. In my experience, “I don’t know where to begin” isn’t a barrier to career transition, it’s often where the process starts.
Tate Harris is a Career Management Specialist at Fortem Australia with more than 15 years’ experience supporting career transitions and providing career counselling services.
¹ Brown, S. D., et al. (2025). The Effectiveness of Career Counseling: A Meta-Analysis. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/joec.12239
² Liu, S., Huang, J. L., & Wang, M. (2014). Effectiveness of Job Search Interventions: A Meta-Analytic Review. Available at: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-41193-001