Deb Hirsh: A Successful Transition to Civilian Life - You Can Do It Too!
Deb Hirsh: A Successful Transition
to Civilian Life - You Can Do It Too!
About
the Author
Captain Deborah D.
Hirsh, USN (Ret) is currently serving as the
Chief Human Resources Officer of the Los Angeles
Unified School District (LAUSD). This is her
first post-retirement position, which encompasses
overseeing all personnel issues for the second
largest school district in the United States.
LAUSD's 100,000 full and part time personnel
serve 750,000 largely economically disadvantaged
children, attending more than 800 schools.
Captain Hirsh, a veteran of 26 years on active
duty, began her naval career with several
varied tours early in her career in communications
and intelligence, serving on major fleet and
international staffs, as well as operational
units, before settling into what was to become
her specialty, recruiting. After a very successful
tour as the Executive Officer, and then, Commanding
Officer of Navy Recruiting District, Omaha
in 1989, she was selected to head up the Officer
Recruiting School in Pensacola, Florida. Later,
she became the Commanding Officer of Navy
Recruiting District New York, arguably the
most complex and challenging recruiting district
in the country. Under her leadership, Navy
Recruiting District New York went from last
to best in the nation in two short years.
This was followed by a tour in the Pentagon
in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Personnel and Readiness as the
Director of all Military Recruitment Advertising.
A television military recruitment advertising
campaign spearheaded by Captain Hirsh and
employing the Oscar-ominated Passion of
the Christ cinematographer Caleb Deschanel
won the prestigious advertising industry Effie
award in 1996.
After the Pentagon, Captain Hirsh was selected
for Major Command and served first as the
Director of Operations for the Navy Recruiting
Command, followed by Commander, Navy Recruiting
Northeast Region with eight subordinate commands.
She rounded out her rich Navy experiences
as the Chief Human Resources Officer at the
Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California
before retiring in 2002.
Relocating with her family to Los Angeles,
she has proven that a smooth transition from
military life is very doable. She has found
that the leadership skills, coupled with the
MBA she gained while serving on active duty,
are directly translatable to the civilian
sector and in great demand. In one short year
after arriving at the Los Angeles Unified
School District, she raised the quality of
the district's teaching force from 71% highly
qualified teachers to over 94% overall. Her
focus is now turning to improving the quality,
selection and training of the district's 800
plus school principals, and she is actively
pursuing initiatives that would allow transitioning
military commanding officers to serve as school
principals.
Captain Hirsh is also the proud mother of
16-year old TV and movie actress Hallee Hirsh,
who is best known as Anthony Edwards' (Top
Gun's Goose) recalcitrant daughter, Rachel,
on the hit television series ER. Hallee can
also be seen this season on CBS's JAG, in
the role of Mattie Grace, Harm's adopted daughter.
Both Hallee and her mom think this is pretty
cool considering Hallee grew up in a Navy
family.
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Hello Military.com readers! I am excited to have been accepted as
a contributing correspondent for this esteemed community. As a 26-year
Navy veteran who has made a successful transition to civilian life,
I was thrilled to find a forum in which I could share my experiences
and insights with the hope of lessening the anxiety for those of you
facing your transitions.
The first thing you need to know is that the skills you have gained
in your military careers are transferable and in great demand in the
civilian sector. Second, the easiest way to a great second career
is through, yup, you guessed it, networking.
We've heard it all through our careers and we heard it again in our
transition workshops. When I was ready to retire, it was the first
process I turned to, and it worked right away. Maybe I was just lucky,
but it also worked right away for two of my colleagues retiring at
about the same time.
I attended the acclaimed Ruehlin Seminar, named after Admiral Ruehlin
who started the program, a few months short of my retirement. Our
instructor taught us about a pretty straightforward process of listing
all the people you know and then taking the time to contact each of
them -- to let them know that you were coming on the job market, and
whether they knew of any potential opportunities matching your skill
sets. I dutifully and methodically put out my feelers not really expecting
much to come of it.
Lo and behold, a very kind senior officer, who remembered me favorably,
contacted another recently retired Naval Officer on my behalf in Los
Angeles, where I desired to go. I didn't know she had done this, nor
did I know the retired Naval Officer in Los Angeles. It just so happened
that this other retired officer's organization, the Los Angeles Unified
School District (LAUSD), was just beginning a search for a new Chief
Human Resources Officer. This officer contacted the headhunting firm
responsible for the search, which, in turn, contacted me.
This is where I did an initially rather stupid thing. At first I did
not return the headhunter's phone call; being a Chief Human Resources
Officer of a school districtdidn't sound very interesting, and I wasn't
really a human resources expert. My background was in recruiting,
but I thought I would like to try something completely different from
either recruiting or human resources, like, say, becoming a film producer
(hey, nothing wrong with dreaming big).
A couple of weeks went by and Korn Ferry (the headhunting firm) called
again. I was darned lucky that they did, but I initially told the
nice headhunter lady at Korn Ferry that I didn't think I was interested.
However, I asked her what the job paid, and then I suddenly got interested.
I had no idea how much below the market we were paid in the military
(however, when you factor in our indexed pensions at a very young
age, military service is still a great deal). Practicality took over,
and I remembered the sage advice of others who have transitioned ahead
of me. They had told me that it was a good idea to seek the most responsible,
highest paid position you could find as your first job on the outside
so that you could establish your "worth" in the private sector right
away. This, then, could be used as a starting place for future upward
mobility positions, should you choose to go that route.
I was given the opportunity to compete for the position through a
rather expansive and daunting interview process. There were 40 aspirants
to the position that soon became eight semi-finalists. I was invited
to go down to Korn Ferry headquarters offices in Los Angeles for my
first panel interview. I immediately went out and splurged on an Armani
suit, new purse, and stylish briefcase, and I had a manicure. An Armani
suit is not necessary, I can tell you now, but what did I know, and
I wanted to feel really confident.
I went to Los Angeles a day ahead of my appointed interview and looked
up the retired Navy Officer in the district who had referred me to
the headhunter. She was the Chief Information Officer for LAUSD. I
found out that there were ten other Navy Captains at the district,
including a retired Seebee Captain who was serving as the Chief Facilities
Officer and was embarking on building over 200 new schools! Working
for him was a retired Admiral, a Marine Colonel and several other
Captains. I gathered as much information as I could about the challenges
in the Human Resources Division and the district at large so that
I would be able to intelligently answer questions the next day.
At the Korn Ferry offices, I found myself in a beautifully appointed,
thick carpeted conference room and was invited to sit down by myself
on one side across from about eight senior administrators from the
school district. The lady from Korn Ferry sat at the end of the table
and asked the questions, many of them multi-part, while the administrators
sat stoically across the table and took notes. I was the only non-educator
in the group and the preference was for an individual with K-12 (educator
jargon) HR experience. A lot of the questions were directed at why
I thought a military officer could fit into a school district environment
and what specifically I would do given the challenges the district's
HR division was facing having to hire 4,000 highly qualified teachers
a year. I found the panel interviews quite challenging but quickly
got into the groove of relating my military leadership experiences
to what I could contribute to the school district. I left the interview
trembling from adrenaline but I don't think it showed. That was really
hard.
I went home expecting to hear something pretty quickly. No word. A
week went by and then part of another. I figured that was that, I
was out, but it still would have been nice to hear something one way
or the other. It was a most maddening time. Finally the headhunter
called and told me she had good news and bad news. The good news was
that she thought I had done very well in my interview and that the
panelists were impressed. The bad news was there were two candidates
they liked better. I accepted that this job would not likely pan out
for me and I went about working other potential leads.
A month went by and the headhunter called again. Apparently the first
two were offered the position, one after the other, and both declined.
They were happy where they were in other school districts in other
states. The prospects of dealing with massive issues in the second
largest school district in the country, with 100,000 employees, 37,000
teachers and 757,000 students was not appealing enough to them to
make the move. LAUSD was now interested in me again, the third choice
candidate, and I was invited back down to meet the Superintendent
of the district, the recent former governor of Colorado, for a final
interview.
I was told that the interview would be at 8:00 A.M. on Aug 1st. This
was followed by a letter confirming the time and date. On July 30th,
a FEDEX package arrived with two 300-page audit reports about the
state of the HR Division at LAUSD. I had a day and half to read and
absorb them but I wasted no time and read both front to cover that
very evening, staying up to the wee hours the next morning. This lack
of procrastination may be one of the best decisions I have made in
my life, because the next morning, July 31st at 8:30, the headhunter
was on the phone to me frantically inquiring why I wasn't at the district
for my appointed interview with the Superintendent.
But, but, you told me it was on August 1st, I protested. I had planned
to get my hair done and have another manicure in a leisurely fashion
the day before my interview, and now I was scurrying to get into my
Armani and to the district as fast as possible because all these senior
managers as well as the Superintendent had cancelled all their plans
for the day and were waiting for me! I was indignant beyond words,
but did not let on. I arrived downtown Los Angeles by 10:00 and finally
had my final interviews. Because I had read all the materials, I was
well prepared and didn't even need notes. I pulled myself together
emotionally and was "on" in the interviews. A day later I was offered
the job. I started with thirty days left to serve on active duty in
a leave status.
Once in the position, I quickly realized what I had to offer. All
that I learned in my sequentially challenging leadership positions
while on active duty came into play. People are people everywhere,
and the basic leadership skills of determining the priorities and
then organizing and motivating the workforce to mission success are
the same on the inside of the service as on the outside. And we in
the military are uniquely qualified to step into a new area and immediately
start making a difference. Remember, we have had to do this very thing
many times throughout our careers, changing jobs every two to three
years while many of our civilian counterparts have been employed by
the same organization for their entire adult lives, and in many cases
with very few different job experiences.
Most of my senior colleagues at the Los Angeles Unified School District,
for instance, had been with this organization for 30 years. The Chief
Human Resources Officer I replaced (or the Associate Superintendent
for Human Resources, as her title was called since she was a former
teacher) had been in the very same position for 20 years! And another
thing I don't think many of us fully appreciate while on active duty
is just how much we have been able to hone our leadership skills and
what a competitive advantage this gives us on the outside. When you
stop to consider that we are changing jobs every two to three years
on a basically upwardly mobile track in the military, and our bosses
on the way up are doing the same thing, we have the opportunity to
see and try out many different effective and ineffective leadership
styles and hone our own to work best for our own temperaments and
gifts.
I look forward to the opportunity of providing continuing commentary
in the future with the hope of helping my colleagues still on active
duty and others as well to step boldly and bravely into the next phases
of their lives knowing that there is still much more to give. I have
found in K-12 education, work that is every bit as meaningful as the
work I did serving my country on active duty. I would be thrilled
to encourage others to follow in my footsteps into education as an
area uniquely crying out for the very skills we have to offer. What
could be more important, aside from defending our country, than helping
the American education system provide the best possible education
to our nations' youth, an area of great challenge today and for many
years to come?
