Be prepared to not feel as secure as you did when working in one of our national services. Your civilian job might not exist tomorrow!

If you are leaving the Canadian military you need to start planning your retirement, your job search and your new future. You really should start this years before you plan on retiring. If you are already out of the Canadian military and considering a new position or a career change you need to do the same planning – only you now need to concentrate on this planning - a lot more. You will never know when you – as a civilian - might be forced into a job search.

From the moment you enter the civilian workforce, you need to have a back up plan. You need this back up plan available and up to date at all times. Company fortunes and misfortunes have a way of surprising you. And this often happens at the most inopportune times.

You might be very happy where you are working and plan to stay until you retire. The company you are working for might have other thoughts on their mind.

One method of building that safety net and keeping you informed of opportunities that might lay around the next corner can be illustrated by the following plan used by one of this company’s owners.

Read the follow on articles to see how he did it.