Veteran advice came from LW Patrick Calahan, who served in the US Army Corp of Engineers (1941 – 2021). He shared the following advice with his daughter, Christie Calahan, noting that he learned everything he needed to know in the Army.
“If you don’t like something, take corrective action.”
Christie, a determined job seeker, took her father’s advice to heart and embarked on a journey of self-improvement.
She was downsized by her company with 100 others, and she knew she had to take corrective action in several ways in her job search.
Christie, a senior marketing director, knew she needed to revamp her resume and optimize her LinkedIn profile, so she took measures to do that.
Recognizing the need to step out of her comfort zone, Christie, despite being an introvert, courageously engaged in networking, understanding its crucial role in her job search.
She joined the Great Careers Network and loved it so much that she applied to be VP Marketing on the Board of Directors.
Then, she decided she needed to take corrective action professionally and upskill with the latest AI and machine learning knowledge to be competitive in the job market.
Despite the potential for a longer career gap, Christie was committed to her professional growth. She invested in herself and took an education sabbatical, enrolling in MIT’s Machine Learning & No Code AI Certification program on Father’s Day.
MIT is where Christie’s great aunt was the first woman to graduate from their engineering school.
At MIT, Christie was among classmates with PhDs and were Ivy League graduates.
Christie has just completed her education sabbatical and is now ready to bring more than traditional marketing to her next full-time role.
She learned how to predict customer churn, automate customer responses based on segment analysis, and what is possible when you integrate at the API level of large language models (LLMs). She also gained knowledge of prompt engineering.
RapidMainer, Dataiku, and KNIME are the platforms Christie learned, and she is now a whiz at AI acronyms.
Her completed projects include: 1) Hotel Room Cancellation Predictions. 2) Predicting Cybersecurity SMS Threats, and 3) Prompt Engineering to Manage Restaurant Reviews.
Although Christie is still seeking her next success story, she is happy she followed her veteran father’s advice to “take corrective action.”
Since Veterans Day is upon us, I would like to thank veterans personally for their service to our country.
Every year for Veteran’s Day, I like to share a favorite quote on what is a veteran:
“A veteran – whether active duty, discharged, retired or reserve – is someone who, at one point in his/her life, wrote a blank check made payable to the United States of America, for an amount of up to, and including, his/her life.”
Credit to John O’Brien for this quote, noted in a previous article on 8 Ways to Thank a Veteran on LinkedIn.
Credit to Christie Calahan for her contributions to this article as well as to her dad for his veteran advice.
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CO AUTHOR BIO
Christie Calahan has 20+ years of experience working on EdTech, SaaS products (B2B, B2C, B2B2C), and subscription models and has a global ad agency background working on Fortune 500 brands. Her expertise includes creative strategies, branding, CRM/marketing automation, media buying and planning, metrics dashboards, demand generation, GTM strategies, and sales enablement.
As an established team leader with a proven track record, she is equally adept with both creative strategies and technical skills, now including machine learning and AI. She has completed her Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence certification at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) while freelancing for multiple companies. She also has a digital media marketing certification from NYU and a Bachelor of Science degree from the Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University.
CO-AUTHOR BIO
Lynne M. Williams is the Executive Director of the Great Careers Network, a volunteer-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides career development and networking connections for 1) job seekers in career transition, including veterans, and 2) employed and self-employed for career management.
Aside from writing keyword-focused content for ATS resumes and LinkedIn profiles, Lynne is writing her doctoral dissertation on LinkedIn for Job Seekers. She is a contributing author on “Applying to Positions” in Find Your Fit: A Practical Guide to Landing the Job You Love, along with the late Dick Bolles, the author of What Color is Your Parachute?, and is also a speaker on career topics.
