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Supporting Peter Stowell on his resettlement journey

Category: Success Stories Publish date: 05/01/2021

Supporting Peter Stowell on his resettlement journey Peter Stowell left the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2020 following a 36 year career. After taking stock of his career, Peter decided that it was time to embark on a new journey, and registered for support with the Career Transition Partnership (CTP). Here, he tells us a little bit about his experience:

"There wasn’t an element of Service life that I didn’t like, and I particularly enjoyed the sense of collective endeavour throughout my career. However, after 36 years in the Army I had achieved everything that I had both wanted to and was able to – and so I felt it was the right time to move on."


Resettlement

Once registered with the CTP, Peter immersed himself in the wealth of support available, starting with attending the 3-day Career Transition Workshop (CTW) which forms a solid foundation for and resettlement planning, and undertook some external training courses too in order to cement his skills and experience and prepare for civilian roles:

"I found the CTW very helpful and enjoyed the chance to get away from work and really start thinking about the practicalities of what I wanted to do next in my career.

"I undertook as many CTP workshops as possible, enjoying them all and taking crucial learnings from each of them. I also took the Property Maintenance course which was really enjoyable and helpful, along with the AMAC course at Manchester Business School, which I must say, was superb."

Peter also worked closely with his CTP Career Consultant, Annette, and found their time and work together to be the most valuable:

"Annette was always available to offer great advice on potential courses (AMAC being key), as well as guidance on developing my CV. This, along with her insistence on hammering home the importance of speaking to my network was invaluable and encouraged me to get plans in motion."

Successful Outcome

Peter is now a Principal Consultant for C3IA Solutions, where his military experience and resettlement journey have put him in good stead to enjoy an obstacle free transition:

"Being a Chartered Communications Engineer and having experience in project and programme management has proven invaluable for me in civilian work. While every aspect of my resettlement training helped and prepared me in different ways to ensure that I had my head in the right place and could hit the ground running in my new role."

Advice

For his closing words of advice to fellow Service leavers, Peter goes on to say:

"Talk to your network. I really, really hate networking – I would genuinely rather do anything than go into a room (virtual or physical) full of strangers and make small talk. But it’s how the world works and you simply have to bite the bullet and do it."