I had a great conversation with Ted McAleer, the head of USTAR, over breakfast this morning. (I reported on his USTAR update briefly on the MWCN blog.)
Ted attended West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. He later earned a masters degree in engineering from the University of Virginia and, several years later, completed an MBA at Harvard.
We talked a great deal about the preparation of a military career, especially one that begins at the Academy, for non-military careers.
We traded stories in no particularly scientific way, but I came away more convinced than ever that military service, especially beginning with training in the Academy, is genuinely unequaled career preparation for executives.
As a 22-year-old second lieutenant, Ted's first direct report was a 40-year-old sargeant. Ted felt absolutely prepared for that experience after four full years of training. The system works.
I believe that it is the combination of Ivy-league caliber education combined with real-world, live-fire, life-or-death leadership that gives military experience unequaled value in a career. It may be the only place that the stress and excitement of the daily grind exceeds the stress and excitement of launching a new business.
I recall that when I was in graduate school at Cornell that my classmates who'd attended the Academy where generally at the head of the line for job interviews. They were considered top candidates.
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