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You may retire. You may resign. Either way, some day, you're going to leave government. You'll likely need to look for another job. It's always better to think about the options and how you're going to handle your job search before you're ready to bid Uncle Sam a fond farewell.

This week and next week, I'll be interviewing Dick Irish about looking for a job outside government. Dick is an expert in career transitioning. He has trained and counseled more than 10,000 returning Peace Corps volunteers in getting jobs here in the U.S. after years in other countries. If you think it's hard to transition from the federal government, just think how hard it is to transition from teaching farmers in Bolivia.

Dick is the author of several books, including Go Hire Yourself an Employer and If Things Don't Get Better Soon, I May Ask You to Fire Me. Dick also established a successful recruitment and counseling center for international development professionals.

This week, he talks about what to do after retiring from government. Next week, he'll talk about translating your public-sector experience into a private-sector resume.

Q: What steps do you think a retiring federal employee should take to begin thinking about going to work in a private business environment?

A: People retiring from government need to ask themselves two tough questions:

1. Do I have the means to live comfortably without working? If you're retiring, money is less important than time. If someone wants to do something more than anything in the world before they die, now's the time to do it.

2. Do I still need to work to feel useful? The key to successful retirement is coping with pleasure, doing what you want to do, not what the U.S. government wants you to do. A lot of people can't handle "having fun," so they work instead. If so, make your next profession your passion and have fun working.

If you want to keep working, think about making function more important than salary, making whom you work with more important than whom you work for. Get what you want out of a job besides a paycheck. Now is the time to think about climbing down the ladder, making personal fulfillment more important than compensation.

Make a list of everything you loved doing in your government jobs and that you will hate to stop doing when you leave government. Think about how these activities might be transferable to jobs outside the government.

Start reading the want ads, the business press, even advertisements. The idea is to think imaginatively about products, services, functions and organizations you identify with. In a word, what are your values and how congruent are they with where you might want to work and at what you want to do.

Talk about next steps with those who know you and people you know who have made the transition from government. Learn from their successes and disappointments.

Career Change Workshop

I will be holding a full-day workshop with Dick Irish on the subject of career change to private industry and writing a resume for the private sector. The workshop will be held at the Department of Health and Human Services Career Counseling Program office in Washington on May 11. Call Phyllis Day at 202-205-9401 to register or e-mail her at pday@os.dhhs.gov. You can view a schedule of upcoming workshops at www.resume-place.com.

New Perspective

In response to last week's column about dealing with a bad apple, the frustrated supervisor who asked for advice wrote me:

Dear Kathryn,

I read the item on GovExec.com and loved it. Furthermore, I checked out the OPM link Dr. Radde listed, and printed the entire booklet on "Addressing and Resolving Poor Performance." His response was excellent, and the resource material on the OPM site was something I had not previously known about. I plan to recommend a training session to our manager for all supervisors, because my problem is not an isolated one, as you well know.

Thanks so much for helping me out. I feel like I have a very good new perspective on the problem. It will be interesting to see what now develops. I hope others can learn from this as well.

Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

Kathryn Kraemer has been the president of The Resume Place, Inc. for 27 years. Kathryn helps people get promoted and change jobs. She is the pioneer designer of the new "federal resume." She wrote and published the first book on federal resume writing and is a popular resume writing workshop leader in government.

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