Understanding business and rank definitions

Understanding roles in a business setting is essential.   Roles like CEO (Chief Executive Officer), CFO (Chief Finance Officer) HR Director (Human Resources Director) are all well understood and guide internal and external conversations.  CEO’s are typically interested in all aspects of how their business is running, however of particular interest is reputation.  Not just the reputation of the business as a good corporate citizen, but the personal reputation of the CEO themselves.   This is especially important for those senior managers seeking their next-level CEO role or as a lucrative board member guiding other organisations.   Central to a CFO discussion, is not just topics such as income and expenditure, but profitability.  Typically, all projects, goods and services are ‘back-costed’ and scrutinised for their profitability as forecast but their contribution to the overall financial health of the business.  Conversations with HR are ‘squarely based’ around their people.  Topics like business churn (turnover of staff), ‘how often we go to the doctor to get ‘sickie certificates’ all indicate and have a direct correlation to the culture of an organisation.  If staff or an employee cannot face going to work, sick day’s statistics tend to rise as a ‘lead indicator’.  These are all red flags for HR managers and typically dominate conversations.

Likewise, understanding Defence rank is equally important as their civilian counterparts.  Their rank very much determines and guides those ‘member-civilian’ discussions.  For example, if a training organisation or an employer is interviewing a transitioned Defence Sergeant, they are typically talking to a blue collar, hands on style person with in excess of 10 – 15 years’ of experience who can manage a team of up to a 40 -140 members.  A Sergeant is likely to be interested in supervisor, or a project management role and equate to a Head of Department civi’ role.

However, if an employer is talking to a rank of Major, it usually denotes someone who has served similar service time and supervisor of similar number of troops however is more likely to be an officer who is interested in University or higher education qualifications or managerial roles.

Just like offering low-level training (ie: Certificate I in Construction) for a CEO is not appropriate, civilians need to understand the subtle difference in Defence ranks to guide their conversations to transitioning members.