Key Points
- Leveraging SkillBridge for a Successful Transition
Jimmy Pichiarello shared insights on making the most out of the SkillBridge program, specifically through Hiring Our Heroes (HOH). He emphasized the importance of actively networking, seeking mentorship, and positioning oneself within a company. He noted how utilizing internal resources and reaching out to veterans within Asurion helped him find a job that matched his skills and interests. - Applying Military Skills in Corporate Crisis Management
Jimmy explained how his background as an Army EOD officer prepared him for his current role as a Global Business Resiliency Analyst at Asurion. His military experience in crisis management, strategic planning, and high-pressure decision-making has translated effectively into his responsibilities, which include business continuity, crisis incident management, and IT disaster recovery. - The Importance of Networking, Vulnerability, and Structure in Transitioning
Jimmy highlighted how critical it is for transitioning service members to network, ask for help, and be open to new experiences. He also underscored the importance of establishing a structured daily routine, especially during periods of job searching. Additionally, he recommended taking time to decompress after leaving the military to manage the major life change effectively.
Transcript
Emily Bose: Hello and welcome back to Landing Zone Nashville. I am Emily Bose. I’m part of the team here at Transition Overwatch, and the goal of the show is to help the military community find great places to live and work in the Nashville area. Today, I’m so excited to have Jimmy Pichiarello on the show with me. He is a former Army EOD officer and a global business resiliency analyst with Asurion. So excited to get into his story. Jimmy, thank you for being on the show today.
Jimmy Pichiarello: Thanks so much for having me. Greatly appreciate it.
Emily: Absolutely. So I know we were chatting before the show and you were just sharing a little bit of your story with me. I think the people that watch this are really going to get a lot out of your story. So I’m excited to get into it. Can you give us a little bit of a history? So how did you end up in the military? I know you said you didn’t do ROTC or an academy. So how did you end up finding your way into the Army? And then, you know, what ended up prompting—or if you want to share why you transitioned, that’s fine, you don’t have to—but just, how has your journey led you from being in the military to where you are now?
Jimmy: So I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania—home of The Office, for those who know where that is—and my whole family was military. My grandfather was military; I had three uncles; everyone was Army across the board. I got out of college, and I was like, “Hey, this is just something that I want to pursue.” And if I want to do it, I’m going to have to do it right now. Like, now’s the time—now that I graduated, got my degree. I feel like now’s the time that I should really go in, make this happen, and see where it takes me.
Emily: That totally makes sense. So what prompted you to be interested in the EOD side of things? I noticed, I think your degree is a little more focused on sports and stuff like that. It looked like maybe you did sports in college. How did you go from that to explosive ordnance?
Jimmy: Yeah, so it’s not your very typical route. I studied biochemistry for three years at the University of Scranton in undergrad, and then I transitioned and eventually got my degree in exercise physiology with minors in coaching, nutrition, and biochemistry. So there’s really no rhyme or reason as to how I ended up in there. When I signed up, I went to basic just about as everyone does. And then from basic, you go to Officer Candidate School, which is a selection process in and of itself. I really didn’t have EOD lined up. You have your typical infantry, field artillery, aviation, things like that. And I had two prior service—two EOD techs—that I was talking to about the lifestyle and things like that. As we got closer and closer through Officer Candidate School, they kind of talked me into it, but they’re like, “Hey, there’s a whole assessment and selection process for EOD in and of itself. You’re a little bit behind the eight ball, but you could probably still make it happen.” And so I eventually ended up interviewing and screening to get into EOD. I didn’t find out until after OCS, just as I was about to start my basic officer training, that I had gotten accepted to the EOD pipeline.
Emily: Okay. And it sounds like from what you were telling me before we came on the show that there’s a lot more to EOD than just awesome explosions and, you know, dealing with bombs. So tell me a little bit more about some of the types of things that you were involved with there.
Jimmy: So the interesting part about EOD is we have three different mission sets. We have a Homeland Response Mission where we respond to explosive hazards here at home. Where I was at Fort Campbell, we have an eight-state response area. So it can go from any type of unexploded ordnance on a range at Fort Campbell to explosives found out in nature. And believe it or not, it happens more than you’d think.
Emily: Like a hiker calls in, “Hey, I found some weird-looking device,” and you respond kind of like a bomb squad would?
Jimmy: Yep, exactly. And we work with a lot of local bomb squads and local and federal law enforcement agencies. If they don’t have the capability, they’ll call us. Believe it or not, magnet fishing was a big one a couple of years ago.
Emily: What does that mean?
Jimmy: People use magnets to find different things on riverbeds, and they were actually pulling out military munitions like mortars and things like that.
Emily: These have to be pretty powerful magnets. We’re not talking about a string with a little U-shaped magnet on it.
Jimmy: Yeah, we’re talking a hefty magnet to pull up a mortar.
Emily: That is interesting.
Jimmy: The second area is we support the Secret Service in protecting the President, Vice President, and foreign and military dignitaries. We stay very busy, especially with the election just passed. Starting probably in May, when they’re on the campaign trail, we’re there with them. We’re not dressed like agents, but we’re trying to blend in more or less. We work directly with the Secret Service agents on-site to clear the site and make sure there are no explosive hazards and to ensure the site stays secure.
Emily: That’s interesting.
Jimmy: And the final portion of that is we deploy. So we can either deploy with conventional units like infantry units, or we deploy—most recently, a lot of it’s been special operations-based because we do work with them. We do the pre-deployment train-up with them. And because of the way the war has gone on, we’re still over there and still doing it just because of the threats that we still face today. So as EOD, they’re still deploying to this day.
Emily: Okay. Wow. That’s so interesting. There’s always so much more that goes into every job than you would think on the surface. So that’s really cool to know. And you said something about emergency response before we came on, because I believe that ties into your current role now to some degree, right? Did you do some level of emergency response in EOD?
Jimmy: Yeah, so we are pretty much on call, and we rotate call. The way it was set up, I was the platoon leader, so we’re a very small community. My platoon was only eight people, myself included—myself, my platoon sergeant, and I had three two-man teams under me, each consisting of a team leader and a team member. We operate very independently. One team could be on call responding to homeland response calls, working with various local and federal law enforcement agencies, another could be out on a mission protecting the President, and I could have another one with me. So it’s very dynamic, and you’re trying to balance a bunch of priorities all at the same time. Everything in our world is pretty much a no-fail mission.
Emily: Right. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. And it sounds like a job where you would be doing different types of things all the time. You’re juggling, like you said, juggling a lot of personnel, handling a lot of plates, keeping a lot of balls in the air at the same time.
Jimmy: Yeah, that fits. And then you have your various administrative tasks as well. So in addition to the ongoing missions and the training that you’re constantly doing to stay proficient, you also manage the training program leading up to deployment and our maintenance program to maintain all of our vehicles and equipment as well.
Emily: That is a lot. So you would be responding to all kinds of ordnance, whether it be, you know, I hate to use this word, but your standard grenade versus a chemical or biological weapon. You would be responding to any of those things?
Jimmy: Exactly. Anything from a grenade to something biological or nuclear, we have to stay up and on top of it all.
Emily: Quite a range of things to need to keep a level of expertise in. Okay, so take me through—you know, I know you were in the military for several years and then transitioned out. I saw just through your LinkedIn and our conversation that you managed to land an HOH Hiring Our Heroes internship through SkillBridge, which is great. I know these can be pretty competitive. So I’d love to hear, especially coming from a position like that, I’m sure it was not easy to even get SkillBridge approval from your type of role. What was your experience like doing HOH?
Jimmy: So I absolutely loved my experience with HOH. Leading up to that, I mean, you don’t really know what to expect when it comes to the transition. I did a deployment from May to October of 2022 with special operations and my platoon, and then I came back knowing that I was going to transition. The thing about us as EOD is normally when you come back from a deployment, the unit kind of resets. So there’s a lot of turnover, people moving, and people going to different schools. So around January or February, I started getting all my medical stuff done and things like that. I didn’t know—I was sitting in TAPs class at Fort Campbell, and I wasn’t even sure what CSP was, what was going on, or that I had the opportunity to do this. I didn’t know Hiring Our Heroes was a CSP program at all. For those that don’t know about it, I’m glad the word is getting out there for those that are transitioning. I remember I found out about it so late that I was running around for about a week trying to get all the paperwork signed to meet the deadline.
Emily: How did you find out about it?
Jimmy: It was more or less through TAPs, through Transition Assistance, and talking to a few different people. I know for CSP, you can either try and find your own thing through networking and an area you’re interested in, but I thought Hiring Our Heroes was a fantastic option since I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. The program itself is structured in a way that you get an interview with different companies, you get to see the opportunities available, so I thought that was my best-case scenario.
Emily: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you were ready, obviously, because you went to school before you joined the Army. So you already had your degree and those things lined up, which is nice. Then you did your SkillBridge with Asurion, which is where you’re at now, but didn’t necessarily come directly through the internship, which is interesting. I want to talk about that in a sec, but I’d love to know what was that like for you to dive into? I mean, Asurion is a huge enterprise-level corporate job. For those who may be listening that haven’t yet transitioned or are getting ready to, I think one of the most challenging things can be just learning how to communicate in kind of a new language, right? It’s the same type of things, but the military definitely has its own vocabulary, and then the corporate world has its own. Did you find it challenging to step straight into that corporate environment for those months, or were you able to get up to speed quickly? What was that transition like for you?
Jimmy: I think the military laid a good baseline for things that would be needed as far as skills go, like interpersonal skills, project management, and working with different software like Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint. The military gives you a good base, but coming into the corporate world, you’re really sheltered in the military. And Asurion’s so expansive—there are so many different departments and business functions—that you don’t really know where you fit in or what piece of the pie you’re fitting into. It’s about getting balanced and set as to where you are, understanding your surroundings, realizing the scope of work, and what the mission is and what you’re driving and pushing forward to accomplish.
Emily: That makes sense. I’ve heard that one of the most challenging things can be in the military because everything is so hierarchical and clear. You know what rank the person is that you’re talking to most of the time. You’re going to know who you’re talking to, what their rank is, what your position is relative to theirs, how you should relate to them in terms of the hierarchy in the military. And then when you come into the corporate world, that’s not always clear. And depending on the culture of the company, it may be very unclear. Or the culture of your team within that company might be totally different than the greater company itself. Did you find that to be a challenge? Or did you feel like you were able to recognize and identify the relevant hierarchies there and adjust quickly?
Jimmy: I think I was able to recognize it fairly quickly. And one of the good things about going through Hiring Our Heroes is there are a ton of veterans here. While I was here during the internship, everyone was willing to lend a hand. Even now, I try to reach out to people going through our Hiring Our Heroes program. There were a ton of people who helped me get to where I’m at now, so if I can do that for someone else, I’m always willing and able to help. A lot of the veterans here really took me under their wing, saying, “Here’s how this works. Here’s what to expect. Here’s this person; sit down and meet with them.” Even if you don’t stay in this position, there may be another fit or department within Asurion that’s better for you.
Emily: That makes sense. Something that we were chatting about a little bit beforehand is, you know, SkillBridge is such a—or CSP—it’s such a tricky thing because, you know, you have this opportunity to leave your command for a few months. And to me, it’s one of the most valuable assets that you could possibly have leaving the military because you have the opportunity to get your foot in the door at a company, get through—usually three months if you can get approved—get through those first ninety days, which are so critical, get that initial onboarding, all that stuff, you know, that it’s just tedious. Get it out of the way and actually sort of find your groove and hopefully, on the other side of it, leave with a job, which is really the goal of SkillBridge—getting you into a job. I know, you know, I think depending on the way it’s been presented, I’ve definitely talked to people who view SkillBridge as kind of a “get out of jail free card” from their command just to like, “I’m ready to be done. I just want to go somewhere, and I don’t really care if it turns into a job or not.” Understandable, right? And then there are other people who get into it but don’t know how to fully take advantage of that opportunity. And I think what you were just describing, it’s really important for people to recognize and take advantage of the resources that are there to network internally with other veterans, with other leaders. If people are willing to sit down and have coffee with you, take them up on it. Learn the hierarchy of how things work so you can see where you can fit in and make yourself start adding value to the company. How did you think about positioning yourself while you were there in that SkillBridge to really take advantage of that opportunity?
Jimmy: I think it’s being open and vulnerable—allowing yourself to be open and vulnerable with different people, to meet new people and things like that. That’s actually how I ended up in the role that I’m in now, through different projects and connections. And one of the biggest things I learned in the transition is, no one’s coming to help you. You have to put yourself out there, tell people your story, see where they might have an idea if they know a company, business, or role that might suit your background.
Emily: That’s a great insight because people don’t know how to help you if you don’t tell them what you need. And I know we were chatting beforehand that you came into this role in a department that unfortunately ended up not having a position, which is not typical with HOH, but it sounded like you had made a connection with a VP in a different department that you were able to leverage into the job you have now. So how did you connect with that VP to begin with? And then what was that process like for you to kind of maintain that connection or follow up to help land in the role you’re in now?
Jimmy: I would say out of the ten weeks that I was here doing my internship, around week eight, I was informed, “Hey, we just don’t have a position for you here currently within this department.” I had been working on projects with different members of the security team, who luckily are mostly former law enforcement or military. So we share that same background. I went down and decided to pivot. In the last two weeks of my internship, I started talking to people in security, shadowing a couple of people, and trying to gauge my background against the different areas in security. They said, “Unfortunately, we don’t have anything for you right now at the moment either.” They told me to stay in touch, though. My senior Vice President of security, Jim Desmond, put a post out on my behalf, saying, “Hey, Jimmy’s here; he’s looking for a job in different roles.” He didn’t know me from anyone—just a random Hiring Our Heroes candidate that he was willing to help out. He has an extensive LinkedIn network, and he put it out there for me.
Emily: That’s awesome. And then you were saying that you took a little break to decompress. Tell me about what you did, because it sounded fun.
Jimmy: Yeah, so my last day in uniform was August 8 of that year. I didn’t transition until September 1, but I had so much leave saved up. My last day—my award ceremony, signing out of Fort Campbell—was August 8. I put my house up for rent, packed everything away, packed some stuff in my car, and decided to go see friends all across the U.S. I took a road trip for two weeks and then realized the place I was moving into wasn’t done with construction yet, so I delayed it, put everything into storage, took a trip across the U.S., drove home to see my family, and I was actually visiting friends in New York City when I saw Jim—now my senior Vice President of security—post a job for a global business resiliency analyst. I messaged him on LinkedIn, saying, “Hey, do you think I’d be a good fit for this role?” He said, “Apply. The worst we can say is no.” So I applied, and from there, I took a trip to decompress from everything, went to Norway, Ireland, and Poland with friends from deployment, and actually interviewed for this job from Norway.
Emily: Awesome.
Jimmy: Yeah. Then I came back, did a couple more rounds of interviews, moved into my place, and November 6 was my hiring date. There was a big gap. I wanted to be in Nashville, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to be here. Luckily, I was well off enough financially to take that break and wait for the right fit.
Emily: That’s amazing. So what are you doing now? Global Business Resiliency Analyst is an interesting title. What does that mean, and how have you seen your skills from the military transfer into that job?
Jimmy: From an EOD perspective, everything you respond to is a crisis incident, so you’re managing people and the worst-case scenario possible. Even though I didn’t have all the necessary qualifications or knowledge, they saw that I knew how to plan, coordinate people, and manage logistics. My current position has three phases: crisis incident management, business continuity, and IT disaster recovery. Crisis incident management involves planning for natural disasters, active shooters, and bomb threats. My specialty, business continuity, focuses on getting people and assets back to business as usual. It’s a lot like my military role where you plan for the worst-case scenario.
Emily: It sounds similar—something new all the time and keeping lots of plates in the air.
Jimmy: You’re noticing a pattern here.
Emily: I am! That’s awesome. I think it’s great that you were open to different roles and didn’t feel boxed into one particular job title. Many people wouldn’t even know that a role like this exists, which is pretty cool.
Jimmy: I didn’t know it existed when I first applied. I didn’t know that business continuity is standardized across America with different businesses, but it is.
Emily: What an interesting role. So you’re just a year out from that transition. Is there anything you would encourage people preparing to transition to do or think about?
Jimmy: I think it might feel like bugging people, but take advantage when people say they’re there to help you with your transition. Reach out—it’s one of the most pivotal times of your life, so it’s OK to ask for help. Also, realize what your capacity is post-transition. The transition itself is stressful. Take the time if you can. One thing I missed was a schedule. Sticking to a schedule would probably help. Also, attending different events—I met great people at LinkedIn Music City, a quarterly event here in Nashville. It’s a great way to meet people who are in the same situation or hiring managers looking to help in any way possible.
Emily: That’s a fantastic recommendation. I think giving yourself the time that you need, asking for help, setting a schedule for yourself are all great insights. And one last thing—you said you moved four times in five years. What made you decide to stay in Nashville?
Jimmy: I just love the people and the culture here. Fort Campbell is only an hour away, so I have connections in special forces and the 101st. A lot of us decided to stay here, and we all love Tennessee. I wanted to come down to the city and experience what Nashville had to offer. Plus, I needed stability after all those moves and deployments, and Nashville gave me that. The work-life balance at Asurion is also incredible.
Emily: That’s great to hear. Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on with me today. You shared so many great points around networking, taking advantage of CSP or SkillBridge, and thinking about those things as you transition. Thanks so much, Jimmy.
Jimmy: Thanks so much, Emily. Greatly appreciate it.
