On Monday, I got to tour a new hire around at work, and I was happy to find out that he was also a Submariner, having finished his SSBN JO tour and subsequent IA assignment to Afghanistan last year. After the Navy, he went to work for a nuke plant in Georgia that's being built, but wanted to find a job closer to his hometown, so that's how he ended up coming to Idaho.
When I went job-hunting for a post-Navy job, I did it the exact wrong way -- I selected a town first without having any contacts in the area. It worked out OK (I love my job and new town) but I know I could have made a lot more money by finding a job first. By coming to the Boise area, I pretty much locked myself out of a nuclear job -- this was especially true because the only nuclear jobs in Idaho are at the Idaho National Laboratory (currently ran by John Grossenbacher, former COMSUBLANT), and while they might have some positions in Boise, they were going through a management change at the time and had a hiring freeze on. I ended up taking a $12/hr temp job at Albertsons about three weeks after my official retirement date, and didn't get hired to my current job until almost five months after I retired. During that time, I did think seriously about going somewhere else for work and living away from my family, which would have sucked.
What's your story? Did you, or are you planning on, look(ing) at location or career field first when getting a post-Navy job?
