How much preparation is enough to successfully transition out of the military?

Depends on the person I think.

In my case, I had spent 36 years PRIOR to military service as a civilian. I had experience buying big ticket items like cars and houses, had savings and investments, had civilian jobs/career, raising a family, and already had graduated from college; so I was already very well positioned to move back into the civilian world from Active Duty.

Contrast that with those individuals who may have spent 20-30 years Active Duty military, having joined at age 17 or 18 knowing little of the (adult) civilian world, and the transition back to being a civilian would not generally be as smooth. For them, they should be afforded as much time and resources as they need to make the transition.

For the vast majority in between the above two extremes, it comes down to the individual and their level of experience in the world outside of the military. But transitioning I think helps everyone to some degree so long as they are willing to buy into the program. While some of ACAP was rudimentary and repetitive info for me, some was quite helpful in transitioning and landing a civilian job. So long as the resources are there, everyone should be afforded some level of transition help--and reasonable time to process--regardless of how easy one may think transition will be for them. For some, that help can be a life-saver.

Honestly, this should start from day 1 of joining. Had there been better tools available, I would have made different choices in the types of assignments I took and the prep I did for ETS. I think the biggest problem is that there are not enough resources available and what is available isn't exactly good. I never even got an interview using the resume I did in ACAP.

Here's my two cents on ACAP and TAPS because this is not a place to be building or preparing your resumes when you have 1 week left in your military service. One of the mine reasons I am on here is to help support and guide veterans to a new path and get the support from senior enlisted and officers because we are setting our soldiers and seniors up for FAILURE because most of you can't even developed a resume if told to sit down and do it, you would rather spend the money and have a private firm do it for you. Well I been saying since I've been on RP and everyone needs to listen because it needs to start now in the NCOES courses teaching our enlisted the basic and the fundamentals about resumes and cover letters because what kind of LEADER are you when your soldier is transitioning out and they ask you for help on a resume or cover letter, Are you going to send them to social media or ACAP or TAPS class, You going to be that role model and sit down with that soldiers and guide them through the process and steps, this person has a family and has to provide for them, this person looks up to you or the LEADERSHIP in your command and will always remember the little things you do for him or her. Resumes take awhile but I want any one of you active duty persons to try to list everything that you have done, in your career and then make it into a resume and then have some of your counter parts review it, then change the wording into what job description you are looking for and come back to this post and blog to me and tell that I was right about how we should teach resume writing skills in NCOES courses. If you are about to transition out of the service you better starting get on the right track, start looking on USJOBS.com and you can always try to build a resume on their resume building for a start, I've been building my resume since 2007 and I just got down to 3 pages that will work for DOD and private sector. I have example of my resume on my RALLY POINT page please look at my bio/profile and download my resume for you to freely view. My resume is your resume. Resumes were the hardest thing I ever did and cover letters as well, these are the key to your success. Let's push resume writing in NCOES course.