School-to-Community: Mr. John Searing from ASRC Federal

You must like what you do and be passionate about it. Mr. John Searing is a man who loves his job at ASRC Federal. He has worked there for eight years as a mechanical engineer.

“I don’t do what I do for money,” Mr. Searing said.

This company drills oil in Alaska, works in federal government, and is involved in many  different lines of business, including engineering, mission solutions, infrastructure support, information technology, and professional and technical services. ASRC Federal companies “focus on providing reliable, cost efficient services that help government customers achieve mission success,” according to its website.

The company also works with NASA at its Armstrong facility and the air force rocketland, where new rockets are tested.

There are many types of occupations at ASRC, including system engineering, space operators, computer hardware and software, and technical services.

In his junior year of college Mr. Searing was looking for a career. A family friend suggested that he go into engineering, so he researched it and liked it.

After college he found a job as an engineer at the Shoreham power plant and worked there for some time before he switched to Brookhaven National Lab. He was employed there for 20 years but then left to switch careers, and he was the commissioner of a fire department. Mr. Searing did this for four years until he would not pick a side in an upcoming election. He then ran into a friend who offered him a job at ASRC, and he has been working there ever since.

Mr. Searing said that sometimes half of his day is commuting to places like Maryland, California, and Alabama because 37 states have ASRC offices. In Alabama, he is involved in launch support and army helicopters.

Mr. Searing, whose children attend SWR, explained that ASRC has to constantly compete for work against other corporations, and one of the most difficult aspects of working at a company like ASRC is getting everyone on the same page. He said there are more than 7,000 ASRC employees, so it is a challenge to get everyone to agree on something because people have different opinions and beliefs.

Mr. Searing’s path would have been different if he had chosen another career he was interested in: medicine. He said he wanted to be an emergency room doctor because he loves to help people. However, he is proud of the work that he does and said that he would not have done anything different.