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Sometimes it’s the dream job that becomes a nightmare, while a profession you couldn’t imagine yourself doing becomes everything you’d hoped for in a career.

Just ask Andrea Hovey.

Always an energetic dynamo, Hovey seemed like a perfect fit for a high-powered career in the Navy’s nuclear power plants. Endless work hours and uninspired leadership, however, left her with little energy to enjoy the rest of life. So she jumped ship for a new profession as a civilian project manager in an industry she knew nothing about.

While short-circuiting her expertise running reactors, the switch led to a well-paying job that has re-energized her enthusiasm while giving her plenty of recharge time.

“If you had tried to tell me that I would have been working as a project manager in the construction industry, I would have said ‘no way,’” she says, as a massive crane lifts another pallet of supplies to a crew of workmen. “Never in a million years would I have thought that, a) I’d end up doing a job like this, and b) that I would actually really like it.”

There’s an enthusiasm in her voice that comes not just from the excitement of challenge and diversity but also from the joy of being able to spend evenings with friends and family and weekends rock climbing and camping instead of being trapped at work.

Here’s how she converted her Navy know-how into management moxie while amping up her quality of life.

Sea dreams

After graduating from the Naval Academy in 2003 and spending her first tour at sea, Hovey went to Nuclear Power School to become one of the engineering wizards who keep the Navy’s reactor-driven big decks on the move. From there, she was assigned to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

She loved the job and the sailors she worked with, but wasn’t thrilled with the micromanagement she experienced. And while the endless blur of constant duty was one thing at sea, it only got worse when the Lincoln returned to its Puget Sound homeport. Grueling 20-hour workdays were becoming the norm: It was work hard, no play, just work harder. Sleepless in Seattle, Hovey’s dream of a career in the Navy started to fade.

“I truly agonized over the decision, but I came to a point where I just knew it was time to go,” Hovey says. “The two best decisions in my life have been the decision to join the Navy and the decision to get out.”

She was less clear on what she would do once out of uniform, but she knew exactly what she didn’t want to do.

“When you’re a nuclear officer there’s a lot of pressure to go into the civilian nuclear industry,” she says. She knew that’s where the high-paying jobs were. She also knew what it would cost her.

“The pay would have been great, but I would have been working more ridiculous hours. The main reason I was getting out of the Navy in the first place was quality of life, and that kind of job wouldn’t have made things any better.”

Examining the soft skills

Hovey knew she needed to take a fresh look at what she wanted from a new profession, as well as what she was bringing to the job market. With her most marketable skills off the table, she focused on her less tangible talents.

“It’s important to take a step back and look at your personal skill set abstractly. Don’t relate it to a job, but think about what you like to do,” she advises.

Ask yourself a lot of thought-churning questions: Are you organized or more free-thinking? Do you want to be in an office or spend your days outside? Do you like to be the person working in the background or out in front?

As a junior officer, Hovey spent much of her time multitasking through the details of day-to-day crisis management and routine work, while serving as the link between the getting-it-done experts and the managing-it-all leaders. In other words, her experience looked a lot like a project manager’s. “The ability to maintain that pace processing information and responding to it — those skills transfer over very well.”

And, perhaps just as important, Hovey realized that she enjoyed that ever-changing, always-challenging part of her job.

“I realized that I like the idea of project management,” she says. “Maybe it didn’t really matter what kind of project needed managing, just that a lot of the skills were going to be the same. So I tried to keep an open mind.”

Interviewing the interviewer

As Hovey made the rounds to interviews and job fairs, she made a point to interview potential employers as much as the other way around.

“You have the power in an interview. Ask questions. I think sometimes people are afraid to be pointed about things,” she says. One of her favorite questions: How is your company going to train me to be successful in doing what I need to do?

“That helped me eliminate several potential companies,” she says. More than one said professional development was available after hours. “No way — that’s the same thing the Navy was doing and I hated it.”

A perfect match

In the end, she found just the job she didn’t know she was looking for in PSF Mechanical, a Seattle-based commercial and industrial construction company that specializes in installing heating, air conditioning and plumbing systems.

At first, she might as well have landed on another planet.

“I didn’t have any idea what I was supposed to do. They took a big chance with me.” Recalling her first day on the job, she says, “There was a set of plans for a new YMCA on my desk. They said, ‘Start getting familiar with these, it’s your first project.’ I didn’t even know how to read them.”

But she did know how to learn on her feet. “I just did the same thing I did in the Navy: seek out the technical experts, ask a lot of questions and learn as quickly as possible.”

Not even two years later, she’s managed nearly $10 million worth of projects, including the construction of the Navy’s new 22,000-square-foot fleet readiness training center at the Lincoln’s homeport at Everett Naval Station.

“It’s hard to put into words exactly what I do because the answer is ‘everything,’Ÿ” she says. “I don’t pick up a hammer, but if something doesn’t happen, it’s my fault. ... But I love it because it’s so dynamic and I get to interact with every piece of the puzzle.

“I’m trusted to do my job, make decisions and be responsible for the outcome of those decisions. It’s terrifying sometimes, but it’s amazing.”

She’s not making the six-figure salaries her former Navy nuke buddies are drawing, but she’s OK with that. “I love my job and I’m working 40- to 50-hour workweeks, 90 percent of the time, and nobody expects more than that from me. And that is awesome.”