By Scott Schonauer, Rota bureau

NAVAL STATION ROTA, Spain — At some point, every sailor must make the decision: stay Navy and make it a career, or get out and find a new one.

The economic boom of the past three years tempted many servicemembers to grab their resumes and leave for more lucrative jobs. But with the nation’s economy slowing and computer dot-com businesses becoming dot-bombs, Navy career counselors have the type of private-sector horror stories that might convince more sailors to stick around.

Speakers at a roving "career decision" fair last week for servicemembers and their spouses in Rota dished out the pros and cons of staying and leaving. Using Power Point demonstrations and question-and-answer sessions, lecturers insisted that the grass isn’t always greener outside the military.

The Navy’s Center for Career Development teamed up with Ruehlin Associates, a San Diego-based private research company, to conduct the first-of-their-kind workshops in Rota, Italy and at bases throughout the United States the past few months.

During a Friday seminar for junior officers, Lew Mabie of Ruehlin Associates used charts, graphs and articles to offer a little "cold reality."

"Whatever you do, you gotta get the facts," Mabie told the handful of pilots, civil engineers and medical personnel.

He clicked through slides of USA Today articles about pay scales and compared military and civilian life in terms of vacation, retirement benefits, wages, job security and family separation.

"It isn’t always what it seems," he said.

Many military commands are undermanned and often have to move every two to three years to another base, Mabie said, but it isn’t much better in the private sector. Civilian workers also complain of being overworked, and successful business people relocate 8 to 12 times during their career, he said, showing the next slide on the screen.

Although servicemembers have complained about family separation, entry-level workers at a tech firm in Silicon Valley would be lucky to get the 30 days of vacation entitled to servicemembers, said Mabie, a retired Navy captain.

And with some large corporations like Cisco trimming thousands from their payrolls, civilian workers don’t have the level of job security an enlisted sailor or officer has.

"What you don’t see is the cold reality," he said.

Although the presentation at times sounded like a pitch to "stay Navy," Cmdr. Syd Abernethy said the workshops are designed to help sailors make the best decision when the time comes. The Center for Career Development, based in Millington, Tenn., is one of the Navy’s initiatives aimed at helping sailors who are unsure about their career. The center was created about eight months ago.

"Whether they get out of the Navy or stay," Abernethy said, "we want them to make an informed decision not based on emotion."

That has been a challenge for the Navy when aircraft squadrons are short on spare parts, family housing is substandard at some bases and military deployments have increased as manning levels have decreased.

Four of 10 sailors continue to leave after their first term.

Lt. Rich Downey, a pilot with Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 2, also known as VQ-2, will in three years will be at a crossroads in his Navy career. He said, if he leaves, it’s not because he doesn’t like the Navy; it will be because he wants to do something different.

"My decision is based on what I decide I want my job to be," said Downey, who has aspirations of becoming a scientist.

Abernethy, a former commanding officer of VQ-2, said the Navy simply wants to keep the best and brightest people to at least consider staying.

"I’ll be upfront," he said. "We don’t want to keep everyone in the Navy. We want to keep the right people who want to stay."

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