by Guest Author, Miles Oliver
A career in the military can be an enriching and fascinating experience. At some point, everyone transitions back into civilian life. One of the challenges many find about this period is finding employment or a fresh career path.
This isn’t because your skills don’t have value; quite the opposite. Instead, for many, the difficulty lies in translating their military experience in a way that impacts a civilian resume. With little time and consideration, you can make applications that give you the best chance to successfully begin your return to civilian life.
Identifying Transferable Skills
The first thing to focus on when translating your military experience into a strong resume is your skill set. You’ve had significant training, gained invaluable experiences, and developed abilities that make you an asset in the marketplace. Part of the key is identifying their transferable skills and focusing on representing them effectively.
What do we mean by transferable skills? Unlike the technical skill sets you’ve gained formal qualifications in, transferable skills are abilities and characteristics that are useful in almost any industry.
Some examples here include:
- Leadership: Among the traits that military service tends to cultivate is leadership. This isn’t just the ability to tell people what to do but to recognize the talents and needs of those in your charge so you can better help them achieve their full potential. Those with good leadership experience are highly coveted in all industries.
- Problem-solving: A career in the military means you’ve faced a multitude of challenges, often in unpredictable and high-pressure scenarios. As a result, you may have great problem-solving skills that use your creative and technical mindsets to achieve positive outcomes. Few businesses or industries won’t recognize the operational and innovative potential of those with problem-solving skills.
- Logistical abilities: Most businesses involve keeping several balls in the air at any given time while also working as efficiently as possible. In the military, you may have developed logistical skills in which you collaborated with units or local civilians to perform operations effectively with slim margins for error.
Take the time to list out what your activities were throughout your military career and which of these involve transferable skills. Doing so doesn’t just help your resume; It also helps you match your skills to roles and industries in civilian sectors.
For instance, there is a growing range of opportunities in the renewable energy sector ideally suited for those with leadership and logistics among their transferable skills. There’s great demand for solar installation contractors with the problem-solving abilities to plan solar arrays that support strong, sustainable infrastructure. Wind farm consultants with leadership and technical skills to collaborate with land owners, technicians, and government administrations are also invaluable.
Using Civilian-Friendly Language
Outlining your military service in your resume is a fine start. It's a pretty good shorthand for employers to recognize that you might be disciplined and committed. At the same time, there’s a lot about military operations and life that civilian employers can’t easily understand. By minimizing the jargon and finding clearer alternatives, you can communicate your value effectively.
Some areas for focus when building your resume include the following.
Roles and ranks
Your role and rank in the military aren’t often understood by civilians outside the military. Therefore, it’s important not to simply list these attributes on your resume. You’ll need to accompany them with civilian equivalents instead of industry jargon. For instance, rather than list your title simply as platoon sergeant, you can swap this out with supervisor, team leader, or trainer. Similarly, avoid listing your military occupational specialty (MOS) alone and expand upon this with a more detailed job description.
Deployments
Deployments are a fact of military life, and employers are likely to be able to see that as a sign of commitment. That said, just listing where you were stationed and for how long doesn’t add much to your resume. Instead, within the bounds of security, you can use your resume to briefly expand on the aims of the deployment and how you acted to achieve those goals. Doing so helps show you understood the aims and what your role in them was.
Tailoring Your Resume for Different Industries
One of the most important things to remember when writing any resume is the need to tailor it. You’re already putting in a lot of work making your military to civilian translations, so you must ensure it has the most impact on those reviewing it.
Among the ways you can approach this is by getting an in-depth understanding of the industry or role you’re applying for. For example, if your medic experience sees you applying for the healthcare industry, there’s a lot to know about being a nurse that isn’t widely advertised. It’s more physically demanding than it looks, and dealing with patients during difficult times in their lives requires significant empathy. Even your professional and social lives might become enmeshed.
Knowing these types of details allows you to tailor your resume to present your military skills, experiences, and qualifications in a context that reflects the nuances of the industry. You might be able to show your understanding of the social demands of the job by outlining your camaraderie with other military personnel. If you’ve spent time liaising with civilians during humanitarian operations, writing about this may communicate the importance of empathy.
Conclusion
Creating a solid resume as you return to civilian life requires some strategy. Explore what skills you’ve gained and how to present these in ways that engage employers. Remember that you shouldn’t just focus on what looks good on paper. Alongside building your resume, you should practice talking about these aspects to shine once you get to the interview stage. As a veteran, you know the value of preparation, so set yourself up for success.
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About the author: Miles Oliver is a freelance contributor whose writing focuses on professional development. You can reach him at moliverpages@gmail.com.
