How To Build A Military Resume

Create A Master Military Resume

Before you start writing your civilian resume, create a master military resume.

This will be an easier task than writing a civilian resume as you are already familiar with military lingo and terminology.

Beginning with a master military resume will ensure you have the best and the most complete reservoir of information to pull from and translate into your civilian resume.

You will also find it helpful to use your Verification of Military Experience and Training document, as well as fitness evaluations, to brainstorm content for your master veteran resume.

How To List Military Experience On A Resume

• Examples for listing military experience on your resume

Transitioning into a civilian career may take some time for former military personnel. It is best to choose a specific career path before you begin updating your resume for your job search. Each military job has different experiences and it is important to identify the military experience that is applicable to jobs you are interested in. In this article, you can learn what military experience is, how to list military experience on your resume and review some examples that show how you can list your military experience on your resume.

Military Resumes That Show Your Value And Earn Interviews

Thanks a lot CPG and Bill. Im very appreciative of my resume projects. After a 25 year Naval career, I needed to take advantage of a professional writer to ensure my experience, skills, abilities, and accomplishements were detailed strategically and as professional as could be. We expect the type of service you get for what you pay. Im highly confident that this professional resume service investment will be well worth it in due time. Im extremely excited about my next chapter after the military and CPG played a critical role with ensuring my resumes get that MUST READ attention to land my next professional position as a civilian is priceless! Stay tuned.this is only the beginning! Thanks wholeheartedly CPG and your superior professionalism. Corey C. real BBB review

We are Americas leading Corporate, Military Transition, Government Contractor, and Veterans resume-writing team. Our award-winning team of resume writers and recipients of The Best Military Resume. Our professional military resume writing services are sought after by thousands of enlisted and military officers each year. Our Military Transition Resumes land our clients the all-important interview, leading to job offers.

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Tips For Adding Military Experience To Your Resume

The first thing to remember when youre trying to decide how to include your service on your resume is that you should absolutely include as much of your service as you can.

Never feel self-conscious about describing the specifics of the work you did just keep in mind whos going to be reading it.

You might get lucky and send it along to someone who knows exactly what certain terms mean but youre much more likely to encounter an employer whose closest connections to military service are through the Call of Duty matchmaking games they play on weekends.

So keep the following things in mind when youre listing your military experience on your resume:

Important Job Skills For Military Members

Some military roles can be difficult to translate into civilian professions. But, no matter your technical background, your service helped you hone various soft skills that can get applied to any job. Be sure to put a spotlight on these abilities on your military resume.

Examples include but arent limited to:

• Teamwork

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How To Write A Military Resume

Writing your military resume should follow the same basic format as all other resumes. It should consist of the following sections:

• The resume header
• The resume skills section
• The education section

Since the military is a strictly ordered and regimented career choice, your resume should reflect that with a professional and neutral tone. This is not the place to get flowery with your language. Instead, choose your words carefully and be concise.To help you create the correct tone, take a look at recruitment literature and websites and try to echo the writing style.

Although you will not be applying to many different organizations, you should still make sure you tailor your resume for the specific military job you seek.

How To Make Your Resume Resonate

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Are you a transitioning servicemember, a military spouse contemplating workforce reentry, or a veteran already established in your second career but seeking something different? Based upon your experience, education, and unique skill sets, you are competitive for employment opportunities across a wide spectrum … but listing all those capabilities on your résumé could confuse or overwhelm some employers.You need to make your résumé resonate with employers by tailoring it for the industry and sector, then targeting it for each specific vacancy announcement. That requires a lot of work upfront knowing what you want, doing the research, then writing a résumé that articulates your value and provides the right answers to all of a prospective employer’s questions. Join MOAA and a special guest for a webinar event designed to help you stand out from the other applicants.MOAA Premium and Life members have access to all recorded MOAA webinars at any time via MOAAs Webinar Archive. Want to join MOAA? See MOAA.org/join for details.

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What Is Unique About A Military Resume

Your military resume is unique because its job is to help you start your next career chapter as a veteran. Therefore, it must showcase everything youve learned and done during your military service in a way that a civilian recruiter or hiring manager can understand. It also must translate those accomplishments into qualifications for any role you pursue.

Important Resume Sections For Military Veterans

Since veterans should embrace the functional, skills-based resume format, the most critical resume section for them is the Key Skills section. This section should come right after the resume summary and should contain the bulk of the content of the resume.

The skills section is where you will get descriptive about those skills that are most relevant to the position for which you are applying . But you can also have an Additional Skills section that provides a shorter list of the skills you possess, without getting into a more extended description for each listed item.

You should still have a Work Experience and Education section on your resume, but these dont have to be very descriptive.

Also, its quite common for veterans to have a list of accomplishments, certifications, and courses completed, which may be valuable in recruiters eyes depending on the prospective position. You can include sections for these elements on your resume, and a good resume builder will make it easy to do just that.

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Resume Writing For Veterans

If you are transitioning from a military position to the civilian workforce, writing a resume and cover letter can be challenging. Fortunately, help is available from professionals who specialize in resume services for veterans and providing assistance that goes beyond veteran resume help.

The Veterans Administration is an excellent resource for veterans and their spouses. It provides training and resources to help you find employment after your military career is complete. The Veterans Employment Center connects veterans to local career fairs, places to find internships, and access to personalized career counseling.

Ready to Build Your Own Business?

If you are a veteran who is thinking about starting your own business, the Small Business Administration Office of Veterans Business Development helps veterans and their family members begin the journey to business ownership. Veteran-owned businesses can receive assistance by connecting you with supply chains, special funding, and access to capital. You can access these resources through special centers across the nation. This is an excellent way to get what you need to get your business up and running at a low cost. The SBA also provides federal resume writing for veterans and contractors who need to learn to navigate the system and present their company as the most qualified for the position.

Highlight Your Soft Skills

While you were in the military, you may have developed and honed your soft skills like communication, leadership, management skills and attention to detail. List these skills in your âsummary of qualificationsâ section and incorporate them throughout the accomplishments in your âwork experienceâ section to showcase yourself as a well-rounded candidate.

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Plan Your Career Path Before Being Discharged

This might sound obvious, but its essential that you know what you want to do before being discharged from the military. Its common for veterans to find themselves lost when entering civilian life, and unsure how to start their career.

You need to have a plan for what youre going to do once you transition out of the military, so you can target a certain industry when writing your military to civilian resume.

Different industries will require certain skills sets and experience, and its good to know how the experience and skills you gained in the military will transfer to a relevant civilian career.

Dont make the mistake of leaving the military without a plan. If youre not sure where to start, there are a multitude of veteran employment services run by the VA and other organizations that can help you transition from military to civilian life.

Create A Skills Summary Or Qualifications And Highlights Section

In this section, promote your qualifications and unique talents. Focus on how you can add value to the organization. Use bullet points and indicate quantitative and qualitative data don’t just say “automation” or “operations.” Instead, describe your complete experience.

Examples:

• “In total, have tracked, maintained, repaired and been accountable for $5.8 million worth of government aviation property.”
• “Have guided, trained and assisted over 300 U.S. Naval officers in the execution of various aircraft maintenance duties and flight schedules.”

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How To Choose Military Resume Writing Service

We hope, now you have a clear idea of how to determine professional military resume writer. Lets see what to take into consideration while choosing the best military to civilian resume writing service.

Qualities to Look For:

• Website design and content: guarantees, turnaround time, working process and contact information.
• Testimonials: make sure the person is real, just browse name and surname, occupation in Google or on LinkedIn.
• Direct contact with a writer is a must. Even if youve got a first-class writer, make a double check if youre both looking at the same direction of your career transition.
• Resume review is an essential part of the process. Make sure, youll have the possibility to revise the document for further improvement.

Qualities to Avoid:

• The lack of direct contact with a writer, unskillful communication during a chat with your writer. Writers reluctance to get into details of your military transition.
• No guarantees: on-time delivery guarantee, revisions guarantee, quality guarantee. Usually, military resume writing services provide 100% satisfaction guarantee or 60-day interview guarantee.
• Fictional information or overstatement of your skills, years of experience and achievements, which can be easily revealed during a job interview.

Pick The Right Military Resume Format

Use the right resume format to prove youre no oxygen thief.

This is what you should include in the resume:

• Start with the reverse-chronological resume format. It puts your most relevant achievements in the front lines.
• Choose the best resume fonts in 1014pt. Use 1-inch margins, clear headings, and generous white space.
• Write a one-page resume unless youre more accomplished than R. Lee Ermey.
• Lead with a military to civilian resume header. Include name, phone number, email address, and social media links. No snail mail. No photo.
• Next add a military resume profile, work experience, and education.
• For maximum effect, include resume extras like volunteer work, publications, certifications,and additional activities.

Expert Hint: Use a resume PDF unless the job description says theyre off limits. PDFs dont go AWOL in transit. Plus theyre machine-readable in 2019.

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Translate Your Veteran Resume Into A Civilian Resume

Once you have your master military resume on hand and possible career paths in mind, it will be much easier to craft your civilian resume.

Use that master resume and pull out the most relevant information that aligns with your targeted roles and industries. You might need different versions for different industries you are targeting.

But one thing that you should always remember is to translate all the military references, terminologies, and jargon into civilian terms.

Use this military-to-civilian skill translator to discover a variety of potential civilian applications for your military skills and experience.

Also, in this military to civilian resume how-to guide, you will find the translations of most of the military terms and jargon.

Focus On Your Transferable Military Experience And Skills

Depending on what job you performed in the military, you likely have a variety of transferable hard and soft skills.

For example, a prior Air Force Technical Aircraft Mechanic specialist has skills that translate directly into aviation maintenance and repair. Targeting airlines or logistics companies like FedEx and UPS, as well as aircraft manufacturers like Boeing, will likely be an easy career transition.

However, not every veteran is going to have directly transferable skills. What if you were an infantryman and now want to step into a corrections officer position? How about if you were a human resource specialist and want to become a financial analyst? Convincing employers that youre the right person for the job wont be so easy.

However, regardless of the industry, heres a list of ten great soft skills that any employer will love to see on your military to civilian resume:

• Oral and Written Communication

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Describing Your Work Experience

Your resume is going to be reviewed by non-military tech/business/logistics professionals first, so when you describe your work experience, you should identify yourself as a veteran early in your resume and go into detail about the following:

• What tools you used and how many people you supervised
• How much money you managed, saved or generated
• If you have led any teams
• Your current/most recent cumulative GPA, if you are an active student/recent graduate

Avoid indicating one specific job in the objective, as we hope to use your skills on multiple projects.

Best Practices For Building Your Post

The most important thing to know about resumes is that 95% of what people worry about doesnât matter – fonts, paper stock, etc. Thatâs because a resume is usually only consumed by two entities:

• An Applicant Tracking System that applies an algorithm to grade your words: Do you have the right keywords that line up with the job? That’s the key.

• A recruiter who spends, on average, seven seconds reading each resume. So they don’t have time to grade you on aesthetics, they just need to know whether you fit their mental model for the job.

So to make sure you focus on what actually matters, grab the Shift template and then focus on these two points:

1) Resumes Need Keywords

As described in the last section, the recruiter doesnât have time to figure out what you did in the military . So itâs up to you to feed them the exact words they’re looking for. The best place to look for these are written in the job description itself! Use the organizations language to align your experiences.

• Job Title – Because recruiting and finding the right fit for a role is so important, itâs vital that you show youâve done similar work before. For example, even if your military title wasnât âOperations Manager,â you should make sure to mention examples of operations management in both your Summary and Experience sections.

2) Resumes Need Results

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Third List Experience With Bullet Points

The best way to list your military experience is by using bullet points and by keeping each line short while maintaining an accurate description of the duties you performed. When you list your experience, it is also important to extract keywords from job descriptions. For example, if the job you are applying for wants to hire someone who has experience with bookkeeping or budgeting, then you should add those exact keywords to your relevant experience if they are applicable.

It is also important to avoid using detailed experiences from active combat or deployment in your resume. You will need to consider how to word your experience with combat operations in a way that is relevant to the jobs you are interested in applying for. For example, you may include missions you assisted with if it includes relevant leadership skills or conflict resolution.

Make A List Of Your Duties And Determine If They Are Relevant

First, think about all your duties as a member of the military and make a full list of all the things you accomplished. At this step, you can use military terminology if it helps you make the list. Once you have the list, evaluate which skills you will highlight on your resume based on how relevant they are to your next career. For example:

• If you were an Infantryman in the Army, that means you learned how to quickly assess situations and make split-second decisions. . This is ideal for a job in security, law enforcement or supervisory roles.
• If you received training as an information officer, that means you have some experience operating specialized electronic devices and learning about computers, which can be easily applied to jobs in information technology.
• If you were an aircraft mechanic, you learned troubleshooting, customer needs assessment and project management skills. These skills can be relevant to maintenance management, project management or technical repair roles.

It might help to print out your list, highlight the relevant skills you want to list on your resume and start to think about stories or examples of how you used these skills in the military.

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