If you served in the military, you’ve lived and worked in environments that are specific to the military culture. You have lived on bases, installations, ships and submarines; you ate MREs and shopped in PXs/BXs/NEXs and commissaries; you deployed to unique locations worldwide; and you enjoyed a tight-knit sense of community whether you were visiting schools, places of worship, restaurants or medical clinics. Understandably, leaving this culture can be difficult – you are not just leaving a job, you are leaving a lifestyle.

The skills you developed as a service member are truly valuable and in high demand, but describing those skills to a prospective employer can be difficult. For instance, you may have trouble communicating without using military jargon or are unsure of how to bridge the culture gap that exists between military and civilian workplaces. There are four steps you can take to translate the military experience to civilian employment, and a wide range of resources at your disposal to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Step 1: De-militarize Your Resume

The following two steps can be used to de-militarize your resume:

  • Inventory the skills you used during your service. Whether you were a sharpshooter in the Army, a diver in the Navy, or had another profession in the military, there are marketable skills you developed in your career that apply to the civilian workplace.
    • Think beyond the specific function you carried out and identify the core value, skill or expertise you brought to the table. For example, a sharpshooter would have led small teams to carry out high-priority objectives with minimal room for failure in high pressure situations.
    • Some core values, skills and/or expertise displayed above are leadership, ability to carry out work with minimal supervision, attention to detail and ability to work under strict deadlines.
  • Read the “How to Create an Effective Resume
    [PDF 2.4 MB] manual published by the Transition Assistance Program at the U.S. Department of Labor’s veterans employment and training service to learn about the key elements of the resume development process, develop your career objective and accomplishment statements, and write a draft resume.

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Source: Real Warriors / www.realwarriors.net