From Warrior to Workplace: Reframing Your Military Experience for Civilian Jobs

If there's anybody who should be able to get a good job in a tough economy, it's a person who has just completed military service. In the U.S., we have a volunteer military. Everyone in military service signed up for it. They could have done any number of other things with their time, but they completed Basic Training and then specialist training and spent their years in the military protecting the rest of us, sometimes returning with physical or emotional wounds that will take years to heal. Some of their comrades didn't return at all.

Why is unemployment among veterans so high? Civilian managers don't always understand that military veterans have everything they're looking for in a new hire. They know how to follow orders and they know when circumstances call for a change in plans. They know how to use good judgment and how to respond to changing conditions on the ground. They know how to communicate, how to spot problems and how to work as a team. What more could hiring managers be looking for?

A problem that faces many if not most transitioning service people is that their resumes are written in military-speak language. A resume like that is confusing to a civilian hiring manager.

When my eleven-year-old tries to explain his triumphs and frustrations with his latest video game, I can only smile and nod. It's pure video game jargon; I have no idea what he's talking about. Military resumes are similarly impenetrable to civilian hiring managers. They don't know what the words mean. It's easy to pass over a resume like that and go on to the next one.

We hear every day from ex-military service people who tell us that the critical issue of reframing a military background is all but ignored in their pre-transition career training.

Many of the people teaching service people to get civilian jobs have never held a civilian job themselves. That's like me trying to teach a person to drive a tank.

The fact is that military folks need to get across the heft and power of their experiences in service without overwhelming civilian hiring managers with military terminology.

Let's say that you were a fuel supply operator in the Army. Few civilian hiring managers have the faintest clue what a fuel supply operator does. We have to make it real for them.

"There are U.S. Army vehicles in use all over Iraq, and they need fuel to run. A driver can't pull up to the nearest gas station the way they would in most places. We have to bring the fuel to them. It's not just Jeeps and trucks we're refueling -- we supplied helicopters, too."

The power in an ex-military person's resume is in the stories. Any job-seeker's power is in his stories, but the traditional resume format pushes the stories off to the side. We need to bring more of the story-telling power across in a resume - not less! You can reframe your military background to make it come alive for a civilian hiring manager. You can relate your military stories to the civilian hiring manager's own situation, to show their relevance.

Let's say you're applying for a job as an Inventory Control Coordinator at a manufacturing company. Your job is to read through your military resume, looking for ways to make your experience in the armed forces more accessible and more comprehensible to the civilian Inventory Control manager who's going to be reviewing it.

Your first task is to take the military jargon out of your resume, as much as possible. Get rid of the Army buzzwords and codes and numbers. No one outside the military cares about those things. When we don't understand what we're reading, we don't start looking up terms to find out what they mean. We put the resume aside. Things that are confusing are also intimidating and off-putting. (Ever gotten a letter from the IRS? Then you know what I mean.)

Once you've stripped the military jargon out of your resume, put your human stories back in. Write them as simply as possible. Here's an example:

U.S. Army (leave out battalion and platoon and all that -- those are numbers, and no civilian manager will care! Tell us where you were stationed and for how long at each spot)

2005 - 2009

Fuel Supply Operator

As Fuel Supply Operators my teammates and I supplied 450 vehicles with fuel to keep supply lines and operations moving on schedule. It's a logistics job with a huge amount of coordination among units, and keeping up with constant changes. We had 99.5% efficiency and received commendations for our work. I learned to drive any size truck or equipment.

What would a thoughtful civilian manager take away from this short paragraph? First of all, that you're not afraid of a challenge. Second, s/he's going to see that you're a good person to have on hand when things are going to hell in a handbasket, as the expression goes. You're unflappable. Thirdly, you're someone who works well in a team.

You're going to have to educate civilian managers on how to use your talents. Many of them are not going to see the connections on their own. Lots of managers have been trained to prefer people from their own industry background (a big mistake!) and reject anyone from any other career path. You can use your Pain Letter to point out how your background maps to their need.

Dear Jason,

Congratulations on opening a second warehouse in Phoenix! It's great to see Acme Explosives expanding so fast.

I wouldn't be surprised if your Inventory Control needs are exploding as fast as the business is. When I worked as an Army Fuel Supply Operator in Iraq, I dealt with very large inventory items (trucks, Jeeps and helicopters), keeping track of their location and particularly their fuel supply in a fast-changing landscape with hundreds of moving parts. We kept everyone rolling and got a commendation from our commanding officer for our effectiveness.

If you've got a moment to talk about Inventory Control and how to keep up with Acme's customers' needs, my email address and phone are on my attached resume.

Best,

Carl Sandburg

Don't wait for civilian managers to see how highly-qualified you are based on your military experience. They won't get there without your help, in most cases. Don't sulk and feel mistreated by the civilian hiring population. It isn't an intentional slight. They just don't understand what you can do for them. Our job is to make that connection clear!

Above all, don't get so discouraged that you give up on your civilian job search entirely. Employers need what you bring. They don't even know how badly they need it! Once you walk in the door and start to work your magic, there won't be any more question about how your military experience makes a difference. You know it, and now they'll know it, too.

Our company is called Human Workplace. Our mission is to reinvent work for people. We teach job-seekers "If they don't get you, they don't deserve you."

Know someone who's transitioning out of the military and looking for a civilian job? Here is our new eBook, From Warrior to Workplace: Reframing Your Military Experience for Civilian Employers. It includes a Before and an After resume (a Before traditional resume and an After Human-Voiced Resume) and tips for reframing your military background for a civilian job search.

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