Writing Your First Resume Post Military Career
After serving our Nation for 25 years I recall the day I made the decision to hang up my uniform and enter the civilian workforce. My name is Jim Pardue, and I am a Principal Consultant with Esri Services. While in the military I served as a 12Y, a Geospatial Engineer, and I’ve been doing GIS for roughly 35 years. The biggest thing I had to mentally get over was the idea of walking away from a sure thing and taking a step into the unknown. Very much like when I executed my first exit from a high-performance aircraft with a military parachute strapped to my back. I was leaving a safe place and taking a step into the unknown. After serving our Nation many Veterans will be faced with a similar dauting task. A task where they’ve had very little training or preparation. The task of writing their first resume.
I retired from the Army in 2012, and I’ve read and reviewed several hundred Veteran’s resumes during that time. Both while I served in the Federal workforce and while being part of the civilian industry hiring process. I’ve even volunteered to review as many Veteran resumes as I can so I can help them be the best prepared they can. During this time, I have seen some common mistakes that many Veterans make when it comes to writing their first resume and I think I’ve come up with a few best practices that will help.
Resume Best Practices
Best practice #1: Figure out what type of position you are seeking.
This will require you to translate your prior military roles and responsibilities into the language that is used within the industry/sector you are trying to transition into.
If I use the Army as an example, you need to convert terms like Company Commander, First Sergeant, Platoon Seargent, Squad Leader, etc. into civilian speak, focused on their equivalent in whatever career field you are pursuing. This will take some research, and you should reach out to people you may know who have already made the transition successfully for some input and guidance.
Don’t list every duty assignment you held. Perhaps break your resume into sections with like or similar roles. If you were in a position at two different assignments, combine them and have the years span both assignment periods. Understand that if you held a leadership position for many years in the military, that may not be your entry point in your chosen new career field.
Best Practice #2. Have a civilian to review your resume.
Sometimes a service member’s first resume will read like their annual military evaluations. That tends to be a natural default move for many to fall into. I even did it myself. Find someone who has been out of the military for a while to help review your resume. My resume was completed 2 years before I retired and had been reviewed by approximately 10-15 people before I got it right. It might as well have been written in another language that required a lot of translation and massaging.
Best Practice #3. Don’t have one resume that is one size fits all.
Write a standard two-page generic resume for your specific career field you want to get into. Take that resume once it is good to go and create a more detailed one. Sometimes a company will ask you later for a more detailed version of your two-pager.
When I started submitting for job openings, I had several “flavors” of resumes. I had one for my basic job, as a GIS/Geospatial analyst, I had a manager/leader resume, and I had an instructor/curriculum developer resume. Each of these were role specific and pulled different data from my vast military career.
Figure out the different roles you are interested in, build the baseline resume, then make modified versions of it for the different roles you want to apply for.
Best Practice #4. Tailor each resume for the specific position you are applying for.
I once submitted for several GIS jobs in Texas related to the oil and gas industry. I never got a call back on any of them. I reached out to an old Army buddy that I knew was in the GIS field in Houston Texas and asked him if he could look at my resume. He was quick to respond. I made no refence to anything related to the oil and gas industry, nor did I use any of that industry terminology in my resume. He explained to me how the first hurdle in many hiring processes is to get by a computer or AI algorithm that searches resumes for required terms and words. Once I made that adjustment to my resume based on my experiences, I was getting call backs for interviews left and right. This will require you to read the job announcement and determine what the key phases or terms are that you will need to have in your resume. Do not put anything in your resume you cannot back up with real experience. You’re either qualified or not.
Final Words of Wisdom
A few last tidbits to you coming from my own experience:
- Avoid military jargon
- Spell out acronyms
- Keep OPSEC in mind
- No classified information
- Review, review, review. Get a lot of different eyes on it before you finalize it.
I hope these things that I have learned over the years of reading many resumes and assisting many Veterans to rewrite their resumes will help you. It took me a few years of constant editing, rewriting and modifying my resume(s) to get very comfortable with adjusting them to each role I applied for.
When I conduct interviews, I always use a person’s resume as the baseline for all my questions and discussion with the applicant. You must be very well versed with what you put into your resume and be able to expand in detail on anything you put in there. Good luck on your job hunt, be proud of your service to our Nation, and reach out to fellow Veterans for guidance and assistance.
Comment below if you have any questions and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn James Pardue | LinkedIn.
