Translate your military skills for employers, hiring managers
Q: How can I as a veteran highlight my special training/skills on my resume as well as in the interview process?
A: Veterans understand the necessity of making a good plan. Creating a strong resume begins with a strategy in mind — how to sell your benefits to a civilian employer. Seeing your resume as a sales tool will often prevent you from sharing lengthy descriptions about your military duties, helping you to focus on the benefits you bring.
When employers review resumes, there are several questions they contemplate and one of them is, “how will your skills relate to our business needs?” Many times, veterans will make the mistake of listing job duties rather than clearly showing how their skills will benefit an employer.
Veterans must understand that to generate attention from an employer, their skills must be relatable. Any time your experience has been developed in a structured environment such as the military, the less likely you are to think in terms of selling rather you are more prone to telling.
There is a major difference between telling and selling an employer on your military skills. For example, telling an employer would be listing your duties, responsibilities and offering details that would include military jargon, and acronyms.
Selling an employer on your background would look like accomplishments, presenting the skills that produced results. For example, your special training could be translated into how your skills benefited your squadron in supporting the success of a mission.
A good way to start highlighting your special training and skills on your resume is identifying the type of skills needed in the marketplace. Making a lasting impression with a hiring manager requires that you adapt to marketing your military skills to an employer’s needs.
The military is known for producing top leaders who have been trained on the principles of clear communication and reliability. As a veteran, you leave with a deeper level of training that most will never experience. The key now is to match those skills to the employer’s needs.
Be sensitive toward using the same words repeatedly in your resume such as “responsible for, duties included, managed, helped, or assisted with” rather focus on using power verbs to describe your accomplishments. Make use of a good thesaurus to change your wording, as it will send a stronger message and make your content more appealing.
Apply key words in your resume and during your answers while interviewing, your job title, the industry you are seeking, and skills required for the position are examples of key words. A good job search tool is www.mynextmove.org/vets/ — it will you translate your military titles into related roles in the marketplace.
Writing a resume not only helps you highlight your special training and skills to an employer, it boosts your confidence as well during the interview process. Veterans have many achievements to offer employers and the time you spend translating your military background will pay off in the way your present your unique combination of skills to employers.