Blast the competition p1 - Military to Civilian Résumé Advice - Military Times Edge

After eight years in the Marines, a knee injury sidelined Staff Sgt. Matt Raica. He gave up the uniform, ventured out into the work force and soon found that his military achievements did not translate easily onto the standard 8.5-by-11-inch life summation: The résumé.

“In the military, I worked 20-hour days. I was in charge of a 10-person shop. My military experience covered a lot more than someone in the civilian world might have had in the same number of years,” he said.

With help from job-placement professionals at recruiting firms Lucas Group and Bradley-Morris, Raica eventually put together a résumé that got the job done. Now he’s an environmental supervisor with CB Richard Ellis in Tacoma, Wash.

Raica’s not the only one to struggle with the curriculum vitae. People make mistakes — lots of mistakes — when they try to sum up their military work for civilian consumption.

Worst mistakes

Executive recruiting and career coaching firm Palladian International recently scrutinized 210 officer and enlisted résumés gleaned from job-fair applicants. Vice President Gary Capone was surprised to see how many applicants never bothered to say who they worked for all those years.

“What really jumped out at us was how few people listed the actual employer. In some cases it may have been very clear that the person was in the Air Force, but the words “Air Force” were never used. That happens in some 30 percent of military résumés,” Capone said.

That’s confusing to employers, especially with so many military contractors doing former military jobs these days. “You can’t necessarily assume that someone is in the military” based on past job descriptions, Capone said. “They could just as easily be with a military contractor.”

More findings in the study that Capone points out:

• One in six military résumés didn’t list a job title. “If you don’t have your employer named, and you don’t have a job title, you don’t have a résumé.”

• Four out of five applicants failed to give their ranks. Even for a hiring manager with little military background, a rank gives some context, some sense of how far up you have climbed.

• Lots of military résumés understate the job-seeker’s most impressive credentials, Capone said, burying awards and citations at the bottom of the résumé without explaining what those commendations represent. Without some context, a hiring manager can easily overlook these significant accomplishments.

Capone offers these critiques of some real résumés.

1. A transitioning E-4 with human resources experience boasts a “proven record of success — increasing efficiency, saving time, and reducing expenses.” But he never mentions specific duties or job titles.

Capone: Many hiring managers will discard the résumé as soon as they realize the employment data is missing.

2. A retiring Air Force E-8 opens with this: “Active DoD TopSecret/SCI Clearance B.A. in Management Special Operations Experience Intelligence Community ... Combat tested managerial skills in project planning, resource management, training and direct personnel supervision.”

Capone: The introduction is wordy and unimpressive. You have to read through a lot of text to get to the best stuff. The résumé is a whopping four pages long. (Two pages should be the absolute max.)

3. Former Air Force O-4: “Highly motivated and results driven program manager with 21 years of experience in the military. C2ISR Wing Team of the Year, 2006; Sheily, Wright, O'Neil Award, 2003/2004/2006; Headquarters Europe Communication and Information Professionalism Award, 1999.”

Capone: What branch? And how did you earn those awards?

4. Transitioning Navy E-6 with 20 years’ experience: Résumé lists just three jobs, dating from February 2006 to February 2000.

Capone: And the other 14 years?

Language

Another common plague among job-seekers military and civilian: Wordiness.

A typical hiring manager may receive hundreds of résumés for a single position. Any given document will get about 20 seconds’ attention, said Judy Acord of the Army Career and Alumni Program at Fort Eustis, Va., a certified professional résumé writer.

With managers plowing through applications at full throttle, a high-performance résumé and cover letter have got to be concise, with the best stuff near the top. It’s also important to keep jargon to a minimum. Michelle Nevatt learned that as she went from being an Air Force captain in 2007 to her present job as a facility administrator at a kidney dialysis clinic in San Bernardino, Calif.

In a career development class offered as part of a master’s degree program at Webster University, “they had a scenario where you picked what your dream job would be outside the military, and then you would write a résumé based on that job,” Nevatt said.

“Doing that made it easier for me to find a way to make these very military bullets sound less military. It was a good way to learn how to correlate what you do in the military to make it make sense on the outside.”

Another good source of legible highlights: Your annual career review. “In the civilian world, you really have to pull out only the most relevant bullets, and that is what you’ll typically see in that review,” Nevatt said. The annual report can run long, but it will usually break down accomplishments into concise nuggets. Those are the gems worth mining.

Raica struggled to explain his experience in uniform. As for many people, “my sticking point was in being able to translate all my experience into civilian-speak. When I talked about Marine Corps supply systems — these very specific things for ordering and tracking parts, for assigning a priority level to every job based on combat needs — nobody understood what I was talking about.”

So Raica wrote about outcomes, rather than just about tasks. “You learn to say you were in charge of this many people, you cut your unit’s costs by this percentage. That’s what companies want. Corporations want to know how much money you are going to save them. They want to know about efficiency.”

Combat experience

Describing combat experience requires a deft hand.

A job applicant needs to put combat duty in some context, with some detail beyond just having served in the theater. “You want to see very specific bullets: ‘Conducted 150 convoy security operations over a 10-month period,’” Capone said. “It needs to be something that really drives a picture of what this person was doing over there.”

At the same time, some information is better left out.

“Servicemen overemphasize their ability with weapons systems,” Capone said. “They tend to list all the different firearms they are certified under, and at the end of reading it, it seems like this person is purely focused on guns. In the civilian world, there are a lot of people who will read that and be intimidated by it.”

The look

Then there is the matter of appearance. Some résumés are inconsistent, with margins and type fonts all over the place. Some are too densely packed, dark blocks of text guaranteed to scare off the recipient.

It can be tempting to use one of the many free “templates” available, but Acord advises against it. Template résumés tend to all look alike, when what you want to do is stand out.

Instead, look at a few dozen résumé samples — they’re easy to find online — then construct a font, a structure, a style that feels right based on those explorations. Hint: Put your name at the very top. When employers scan in paper résumés to save in electronic format, associated text programs often automatically name the file according to what’s written on the top line.With competition for jobs as tight as it is, flubs on a résumé can easily put you out of the game. Hiring managers are under pressure to score consistent wins, and they are apt to disqualify anyone who doesn’t look like a star player straight off the bench.

“When an individual makes a lot of these mistakes, that résumé is likely going to be overlooked,” Capone said. “Many companies get so many applicants, it is just too easy to pass by that résumé.”

A captivating cover letter

“The purpose of the cover letter is to get someone excited about reading the résumé,” Acord said. Her recommendations:

å Keep it short: Even a page is too long for a hiring manager with about 20 seconds to spare for each résumé.

å Put at least one of your key accomplishments at the very top.

å If you have something specific the employer needs — some particular skill or experience — say so in the cover letter. Do your research to see if there is a particular fit.

å Don’t say: “I want a job that does this for me.”

å Do say: “Here’s what I can do for you.”

å Don’t just repeat the résumé. Present the information differently. Flesh out job titles with key accomplishments: “As team leader, I improved efficiency by 30 percent.”