As Stone points out, “Before you can translate your experience, you have to know what language you’re translating to. Experts recommend starting with the employer and working backward from there so your résumé is grounded in an understanding of the target industry and the needs of the company.” While this is true, it is easier said than done. As the Director of MilitaryResumes.com, I am frequently asked, “Which jobs am I qualified for?” Many military job seekers don’t even know which industry, let alone company, to target. Surprisingly, the more military experience a client has, the more likely the question. Career search advice and targeted military resumes are things we regularly provide to our MilitaryResumes.com customers. But for those going it alone, I suggest the O*Net website as a resource.

O*Net allows you to pinpoint the civilian job title that most closely matches your military experience and interests. You can use this knowledge to look for companies hiring for your civilian-equivalent job title and target your resume by analyzing your target job announcement for specific language. For more information on O*Net, see my previous post on the topic.

Stone goes on to discuss the importance of creatively drawing less than obvious parallels between military experience and civilian qualifications. Specifically, he cites one Infantry Officer’s struggle to translate his experience. This military job seeker thought about “soft skills” such as “leadership” and added situational details. While I don’t recommend overusing soft skills in the resume itself, as they tend to be interpreted as “fluff”, this can be an effective means to an end.

Creative writers often use a technique called spiraling to develop characters and plots. Spiraling involves placing a main character trait in the center of a blank sheet of paper (such as “Quiet”) and drawing concentric lines around it to point to possible storylines (i.e. repressed memories, solo camping trips, communicates best with animals, etc.). Place a soft skill in the center of a sheet of paper (financially savvy/cost-minded), and spiral out hard skills (fiscal administration and budget management), specific examples (managed a $500,000 training budget), and achievements (optimized training funds and cut travel costs by 50%, saving $25,000 per quarter, by combining 2 courses…). Or try this exercise in reverse; place a tangible experience (managed the construction of an Iraqi school) in the center, and spiral out skills (project management, budget management, quality assurance, etc.). Then spiral out from each of those skills. Are there more examples of project management in your experience? Notice that “budget management” reoccurs. Run with common threads.

To Stone’s well-put insights on how to “word it right”, I’d like to add the importance of putting experience in its proper context. I’ve read hundreds of military resumes and failing to establish context is one of the most common resume writing mistakes veterans make. Lack of context may hinder a civilian’s ability to fully comprehend your experience. The better context you provide, the more the civilian reader can appreciate the unique challenges you have faced on the job. Use context to liberally round out your experience and provide a more realistic backdrop for your accomplishments. Describe your military unit or organization in the context of its industry (size [number of people vs. “battalion”], mission, location [an austere environment like Afghanistan is worthy of mention], “customers”, and services). Briefly describe the scope of your responsibilities, aligning word choice with your status. In other words, a senior executive probably doesn’t need to mention his or her ability to file paperwork.

Military resumes are the most inherently challenging to write, or at the very least, write well. Obstacles faced when building a military resume worthy of civilian attention can be overcome with a little elbow grease and creative thinking. Keep in mind who you are trying to please when writing your military resume – you or the hiring manager? Determine a hiring manager’s needs and, through your accomplishments-driven resume, tell them you are the best person to fulfill those needs.

For more information on professional military resume writing services, please visit www.MilitaryResumes.com or email me at jrichardson@militaryresumes.com.

1. Sales
2. CPA
3. Tax
4. Business Development
5. Marketing
6. Controller
7. Healthcare
8. Human Resources
9. Insurance
10. Software
11. Manufacturing
12. Finance
13. Retail
14. CFO
15. Medical Device
16. Pharmaceutical
17. Sales Manager
18. Software Sales
19. Financial Advisor
20. Pharmacist
21. Medical
22. Supply Chain
23. SAP
24. Accounting
25. Medical Sales
26. Account Executive
27. Audit
28. Tax Manager
29. Food
30. Engineer
31. Recruiter
32. Product Manager
33. Construction
34. Manager
35. Project Manager
36. Oracle
37. HVAC
38. Java
39. Operations
40. Director
41. Inside Sales
42. Hospital
43. Attorney
44. Call Center
45. SEC
46. Packaging
47. Pharmacy
48. Physician
49. Outsourcing
50. International Tax
51. Logistics
52. Deloitte
53. FAS 109
54. Compliance
55. SAAS
56. Real Estate
57. Electrical Engineer
58. Nurse
59. SEC Reporting
60. Security
61. Technology
62. Storage
63. Energy
64. ERP
65. Aerospace
66. Procurement
67. Private Equity
68. RN
69. Business Intelligence
70. Compensation
71. Cisco
72. C++
73. Engineering
74. Mechanical Engineer
75. Ikon
76. CPG
77. Chemical
78. ADP
79. Bank
80. Banking
81. Mortgage
82. Financial Services
83. IT
84. Business Analyst
85. Advertising
86. Accountant
87. KPMG
88. Product Development
89. Wealth Management
90. Transportation
91. Sales Engineer
92. Internal Audit
93. Benefits
94. BPO
95. Litigation
96. Lean
97. Series 7
98. Telecommunications
99. Government
100. CRM

In an article posted on www.fistfuloftalent.com entitled “In Memorium: Obituary of the (Dys)Functional Resume“, Dawn Hrdlica (PHR), an HR manager for MailSouth with over 10 years of HR experience, memorializes the death of the functional resume. According to Hrdlica, a functional format is only suitable for “experience too limiting to be forthright.”

Functional resumes begin with a professional summary that lists primary functional skills, such as project management, maintenance, reorganization, etc. This is followed by skills and significant achievements for each of the primary functional skill sets. Next is a tabular summary of employment (depending on the military resume), followed by education and certifications. Hrdlica’s issues with functional resumes are outlined in the following excerpt:

“Why am I frustrated with functional resumes and professionals who recommend them?

a)    If I see a functional resume, I know you are trying to hide something.  Or someone has advised you to hide something.

b)   They are difficult to read-too much text, no CONTEXT.

c)    They give the recruiter too much power.  Why?  By eliminating important details such as chronological order to your accomplishments, candidates are letting recruiters fill in the blanks for your story.  Never a good idea.

d)   It makes me believe that you are not confident enough with your work history or skills to be confident enough to work for my organization.

e) If you don’t have any work experience-GET SOME.”

In my opinion, there are three problems with functional resumes. First, they do not provide hiring managers with enough information. As a hiring authority, how am I to know if you have three months or three years of “project management” experience? Second, they come across as suspicious. Functional resumes are popular among people with something to hide, such as habitual “job hoppers” and those with large gaps in their employment history. Third, they tend to be heavy on empty phrases like, “exceptional leadership skills.” To a seasoned resume reviewer, this means nothing. A great resume leads the reader, on his or her own, to come up with the very assertions you would like to make. Aim to show not tell – a hard order to fill with a functional resume.

The best format choice for military-experienced job seekers aiming to highlight progressive leadership experience is a reverse chronological resume. This is the format always used by the professional military resume writers at the nation’s leading military resume writing company, www.MilitaryResumes.com. A reverse chronological resume lists employment with the most recent position first. Each entry includes the company, job title, dates, and a job description with an emphasis on accomplishments, and includes an education or certifications section.

In summary, readers want your military resume in a certain format. List your work experiences in reverse chronological order rather than by function performed. If collateral duties and multiple, simultaneous jobs make your reverse chronological timeline somewhat difficult to follow, add a “collateral duties” or “additional experience” section and keep the focus on experience most relevant to your target. While a functional resume may make you feel better about representing your skills, it will not please the reader and you could miss opportunities because your resume ended up in the trash.

1. Avoid applying for a job for which you are not remotely qualified for.

2. Avoid a lofty mission statement. Instead, convey to the reader that you understand his or her hiring needs and can best meet those needs.

3. Do not use a generic resume for every job listing.

4. Don’t make recruiters or hiring managers guess how exactly you can help their client.

5. Explain how past experience translates to a new experience.

6. Include a cover letter.

7. Do not be careless with the details (i.e. no typos)!

Because #1 (do not apply for a job for which you are not remotely qualified) and #5 (explain how past experience translates to a new experience) seem slightly contradictory, I’d like to include the following excerpt:

*Though candidates should avoid jobs where they have no experience, they absolutely should pursue new areas and positions if they can position their experience effectively. A high school English teacher applying for new jobs, for example, can cite expertise in human resource management, people skills, recordkeeping, writing, and training, says Anthony Pensabene, a professional writer who works with executives.

“Titles are just semantics; candidates need to relate their ‘actual’ skills and experiences to the job they’re applying for in their resume,” Pensabene says. An applicant who cannot be bothered to identify the parallels between the two likely won’t be bothered with interviews, either.

In this competitive job market, hiring managers can count on an influx of resumes unlike anything they have seen before. However, chances are the majority of those resumes will commit one or more of the 7 resume sins. Capitalize on this fact. Take this advice to heart or hire a professional military resume writer. The professionals at Military Resumes can create or edit your military resume to free you of transgressions and make you stand out from the crowd.

Get with the times. Know where the jobs are. Network.

It’s time to face the facts. Nearly everyone is using social networking web sites these days. I recently read an article that stated at last count, LinkedIn had over 60 million users. In contrast, job boards only contain about 3.5% of available jobs. This is common knowledge in the career industry, but it seems to be a little known fact within the community of military job seekers. Military job seekers spend an inordinate amount of time on job boards relative to the likelihood of actually finding a job on them. Why is this? Because it feels safer and it’s what they know. LinkedIn and similar sites, which are all about networking and socializing in an unfamiliar environment, can be intimidating. Make it your New Year’s resolution to get with the times and push yourself outside of your comfort zone. And don’t overlook companies like Bradley-Morris, Inc. and CivilianJobs.com. These leaders in placing military-experienced job seekers into the Fortune 1000 and emerging company sectors have done and will continue to do a substantial amount of corporate networking on behalf of military talent.

Understand your audience. Develop your brand.

Gone are the days of the monotonous objective statement – hallelujah! Objective statements are out; personal branding is in. Looking for a job is a sales situation. You are your product. To effectively brand your product, you must know your audience. Got your eye on that dream job with a stable company? Resolve to do some research. What are their two biggest needs right now that you could potentially fill? At Military Resumes, a professional military resume writer can align the “who you are” with the “what they need” in your most important marketing tool – your military resume. Let’s say that you are a career military recruiter looking to join an exciting start-up company. Your brand might be: “Seasoned Recruiter and Marketing Guru… Offering to drive growth by generating qualified leads, penetrating territories, and closing the toughest sales, consistently!”. Now carry your brand forward in your social networking profiles.

Treat your job search like a game.

Treat your job search like a game and plan to win. Set a goal for 2010. Maybe your goal is to get a job before you retire in March. Set up a strategy where you must do X number of things per day. Keep running totals, complete with which actions scored better results than others. For example, if setting up a meeting over coffee with just one individual lands more contacts and job referrals than sending out 30 e-mails, adjust your strategy accordingly. Everyone has a game-playing style that works for them. Find out which job search actions work best for you and focus on using them to get you to the winner’s circle.

The first question about e-mailing your military resume is whether to send it as an attachment or just paste it into the body of the email. Keep in mind that attachments may take up too much space in the recipient’s inbox, harbor security threats, or get blocked by a company’s security system. Furthermore, busy hiring professionals may not take the time to open an attachment. However, Word or PDF attachments are more attractively formatted than pasted-in text resumes and PDF attachments can’t be messed with. So what is a military job seeker to do?

• Try to do exactly what the company or hiring professional requested or find out what they prefer.
• When in doubt, try sending your military resume both ways; consider sending two e-mails: one with the military resume pasted in and one with the military resume pasted in as well as attached.

If you plan to paste your military resume into an e-mail, start the e-mail with a brief introduction of yourself (two paragraphs of two to three lines each, max) in place of a military cover letter. At the end of the introduction, indicate that you’ve pasted in your military resume following your signature and, of course, copy and paste your military resume accordingly. Here are some tips for formatting your pasted-in military resume.

• Keep each line short – between 45 and 60 characters.
• Use spaces instead of tabs for indenting.
• Use capitalization instead of bolding to emphasize text.
• Do not use exclamation marks in the subject line or body of the military resume.

A great way to get a hiring professional’s attention is to identify an issue or offer a solution within the subject line. This is an example of an attention-grabbing subject header: “Re: reducing operating costs by 20%”. And finally, make sure you follow-up, by phone, to ensure your military resume was accepted.

Now that you have positioned yourself for emailing success, you may be eager to hit the send button. Not so fast! Squeaking by the spam filter will do you no good with an ineffective military resume. It’s your resume’s job to land you an interview in this scenario. To accomplish this, your military resume should convey your ability to fulfill critical hiring needs within the target organization. Consider consulting the professional military resume writers at Military Resumes to ensure your military resume, newly received and read, makes the best first impression possible.

Many well-intentioned requisites, such as minimum years of experience and/or educational requirements, actually end-up working against hiring managers… and it is only a matter of time before this truth reveals itself. Who would you rather hire? A person who has 10 years of experience with marginal accomplishments and little ambition or an individual who outperforms all of their peers, no matter their length of experience, even though they’ve only been in the industry for seven years? At the end of the day, hiring managers are really looking for a return on their hiring investment and not a piece of paper or an arbitrary number.

The fact that some companies focus too narrowly on their industries often scares off military job seekers as well. But while an HR representative may be the one to point out that an otherwise impressive military-experienced candidate lacks specific experience with widget X, the CEO might not be willing to pass up a candidate with a documented track record of success improving efficiencies in their military unit and performing under challenging circumstances.

The success of the nation’s leading military-focused recruiting firm, Bradley-Morris, Inc. (BMI), in matching military job seekers with careers in the Fortune 1000 is evidence that military experience is valuable within a variety of industries. BMI markets the value of military experience and works with companies who need perpetual sources of talent, diverse candidates and team-oriented individuals – all of which are found in the military talent pool. Since 1991, BMI has helped companies understand which military occupational specialties have proven successful in their industry previously – no widget X experience necessary.

So now that we’ve revealed these “obstacles” for what they really are – arbitrary requests unlikely to be exactly matched – how should a military job seeker surmount them? I suggest starting with your military resume. With so many resumes circulating today, if military job seekers do not communicate their transferability in 15-20 seconds, they will not get a second look. So during this difficult economic time where military job seekers might opt to skimp on their military resumes, understand that by doing so, they may also be skimping on their futures. I highly suggest investing your time in communicating your value more effectively and convincingly. Your job search will be the better for it.

Or, if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, trust your experience and military resume to professional military resume writers (the writers at Military Resumes are experts in demonstrating transferability in their clients’ military resumes), ones who will represent you as the next best fit… next to the one that doesn’t exist!

I’m often asked, “Well, if I need [keywords], how do I know what [keywords] to use?” Here is a simple list of some great places to begin growing your keyword list.

Use Your Brain
I’m not being cheeky by saying that. I think we often overlook our own common sense because the online tools are so convenient.

Sit down with a blank paper and come up with as many industry specific nouns as you can. Don’t judge what happens, now is the time to get as big a list as possible. Later, we’ll hone it down.

Use Related Job Descriptions
I always tell people that job boards are good for at least one thing…finding job descriptions to mine for keywords. Companies will often (not always) include the keywords they look for when screen resumes in the descriptions.

Find 5-10 related job descriptions (doesn’t matter what location) and pick out the nouns that seem to be recurring. Add them to your list.

Read the Book!
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a book every year called the, “Occupational Outlook Handbook” which you can download for free. It lists out job descriptions for each category of job.

Find your job description and mine for nouns to add to your list.

Use Google’s Keyword Tools
Another great place to brainstorm for keywords is Google’s keyword tool. Now that you have a longer list of possible keywords, begin to plug them into Google’s Keyword tool. It will produce a list of keyword terms that are being searched. This indicates the current popularity of the term and possibly it’s viability in your social media profiles.

Make You Top 10
Now that you have a long list of words, and you have a sense of how popular those words are it’s time to cross off the ones that wont work and keep the ones that will. I like to have a top 10 list.

10 is an easy number to manage and to keep in mind while writing your profiles.

Joshua Waldman is a Social Media Career Consultant, lecturer and blogger for www.CareerEnlightenment.net. He has an MBA from Boston University and over 4 years experience working with Project Managers and Engineers in IT.

At Military Resumes, professional military resume writers litter their clients’ military resumes with keywords.  For more information on professional military resume writing services, please visit www.MilitaryResumes.com.

In an article entitled, Careers in IT – One GI’s Journey, Capicik uses a true story of one  military job seeker’s transition into the IT career field to illustrate what it takes to be successful.  He makes the following points which, in my opinion, can be applied to any career field:

You don’t always know what career path to pursue. Hopefully these articles will help you with that. Also, if you aren’t happy in your job, you will likely look elsewhere or not be successful in your current position.

Most people face a number of obstacles in becoming successful. Whether it is time, money, motivation, or luck, with the right attitude and persistence there is usually a way.

Utilize your military benefits. If you are active-duty make sure you use as much of the TA money made available to you as possible (currently, that’s $4,500 per year). If you are a veteran, use those GI Bill benefits before they run out.

A career field is full of interesting and diverse paths. In this GI’s case, he successfully went from a military networking setting to a small business IT venture to an investment firm finally to an international power management company.

A degree and certifications are key to providing valid credentials. This GI set himself apart and established worthy credentials to companies that, as he said to me, “didn’t know me from Adam.” His education showed a commitment to standards and achieving hard goals.

View the entire article. Keep up with new articles as they come out at the American Sentinel University blog. And regardless of the career field you are transitioning into, target your military resume by incorporating industry jargon, understanding the needs of potential employers, and communicating how you can best meet those needs.  For professional military resume writing assistance from military resume writers, please visit www.MilitaryResumes.com.

The definition of a resume has evolved.  The chronological “obituaries” of years gone by simply won’t cut it today’s troubled economy and saturated job market.  Hiring authorities quickly want to know how you can impact their organization specifically and with which results.  Block offers the following definition of a resume to reflect this shift in mentality:

“Resume: a self-marketing document, prepared for potential employers or organizations, that effectively communicates one’s ability to produce significant results and meet specific performance goals and objectives better than other qualified candidates.”

So how does one transform their military resume to follow suit?  Block goes on to list the three of the most important resume guidelines; guidelines that our military resume writers strictly abide by at Military Resumes.

#1: Make Your Case in 15-20 Seconds:

Recent studies suggest hiring authorities spend 15-20 seconds reviewing a military resume.  In this brief window of opportunity, a military job seeker must showcase their value to grab the reader’s attention and entice them to read on.  Your resume should sing your praises from across the desk and shout, “I’m deserving of a closer look!”  (For assistance with creating a headline and showcase for your military resume from a professional military resume writer, please visist www.MilitaryResumes.com.)

#2: Remember Who You Are Writing the Resume For:

Your intended audience, in most cases, is a stranger.  Would you want to read a stranger’s biography?  At Military Resumes, our military resume writers aim to understand what potential employers are looking for in a military job seeker and clearly convey that information through a military resume.  Take the time to understand the needs of a prospective employer and then communicate, on your military resume, how you can best meet those needs.  Tell hiring managers how you can contribute to their organizational goals and never trust them to infer.

#3: Resumes Without Achievements are Like Report Cards without Grades:

Simply sitting through a Calculus class in high school would have been easy; but you would not have expected the resulting F on your report card to get you into college.  So you worked hard for that A, a telltale marker of above average performance, knowing that colleges only admit the best of the best.  We’ve all heard that the best predictor of future performance is past performance.  It’s not only what you did, but the results you achieved that determine your employability.  The military job seeker is modest by nature.  But don’t be afraid to toot your own horn… or let a professional military resume writer toot it for you.  List accomplishments that make you standout from the crowd.  Let your military resume be your best advocate.