Military Resumes Archives - Palladian Career Resources

Improving a Resume Summary Section

The resume I read this morning started with an executive summary providing an overview of the job seeker. The summary focused on generalizations while the resume contained a number of specific accomplishments and experiences. The result was a summary that did little to help the overall impression.

Below are the first few lines of the executive summary:

Veteran Military Officer with extensive aerospace industry experience. Dynamic Industry Leader. Technically astute. Customer focused. Results oriented. Employs decisive, analytical approach to problem solving.

This summary lists some great attributes, but the buzzwords are so overused they make no impression. Everyone says the same thing. A much better approach is to provide a few attributes and back them up with specific accomplishments.

This individual managed a number of multi-million dollar projects producing significant enhancements to the military capability of various aircraft weapons systems and cost reductions to the military. These accomplishments are buried within the text of the resume. A hiring manager scanning the resume quickly is likely to read only a small portion of the text and may miss some or all of the accomplishments. For this reason, the accomplishments making the best impression should be listed at the top of the resume.

I would rewrite the summary section in this form:

Veteran Military Officer with extensive aerospace industry experience.

Technically astute – <insert the description of a successful technically challenging project>

Customer focused – <insert the description of a project requiring a high level of customer service>

Results oriented – <insert a successful project with significant cost savings>

Employs decisive, analytical approach to problem solving – <insert a project requiring complex problem solving skills>

The job seeker has examples in his resume for each of these bullets. All he needs to do is copy and paste them at the top. This will make a much stronger impression and ensure a hiring manager will see his strongest accomplishments first.

Information on a Military Resume

In our Military Resume Benchmarking Report, we found military personnel frequently omitted key data from their resume. Every resume needs to include a few basic pieces of information. Without the education, job titles, employers, dates of employment and a description of each job, you don’t have a resume. This information is just the starting point. Resumes should include accomplishments, key skills and other a wide range of other details demonstrating the candidate’s capability. For military personnel transitioning a variety of these key details were missing from the resumes.

The most common detail omitted by military personnel was the military rank. Military personnel receive a lot of advice about removing military terms and translating their experience into civilian terms. This is important advice and should be followed. It is possible to go overboard. We found 81% of military resumes did not include the rank of the individual. Many hiring managers have a military background and would find the rank valuable. In addition, listing the rank of the individual throughout their career shows the pattern of promotions – valuable information for anyone reading the resume.

Another key detail often omitted from military resumes was the name of the employer. 30% of the resumes in the study failed to list an employer. For someone transitioning from the military, it may seem obvious they were in the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy or Coast Guard. Even if it is obvious to most people where you worked, you should still include your employer. This ensures there is no confusion about your background.

The most surprising finding from the resume study was that one in six military resumes failed to provide job titles for each job. Job titles are an absolute requirement for a resume. It is very difficult to understand the background of an individual without job titles. In the military, the job titles often use specialized terminology. Civilians without a military background may find these terms difficult to understand. This doesn’t mean you should drop your job title. It just makes it important for you to explain the position.

Resume Writing Style

In our Military Resume Benchmarking Report, we assessed the writing style of the resumes and found 31% of the resumes had inconsistent sentence structures.

In our Military Resume Benchmarking Report, we assessed the writing style of the resumes. A resume is an introduction to an employer. Writing a resume requires a much greater attention to detail than almost any other form of writing. A poorly written resume with lots of mistakes will ensure a bad first impression. Unfortunately, mistakes on resumes are not rare. In our research study, we found 31% of the resumes had inconsistent sentence structures.

There are a variety of acceptable styles and we didn’t want our personal preferences to bias the report. We assessed the consistency of the style. Most resumes are written without using personal pronouns. Others are written in the first person. The verb usage also varies from passive to active voice. Maintaining consistency makes a resume more predictable and easier scan quickly. At the same time, when you write, some variation in sentence structure can improve readability. When we assessed the writing style, we looked for inconsistencies or gross grammatical errors that significantly hurt the readability.

Seeing so many resumes make basic writing mistakes, I wanted to share an example of inconsistent writing from a resume. Below is the first paragraph from a resume I received recently. It isn’t one of the resumes from the research study, but is representative of some of the worst offenders.

Professional Summary

I’m an honest, loyal and highly motivated worker who is result-oriented with over 20 years of active military service and experience in Recruiting, Human Resources, Personnel Administration, and Operations & Training. Possess strong leadership skills and successful team building capabilities and have excellent technical, communication, presentation, and customer service skills. I am a resourceful problem solver with the proven ability to bring quick resolution to challenging situations. Hold a Bachelor of Business Administration degree majoring in General Business with a minor in Business Management.

The summary starts out with by the personal pronoun “I.” The second sentence omits the pronoun, starting with “Possess strong…” In the third sentence, the job seeker uses the personal pronoun again. Finally, in the forth sentence, the job seeker leaves out the pronoun again.

This inconsistencies hurt the readability and are a distraction from the content. A much better approach would be to pick a convention and stick with it. Further hurting the effectiveness, the job seeker uses “Possess” and “Hold” to start two of the sentences instead of the more common “Possesses” and “Holds.”

To fix this, I would scrap the structure and break the text into bullets. The summary is essentially a list of qualities and I would break it down into the form of a list. I would also bold some text to highlight key concepts.

Professional Summary

Results-oriented Sergeant Major with 20 years of active military service in Recruiting, Human Resources, Personnel Administration, Operations and Training.

Strong leader with a track record of building successful teams.

Highly skilled in technical, communications, presentation, and customer service.

Resourceful problem solver with the proven ability to bring quick resolution to challenging situations.

This section reads much clearer. It has most of the same content. I emphasize a few key attributes by bolding a few words. If a hiring manager only scans this section on their way to the work experience, it should help to create an image of the job seeker as a results-oriented, highly skilled leader with good problem solving skills. This simpler summary of the job seeker is likely to be much more effective than a longer more detailed summary.

Is my rewrite perfect? No, it’s far from it. I wanted to show how inconsistent sentence structure can hurt a resume. I also wanted to show an alternative, but didn’t want to bring in much new content. If I really want to fix this resume, I would cut the bullets I listed down to just a couple lines and add a few accomplishments. It’s good for a job seeker to say they were successful, but it is much more effective to show a hiring manager past successes. Adding a couple accomplishments can dramatically improve the overall impression of the resume.

Bottom line: Keep your sentence structure consistent. Proofread your resume closely. Add some accomplishments to show a hiring manager how good you are rather than just making claims. Do these things, and your resume will improve.

Military Resume Benchmarking Report

The 2009 Military Resume Benchmarking Results provides transitioning and former military personnel with hard data on resume writing best practices. The report identified common resume writing mistakes and recommendations to avoid these pitfalls.

The 2009 military resume benchmarking study examined thirty-six separate elements within each resume. All of the resumes were from former or current military personnel, representing all branches of the military. Both enlisted and officer ranks were included.

The study examined the content of each resume. A few results stood out:

Employer Name – 30% of the resumes failed to include the name of each employer in their work history. Listing the employer name for each job is an essential component of a resume.
Job Titles – One in six resumes failed to include job titles for every position in their work history. Job titles are critical to understanding the experience and career progression of a job seeker.
Introduction – In the study, 90% of the resumes had an introductory section, typically including an objective statement or summary of the candidate’s background.

Based on these results and others contained in the report, Palladian provides specific resume writing recommendations, especially applicable to military transition candidates. Specifically, a resume should provide the employer name, job title, start and end dates (with months and years) and the location for each position listed. The resume introductory section should focus on accomplishments, not responsibilities. Resumes should be one to two pages, and 300 to 600 words in length. To improve the readability of the resume, short bullets should be used. Finally, the job seeker should provide the military rank, or the highest rank achieved at minimum.

Cool Resume Checker

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day!

I’ve been thinking about something for a long time and finally got around to exploring it more fully this weekend. It’s a tool that can help you check your resume in a completely different way – I think you’ll find it helpful in giving you a different perspective on your resume.

The tool I’ve been interested in is Wordle (www.wordle.net). It’s a free website and allows you to create word clouds. If you’re not familiar with the term “word clouds” – don’t worry. They’re pretty simple.

The idea is to create an image from the word frequency in a piece of text. Every word is listed once in the image and the frequency determines the size of the word.

The advantage of this for job seekers is to see what words are emphasized on their resume. This has an obvious benefit for search results in resume databases and ensuring your keywords are prominent – but this is only a secondary benefit.

What is really important is the impression your resume creates. The words you use and their frequency can affect this. Since were talking about an imaging tool, we need to take a look at an image.

Below is a word cloud created from a job seeker’s resume (all references to the job seeker’s name, company and location were deleted before creating the image). The resume is from a transitioning senior military officer.

What is most prominent here? Here are the top 10:

Support ~ Logistics ~ Program ~ Provided ~ Requirements ~ Command ~ Army

From this list, it’s pretty clear the individual works in a field that does project or program management. Beyond that, there is only one verbs – provided. This is far from impressive. You have to look hard to find action verbs that demonstrate accomplishments.

Overall, the word cloud is pretty bland – a lot of detail of responsibilities and not much substance. What’s really interesting is that the resume has the same problem.

One final note… the job seeker whose resume I used above is actually a very strong candidate. Their track record is excellent with a consistent pattern of success and achievement. Unfortunately, the resume they sent me and are using for their job search does a terrible job presenting their background.

Military to Civilian Transition: 50 Objective Statements

Yesterday, I listed 50 objectives from resumes of managers and executives. Today, I have 50 more objectives, but all of these are from military officers transitioning into the civilian workforce.

For transitioning military officers, it’s improtant to have an objective statement. Transitioning from the military is a significant career change. Defining what type of position they are seeking is important.

OBJECTIVE: Logistician / Analyst
Objective: To be an asset to the company with my experience in the U.S. Army
Objective: To obtain a position that will allow me to display my rapid adaptation and troubleshooting skills. My ideal position would allow me to make use of my talent for rapidly learning new systems and technology and integrating new, old, and international equipment to further my education and career. This position would let my ambition lead the way giving me open space to excel and move upwards to the best of my abilities.
Objective: To acquire a professional position of the Customer Service focus to further develop myself as well as enhance an established work force.
OBJECTIVE: TO OBTAIN EMPLOYMENT AS A WASTE/WATER PLANT OPERATOR
Objective: Obtain a position with an established company to utilize my experience, technical knowledge, and skills in administration, logistics, computer systems and software, office equipment, people, and organization that will contribute to efficient business operations.
OBJECTIVE Seeking a position as Generator Technician where experience and motivational skills will enhance the company.
CAREER OBJECTIVE: Recently retired active-duty service member seeking a position in the U.S. Government sector to include the Logistics, Transportation and Security industries that will certainly capitalize on my military training, leadership and management skills. Team oriented, well organized individual, with 20 years experience in the U.S. Army’s Transportation Logistics arena.
OBJECTIVE: To obtain a management position with a progressive organization that will effectively utilize my acquired expertise and experience.
OBJECTIVE: To obtain a position with an organization where I can maximize my multilayer of management skills, quality assurance, program development, training experience and administrative skills.
Objective: A challenging position as an Administrative Office / Human Resources Manager
OBJECTIVE: Corporate position which capitalizes on a 15-year career leading senior level financial operations and managing “turn around” operations supporting an organization’s new direction and strategy. Senior level experience managing financial transformation plans integrating program and project management initiatives, oversight of multi-million dollar budgets, and acquisitions. Extensive experience in multinational markets.
Objective Seek a position in Administration Services or Human Resources.
OBJECTIVE: Seeking an Information Technology position
OBJECTIVE: A position as Logistics Analyst in an organization where an extensive knowledge in Acquisition and Logistics Management is utilized to ensure accurate logistics and customer support for the Warfighter.
Objective: Information Technology Management
OBJECTIVE: Seeking a career utilizing my management, leadership and instructional skills.
OBJECTIVE: To secure a position that will provide a challenging and respectable career as well as room for advancement
Objective: A Production/Distribution Supervisor position
OBJECTIVE: To obtain a challenging position as Program Manager.
Objective: Senior Maintenance Supervisor
OBJECTIVE: Desire a career in Project or Operational Management.
OBJECTIVE: A position as a Network Switching Systems Technician/Installer with full range of responsibilities and possibilities for advancement.
OBJECTIVE: A position as a Safety Manager/Director.
OBJECTIVE: A POSITION IN SENIOR MANAGEMENT where I can leverage my experience in operations, Human Resources, security and intelligence.
Objective: Seeking a position as a logistician
OBJECTIVE: Seeking a challenging opportunity in Project/Facility Management, that will utilize my skills in overseeing total project development from start to finish, including maintaining quality and cost control.
PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVE: A challenging Director of Logistics or Supply Chain Management position utilizing leadership, coordination, operations, logistics and communication skills to improve team building and focus on customer service and profit margins for a company in the Government Infrastructure, Oil and Gas or Industrial supplies/products industry.
Objective: To seek career opportunities and provide my knowledge and expertise in knowledge management and communications planning using my extensive skills to an innovative and adaptive detail and results oriented company.
OBJECTIVE: Seeking an analytical position in management or administration that allows me to use and apply over 34 years of progressively responsible experience in both the Department of the Army and public education. Skills and experience include extensive knowledge of workforce (manpower) management, Army programming and budgeting, human resource management, training and development, and logistics.
PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVE: I am seeking to join a team of dedicated and highly skilled professionals as a Senior Logistics Planner/ Manager/ Analyst/ Trainer/ Project Manager or Supply Chain Manager.
OBJECTIVE: Full or part time position within the field of Loss Prevention/Security or investigations
Objective: A Human Resources Opportunity where I can utilize my professional, technical and leadership skills in a company with a long-standing reputation for a great customer service and strong business partnerships.
OBJECTIVE: To secure a position as a Manger with an established organization utilizing my technical knowledge in Human Resources and experience gained from 25 years as a Leader, Trainer and Manager with the army.
OBJECTIVE: Work in a leadership position committed to customer service, developing employees, and achieving organization goals.
Objective: To secure a Manufacturing Production Superintendent position where my past experience and educational experiences would be fully utilized in a career opportunity.
Objective: Seeking a position within a company where I can contribute my efforts and use my acquired skills to complete a mission.
PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVE: A senior position involved in all aspects of managing and reporting in financial terms the results of an enterprise’s operations to its internal and external stakeholders or a senior position involved in all aspects of logistics/production.
OBJECTIVE: Seeking a challenging management position with a dynamic company that will utilize my solid logistics, operations and program management background to the fullest capacity.
OBJECTIVE: I would like a responsible management position in a challenging environment, which will utilize my expertise in aviation logistics in marketing and foreign military sales.
Objective: To obtain a professional position where my experience, initiative, leadership and management Skills will be strongly utilized.
OBJECTIVE: Seeking a challenging and rewarding position in Human Resource Management/Strategic Planning where my skills and experience will be utilized to enhance organizational goals.
JOB OBJECTIVE: Seeking a challenging IT software development position to leverage and expand my full-life cycle technical leadership, team building and software development skills
OBJECTIVE: To obtain an Administrative Services Manager or Security Management position in the Colorado Springs Area.
OBJECTIVE: Seeking a challenging management position with a dynamic company that will utilize my solid logistics, operations and program management background to the fullest capacity.
OBJECTIVE: Seeking a challenging and rewarding position in Human Resource Management/Strategic Planning where my skills and experience will be utilized to enhance organizational goals.
Objective: A senior program management, operations or consultant position in a firm supporting homeland security or defense related enterprises.
OBJECTIVE: Seeking Distribution/Operations/Logistics Manager’s position.
OBJECTIVE: Senior management position using proven leadership, planning, and problem solving skills that will result in superior accomplishments and achieve organizational goals.
Objective: Executive Management- seeking a senior position to draw on proven results-driven abilities in strategic planning, team building, or organizational needs assessment.

I’m intersted to hear your impression of the objective statements – do you plan on making any changes to the objective on your resume? How would you assess the average objective – good/bad, effective/ineffective?