Military Transition Archives - Palladian Career Resources

Resumes Mistakes From an NCO

I received a resume from an Air Force NCO (non-commissioned officer) who has recently transitioned from active duty into the reserves. The NCO makes a number of common military transition mistakes in his resume.

The core of the problem is the NCO writes a resume focusing entirely on his qualifications in the military. It would be a good resume if he wanted a job in the Air Force. Unfortunately, that’s not his goal. This individual is looking to do something in the commercial sector. He wants to utilize some of the skills he gained in the military, but he is targeting a civilian job.

Let’s look at the structure:

Objective: To use the training and experience I received in the military to make a significant contribution, as a civilian, in making my community a safer place to live.
Technical Training: <long list of military training classes, almost all are related to specific combat activities or Air Force equipment>

Work History: <Listing to job titles and dates in the Air Force>

Experience: <A bulleted list showing the scope of responsibility in various leadership roles held by the NCO>

Certifications: <A certification related to the career field the NCO wants to pursue>

Awards: <A list of performance awards won by the NCO>

There is some good content in this resume, but most of it is of little value to an employer. This individual wants a role using his Hazmat skills. He has taken several training classes in this field, has a certification related to the field and one year of experience.

Unfortunately, digging this detail out of the resume takes too much work. The emphasis of the resume is on his military experience. The military experience shows a pattern of success and progression of increasing responsibility. This is a good track record, but it does little to show what the job seeker would do in a completely different role. The military experience and success in the roles he held should play a supporting role on his resume. The lead role is his experience and skill in the hazmat field.

Below is how I would restructure the resume:

Professional Summary: <A summary statement and bulleted list of key skills, training, certifications and accomplishments directly related to hazmat>

Work Experience: <Job Listing with details of hazmat experience, leadership experience and other transferrable skills>

Education: <Listing of education and training received>

Awards: <Listing of awards>

This structure focuses the top half of the first page on the hazmat experience and skills. It is much more relevant to a hiring manager than the previous version that listed courses such as “USAF Airborne Battle Management Course.” Expanding the work experience section to provide significantly more detail on the job seeker’s responsibilities and accomplishments will also help.

The bottom line is the NCO needs to make a sales pitch for what he can contribute in the private sector, and more specifically, in the role he is pursuing. Showing success in the military is nice, but there is a lot of competition for jobs. The successful job seeker will demonstrate the value they can offer. Demonstrating this value comes from showing key skills and accomplishments. To maximize the effectiveness of the sales pitch, it needs to be at the top of the resume, not buried further down.

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.

Resume Writing – Text Block Size

One of the mistakes I see a lot of job seekers make is writing a resume with large blocks of text. A resume is a summary of person’s career and potential. It isn’t a biography. Unfortunately, some job seekers write with large blocks of text that are more appropriate to a book and than a resume.

In the Military Resume Benchmarking Report we released this week, we reviewed the text block size of military resumes. We found nearly 70% of the resumes utilized short bullets for writing about their experience. This is a great style for a resume.

For the research report we looked at three styles – bullets, short paragraphs and long paragraphs. Resumes with long paragraphs had text blocks that were more than a third of a page long, with some paragraphs approaching a full page. Short paragraphs had more than five sentences but were less than a third of a page long. Bullets were typically one to two sentences long, but could be up to five sentences.

Short and concise bullets make a resume easy to scan and read. Many hiring managers will scan your resume first. This initial look may only last 15 to 30 seconds. The goal is to decide if the resume is worth reading closely. If your resume is written in large blocks of text, a hiring manager may not read the most significant elements. Using bullets can direct the reader to focus on the most important information.

When writing with bullets, consider using titles for each bullet. A title can highlight an important concept and draw attention to the bullets that are the most important. Most resumes write bullets like this:

Implemented a project resulting in $200k in savings
Led a quality improvement program, reducing defects by 40%
Revised production scheduling procedures, improving on-time shipping performance from 96% to 98% while cutting inventory levels by 15%.

Adding titles can highlight the accomplishments and draw the reader’s attention to the bullets:

Reduced Costs: Implemented a project resulting in $200k in savings
Improved Quality: Led a quality improvement program, reducing defects by 40%
Improved On-Time Performance: Revised production scheduling procedures, improving on-time shipping performance from 96% to 98% while cutting inventory levels by 15%.

By adding the titles, the bullets have a clear purpose. A hiring manager can scan just the titles and get an idea for the job seeker has done.

One caution with adding titles, bolding and other style devices that emphasize information is to use these devices infrequently. There are a few job seekers that go overboard and end up bolding or italicizing almost everything. This defeats the purpose. If everything is emphasized, then nothing will stand out.

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.

Education and Training on a Military Resume

The military provides a tremendous number of educational opportunities, ranging from short training classes up to year long programs. Knowing what to include on you resume can be a challenge. Many people transitioning from the military include too much information.

The military provides a tremendous number of educational opportunities, ranging from short training classes up to year long programs. Knowingwhat to include on you resume can be a challenge. Many people transitioning from the military include too much information.

I’ve read a lot of resumes from military personnel that include a page or more of classes and workshops the individual completed over their career. Most of these are routine classes that do not differentiate the candidate. Additionally, many military personal include courses with no relationship to the career they are pursuing. For example, listing a large number of classes and certifications for various weapons will not help a person land a leadership position in manufacturing (except, perhaps, with a firearm manufacturer).

Including significant detail of your training in unrelated areas will not help you land a job. It may also hurt your chances. When a hiring manager reviews your resume, they may only spend 15 seconds looking at it. Any time they spend reading details that don’t sell your background is a waste. They may move on to the next candidate before they get to the impressive parts of your background.

To determine the elements of your education and training that are significant and should be included in your resume, you need to focus on the core challenges of the position. Identify the most significant skills that are required. Then include the courses that relate to these skills.

As an example, let’s contrast two positions.

The first position is for a leadership role, a supervisor or manager, with a manufacturing firm. A candidate pursuing this position should emphasize leadership, communications, strategic planning and organizational skills. A routine safety or hazmat class, that all military personnel complete each year, is irrelevant for a position like this. Training classes like this focus on conferring basic knowledge of safety issues. They won’t set someone apart. It is much better to list and emphasize training in leadership and communications skills.

The other position is a health and safety manager for a chemical firm. In this role, technical experience and skill with federal regulations is very significant. Leadership and communications skills may also be important, but technical ability will usually be the highest priority for a hiring manager. In this case, emphasizing safety and hazmat courses is good idea. Although you want to emphasize safety courses, don’t go overboard. Focus on significant courses, not the routine ones everyone completes. You want to show you are an expert, not just someone that showed up for the annual one hour safety refresher.

The key to selecting the right items to include in your resume is prioritizing what is important to the reader. If a training class isn’t especially impressive, you are better off putting more detail in your work experience section and leaving the training class out.

For civilian positions, your resume should be two pages or less. This makes it essential for you to prioritize the content of your resume.

Transitioning Military Resume Mistake

I did a number of resume assessments on Thursday for transitioning military personnel and ran into the same mistake several times.

The mistake each of the individuals made was to not state clearly what their employment was. This may seem like an odd mistake, but it is actually very common and something I have seen on transitioning military resumes before.

The Mistake

There are several key elements that these individuals left out.

Name of the Employer: Although it is usually easy to figure out who the employer is, it's a good idea to make this absolutely clear. One of the reasons for this is the variety of employment options in the military. There are number of roles held by civilian contractors. Specifying the employer ensures that no misinterpretation develops.

Full Dates of Service: The overall dates of the individual's service were omitted from many of the resumes. References to 10, 20 or 25 years of service were included within the text of the resume, but this information didn't standout. What was not included was an actual range of dates, such at “1990 to Present.” This may seem like nit-picking, but without a clear statement of when the individual joined, the job seeker could create uncertainty in the mind of the hiring manager.

Rank: Many of the resumes omitted the individual's rank. It's important for military personnel to put their career in civilian terms and not use too much military speak. Unfortunately, many people go too far with this and make up terms for what they did that others don't understand. Listing the rank of each position does two important things. It helps individuals with a military background understand the job seeker better and it shows a clear progression over the individual's career.

Presenting a career of consistent promotions is a big selling point. Listing the rank of each position shows the hiring manager when a person was promoted. Even if someone can't differentiate one rank from another, it will be clear that a progression to high level positions occurred.

Why This is Important

I have looked at a lot of resumes from military personnel that make the mistake of not presenting basic information about their career. This makes it difficult to know what position would be a good fit. It also misses an opportunity. Demonstrating a long service record, with consistent pattern of promotions, establishes a track record of success.

Military Transition Tips

This is a video of Mark Henderson discussing his military transition along with some tips based on what he’s learned since then. He offers some great advice. Mark is the President of Palladian International and co-founded Palladian with me in 2005.

Although the video is tailored to transitioning military personnel, the advice is applicable to anyone.

Interview Assessment

In the recording I posted yesterday, you heard me ask a transitioning military office the ice breaker question that kicks off most interviews – "Tell me about yourself."

The answer included the officer’s military career in chronological order and concluded with some information about hobbies.

Overall, this wasn’t a bad answer and is typical of a lot of job seekers. There were several areas where this could be improved.

First, the individual focused on the career stops they made, and not the overall progression. For example, the listing of the locations of their postings didn’t help the answer. This information is on the resume. There’s no need to repeat.

Second, the individual listed very little in the way of accomplishments. When you start an interview, you should discuss some of the high points of your career.

Third, the individual didn’t discuss the reason he transitioned from Infantry to Strategic Plans. This would have a great talking point. A lot of job seekers fail to discuss why they made important career moves. Explaining the motivation behind their career moves gives a great opportunity to highlight skills and abilities. For example, this individual might have said something like this:

"I really enjoyed serving as an infantry officer was able to develop my leadership skills in this role. Despite this, I had a significant desire to utilize my analytical skills in a more strategic role. Moving into Strategic Plans allowed me to focus on developing these skills. In particular, I was successful at… <insert short description of an accomplishment> …This experience helped me become a much more well rounded leader."

My example sheds some light on what motivates and interests the individual, it highlights a couple skills and it provides a specific accomplishment.

Fourth, the discussion of hobbies did nothing for the answer. In a short answer like this, you only have a few minutes to discuss your entire career. You should not run out of professional information to discuss in that time.

Transitioning Military Officers: Interview Example

Recently, I conducted a practice interview a military officer preparing to transition into the civilian workforce.

As with most interviews, the first question I asked was “Tell Me About Yourself.” Many interviews start with this and it’s a question many job seekers find challenging. Listen to this individual’s answer and assess it for the following:

Did the individual answer the question asked?
Was the answer clear and easy to follow?
Was the answer concise?
Was the content appropriate, too detailed or not detailed enough?
Did the answer create a professional image?
What do you think the individual should have done differently?

Listen to the Answer

Tomorrow’s posting will have my assessment of job seeker’s answer.