Introduction
It took me a while to get an interview after separating from the Army. After a month traveling through Europe, I got down to asking everyone I knew out for coffee and submitting resumes to those job sites that are mostly a waste of everyone’s time. I reached out to every company that claimed to hire veterans and stayed up late combing LinkedIn for anyone who could make an introduction. I annoyed a lot of people and didn’t hear much of anything except thank you for your service for months.
Savings Started to Run Out Like My Patience Level
As savings dwindled, I insisted on holding out for something I saw a future in. I turned down offers to be a production assistant, customer service rep at a tech company with an office in the Flatiron, and a barback at a fine dining steakhouse where my friend worked the theatre crowd. I was lucky and should have taken anything I could get, but was so afraid of getting stuck in a dead-end job that I couldn’t let myself take the first step toward figuring out what I might actually want to do.
The Worst Job Suggestions
Even before I folded my last uniform into a box and moved to New York, the Colonel whose signature I needed for my separation papers told me I’d make good money as a hazardous materials inspector thanks to a certification the unit made me get.
Other than my high school guidance counselor’s career interest test suggesting I’d make a good fish hatchery manager, I couldn’t think of anything further from who I was.
One Naval Academy grad from a Bay Area company everyone loved for a while told me, “no one will hire you until you go to business school. I won’t even think about hiring you because you don’t have anything I need yet.”
My Experience With Companies Who “Claim to Hire Vets”
It hurt, but he did me the biggest favor anyone could have. Plenty of companies claim to hire veterans, but for what kind of jobs?
I felt misled by all the public relations campaigns hiring engineers and people with MBAs who also happened to be veterans. The obsession with skills matching doesn’t help unless you want to do exactly what you did while wearing a uniform, which for many doesn’t exist. There is no equivalent to occupations like tank gunner, artillery crew member, or infantry squad leader.
Other things don’t matter to hiring managers scanning profiles and resumes for keywords though. When I did start getting interviews from desperate startups, people seemed scared by my military experience rather than impressed by it. One interviewer asked me if I’d killed anyone before making me a verbal offer in a coffee shop in Brooklyn. I kept looking.
Transitioning My Skills to “Civilianese”
I started rewording everything on my resume to sound more corporate, less interesting than it actually was.
Leading patrols in Afghanistan got reduced to collaborative leadership.
Negotiating flights home for over 500 soldiers and their equipment became a project management bullet.
Listening to village elders who fought the Soviets express the fears and needs of their community in town hall style meetings turned into workshop facilitation.
My resume looked like everyone else’s who’d never qualified a crew for tank gunnery or called an airstrike, except I hadn’t been interning and bouncing between entry level positions throughout my twenties. I’d been busy doing other things.
Conclusion
After a few years of working with folks who were as talented as they were patient with teaching me what I needed to know, I’ve finally got enough on my resume to omit my military experience completely. Since deleting the military from my resume, I’ve gotten more interviews and offers than ever.
I hate to think about what that means.
During my most recent interview at a technology company everyone hates but won’t delete from their phones, a recruiter extended a generous formal offer and asked, “You were in the military?”
What was your experience like when applying for jobs? What did you find successful or what hurt your interview? Let us know in the comments below.
I 100% DISAGREE. As a hiring manager, we look for relevant experience. You started getting more offers because you had RELEVANT EXPERIENCE. Period. Not because you took the military off your resume. Military life and civilian life are very different.
Lol. Have you ever served ? You don’t seem to have ANY idea of what your talking about. Ask a veteran. Go to the source and then come back and say this again. I bet you don’t have the guts. ..
Oh yes this is something us Veterans go through. Half the people that interview you think you are crazy because of deployments or even worst PTSD. I can’t even do an angry face without people pointing the PTSD finger. It’s very REAL!
That sort of makes his point – or at least part of it. “We hire vets” then just means “We hire people with relevant experience – and if you happen to be a vet, good for you. Oh, and we’ll use you for our CSR preening about ‘proudly hiring veterans.’ ”
I don’t blame companies for hiring experience. But don’t virtue signal about support for vets if all you’ve actually done is not make it a disqualification (which, OBTW, and sadly, some companies these day do).
If you actually want to help vets, recognize the incredible “relevant experience in leadership, judgment, crisis management, etc that their service brings, and then put your money where your CSR mouth is by providing a little training for the specifics you want them to have.
You’re 100% the problem. Time for
retraining.
This is quite similar, if not identical, to my own experience after getting out of a long law enforcement career.
I have had people ask me, “Do you even think you would be able to let go of your law enforcement past?”. It was blatant discrimination. No one would have openly ever said to a military veteran, “Do you even think you would be able to let go of your military past?” because that would be illegal according to personnel laws. But no one cares about violating that same principal; directed toward those who risked their lives here in the Homeland, because law enforcement officers are not specifically protected from discrimination.
After being turned down by multiple companies obviously afraid of my law enforcement experience, I was able to land a couple of jobs in a row where they actually valued my experience. I was finally working my way toward something positive on the “civilian side”.
Now, I am able to either “dumb down” my law enforcement experience and make it sound more “civilian-y”, or omit it completely, which is quite sad and ridiculous to have to do, considering what I sacrificed for the public.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Thank you for that sacrifice.
The real problem is your perception that law enforcement isn’t “civilian” enough. The fact that policing has been militarized since the Nixon administration is counter productive to our American Public Safety. Everyone knows that Police Officers often use their “authority” to treat the citizens harshly and are rarely held accountable, up to and including murder. Citizens are aware that Combat Zone intimidation is not the same as fostering compliance.
“Civilian” law in the United States is ruled by Constitutional rights. I would rather see an American embracing those rights burn the flag than someone wrapped in the flag burning our Constitutional rights. The overwhelming majority of Americans, who of course are not criminals, agree with me. I am old enough to remember local police not using military tactics to deal with jaywalkers, etc. They were friends and good neighbors back then.
Yes! Luck of the draw dumped me into the medical profession right out of basic training. I’ve been stuck in that field ever since (40years later) because that’s what I was qualified for. If the field you are in in the military isn’t what you want make sure you get a degree while in so when you get out you have more options.
Dropping your military experience from your resume didn’t garner you interviews and offers… “a few years experience on your resume working with folks that were talented and patient…” did. Implying the military experience held you back seems misplaced. (Speaking as a veteran that does hire veterans)
I have a go-to line, and every single time i have used it, I have been hired. It isnt just a line I use to get hired though, it’s a mantra I live by when at work. “Being a U.S. Marine, I will do what I’m told, when I’m told, and exactly how I’m told. I will NEVER argue with my boss or those I work with.”
That isn’t just lip-service, I walk the walk. It has never let me down.