In the recent
past, M2C published a number of job opportunities on its website for
military-experienced-professionals in various domains such as business
development, legal and admin, operations, and marketing for which hundreds of
resume were received; resumes ranging from two pages to 12 pages, from
stereotyped to professionally written, from general to job specific, and from
military-jargon-laden to corporate-heavy-terms. The very basic idea of writing
a resume is to effectively leverage your military skills, resulting in an
interview call. However, there were certain pit-falls observed in some military
resumes that prevented the candidate from being shortlisted despite having the
required soft skills and work-content skills. The Team M2C will try to bring
clarity on this subject through this five series article covering the common mistakes in military resumes , how
to avoid these mistakes and ,in the last, how to write job compelling resumes.
Let’s first have a look at some of the most common resume mistakes.
Military Jargon- Recruiters Don’t Understand
You were ADC to
GOC-in-C or a Col GS, Great! How does that sound to your civilian friends? Too
much of military jargon confuses the HR recruiters to the extent that not only they don’t understand what all skills you posses or what
all role you played in military but also they find it difficult to identify where you would best fit with the
company. It’s important to describe the skills,
gained during your active duty, in a transferable manner thereby showing that
these skills are equally relevant in corporate.
This would be possible if you translate the military training,
professional experience, and technical courses into civilian terminology. If needed, a line can be added about some of
the topics studied during military courses which may be common to the job
applied for.
Also, It’s
important to add only those experiences, medals or awards that are relevant to
the job applied for. Mentioning that you
were the champion of divisional level
shooting competition may make impact if
you’re applying for security job opening but would have no value for a HR job
opportunity rather it would be better to mention how you earned those
awards and what is it’s applicability
for the position you've applied for. The
translation of your military experience into corporate terminology is one of
the most challenging task you’ll face, however it is also the most essential
task. To see one of the
example of the military to corporate
translation, click here
One Size Fits All - No, Recruiters Need Specifics
Another most
common mistake in military resumes is that they are written tangent to the way
what recruiters want. Many prepare a
general resume that reflects a bit of everything, including HR, security,
Admin, operations, finances and many more, and shoot that resume for every job
opening that they come across. While on the other side, if a job opening is for
HR, the recruiter is only looking for specific work-content skills relevant to
HR domain. In India’s competitive environment, these recruiter
get hundreds of resume for a particular job opening. They have a
limited time to go through each resume and when they read vague objectives such
as “A sincere and hardworking professional seeking an opportunity that will utilize my skills” or when they read skills that aren't related
to that specific domain, probably they don’t even think twice to discard such resumes. This one
size-fits-all approach doesn't go well in job search and therefore it’s
pertinent to prepare a separate resume for HR, a separate one for Admin and
similarly for other domains; each one highlighting the specific skills set and
specific experience pertaining to that particular domain. You have to tweak your resume according to each job opening, changing the content in such a way that it emphasize the skills recruiters are looking for. A word of caution here is that don't apply for jobs that you don't qualify for. It's important to target your resume to individual jobs and domains but it is equally important that all the information mentioned is factual and not faked just to meet the job description.
A Long Resume-But Recruiters Have No Time
Another sore point, We did receive many resumes that were
almost 10 plus pages. There is no denying the fact that military professionals,
by virtue of their numerous postings in different positions, gain enormous real
life leadership , problem-solving, team
building, and crisis management experience and therefore there is always a
temptation to put across every bit of the vast experience, thinking that it may
add value to the resume and impress the recruiter. In today’s fast-paced
environment, we all are looking ways to do maximum work in minimum time but at
the same time we are compelling a recruiter to read our research-paper size
resume and expecting even positive
result. Are we correct in that? . Mentioning that you enjoy playing golf or you
like going for long drives ( Trust, we did receive such ones also ) will not
have any positive impact on the HR recruiter.
Of-course we never got any resume writing training or assistance in military during our retirement phase but we can seek professional help or even we
can take help from our civilian friends especially those who are working in the
similar positions that you are seeking .
Military professionals have rare real life experiences and
qualities that have enormous business potential , however it is observed that
much is lost in translation. In our next article of this series, we will highlight more such avoidable mistakes so that the resume doesn't place our
veterans at a disadvantage against civilian counterparts. To read the next article on military resume, click here For more info, clickhere
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