Where Are All the Jobs for Veterans?
I Was Told That There Would Be High Demand for Veterans, But I’m Not Seeing It.
It’s no secret that veterans have a lot to offer employers. But where are all the jobs for veterans? It seems like every time you turn around, there’s another military-friendly company touting its veteran hiring initiatives. While this is great news, the reality is that finding a job as a veteran can still be tough. So, what’s a vet to do? Surely there’s something that fits your skills and interests. Where are they?
The generic advice that people may give you (that even I once gave people) was that the military looks good on a resume, even the combat arms jobs. Hiring managers see military on your resume and they tend to draw certain conclusions;
· you’re hard working
· drug free
· punctual
· self-starting (whatever that means)
That’s more or less true, in that those are qualities that hiring managers would like the ideal candidate to possess. But how many positions have you seen advertised for ‘punctual?’ What’s the salary range for ‘drug free’?
That Job Fair Resume Won’t Cut It
If you sat down and drafted a resume for your transition class as a check-the-block requirement during your transition, then that’s all you have — a draft. You have a generic and (probably not) representative sample of your technical expertise and professional experience. It’s a highly-condensed curriculum vitae wherein you desperately try to summarize the whole of your military service; your training, your experience, the breadth and depth of your competence. In other words, you have a resume that is only worthy of distribution at a job fair.
I’ll Bet You’re More Marketable Than You Think You Are
Don’t believe me? Okay, cool. Try this little experiment. Go to your job hunting website of choice. It doesn’t matter which one. Find a job announcement that you think you could do. Look at the duties and responsibilities. Every time you see something there and think “I could do that,” write it down. Try to come up with, say, ten things. Once you have that list, check to see if those competencies or skills are on your resume.
Are the things you know you can do listed on your resume? No? They should be. If you were to apply for that job, wouldn’t you want the manager there to know that you have the skills they’re looking for?
If you think it was hard to capture everything that you’re good at on your ACAP resume, I totally get it! This stuff isn’t intuitive. Writing resumes requires different writing rules. Evaluation bullets don’t directly translate to a resume (even if the job you did does translate). Maybe you were only in a couple of years and don’t think you really did much. Maybe you were in a specialty that seems nothing like what exists on the job market (looking at you, combat arms).
The point is, if you’re looking at the job ad and see skills you know you possess, then those skills belong on your resume.
