Turn Your Military Experience into a Civilian Career

How can you make the most of your military experience in a civilian job? There are two key steps. First, explore how your military background may map to specific civilian careers. And second, by translating your skills, knowledge, and training so that civilian employers understand their value. Military jobs have their own language and use job titles that everyone in the ranks understands. But civilians use different job titles, work settings, and terminology to describe jobs and requirements. As a veteran, how can you translate your military experience to civilian jobs and employers? And communicate the valuable technical knowledge, leadership experience, and skills so that they are understood? To connect your military experience to civilian career opportunities, check out CareerOneStop's Veterans Job Matcher. Start by entering your military occupation title or code and select your branch of service. The matcher will identify civilian careers that use similar skills and work experience. Your results will list careers that closely relate to your military specialty or that relate to specific aspects of it. This can be a good starting place to explore civilian career matches that may be a good fit for you now or find options you had never considered and might want to train for. When you select a career title, you'll see a profile with typical job duties, wages, education or training requirements, and employment outlook. Profiles also include a career video and a link to active job postings in your local area. The profiles can also help you translate your experience into civilian language. For careers that are a close match to your experience, find terms in the Activities, Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities sections to help describe your background on your resume, job applications, and in interviews. The Veterans Job Matcher is part of CareerOneStop's Veteran and Military Transition Center with more resources for career exploration, education and training, job search, benefits, and local employment services. Visit CareerOneStop.org and select Veterans Job Matcher to get started.