To put military experience on a civilian resume, describe the work you did in the words of the job you want, then show how much you were responsible for. A screener who hasn’t served won’t know what an 88M or an AO does, but they know what “transportation supervisor” means and what “managed a fleet of 20 vehicles” is worth.
Most of the work is translation. Your duties, your scope and your results all exist already in your records; the resume puts them in civilian terms. The same method works for an office job, a trade, or the remote jobs that pay for military knowledge, such as AI training projects in your specialty.
Your MOS, rating or AFSC has a civilian job title
Start by finding the civilian title that matches your military occupation code. The Department of Labor runs two free tools for this. My Next Move for Veterans takes your MOS, rating or AFSC and shows matching civilian careers. The military crosswalk search on O*NET OnLine does the same with more detail: each matching job lists its tasks, tools and skills.
Read the task lists closely. They give you the vocabulary a screener searches for, and many screeners don’t read a resume at all until software has matched its words to the job post. If your code was 92Y, the crosswalk points you to inventory and supply roles, and the task list hands you phrases such as “maintain inventory records” and “reconcile discrepancies”.
Two records help you fill in what you did:
- The Joint Services Transcript lists your training for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, and the Community College of the Air Force transcript covers the Air Force and Space Force.
- Your evaluations, such as NCOERs, OERs, EPRs, FITREPs and evals, hold the specific numbers you’ll want: people supervised, equipment value, readiness rates, and the results your rater wrote down.
Pick one civilian title per job and use it as the heading, with the military title in a short line under it. “Logistics Supervisor” on top, “Unit Supply Specialist (92Y), U.S. Army” below it.
Rewrite each duty as a civilian would say it
Military writing packs a lot into acronyms and unit names. A civilian bullet spells the work out: what you did, for how many people or how much equipment, and what changed because of it.
| Military phrasing | Civilian phrasing |
|---|---|
| Served as squad leader for 2nd Platoon | Supervised and trained a team of nine, responsible for their schedules, performance reviews and safety |
| NCOIC of the battalion motor pool | Managed maintenance for 45 vehicles and generators, and a team of 14 mechanics |
| Conducted ISR analysis in support of OEF | Analyzed imagery and reports to produce daily threat assessments for senior decision makers |
| Maintained 100% accountability of $4M in TPE | Tracked and audited $4 million in equipment with no losses across three inspections |
| Qualified as CDO and EOOW | Led the overnight operations watch, responsible for the ship’s engineering plant and a crew of 20 |
| Completed WLC and ALC | Completed leadership courses in team management, training and planning |
The right column uses three habits. Lead each bullet with a verb that a civilian uses for the same work: supervised, analyzed, managed, trained, audited. Spell out each acronym or replace it, since “battalion” and “platoon” mean little but “team of 14” means a lot. And keep the numbers you have, because a number survives translation better than any title.
Show scope instead of rank
A civilian employer weighs how much you were responsible for, and rank doesn’t tell them. A sergeant and a lieutenant can both have led 30 people. Write the scope into the bullets instead:
- how many people you led, trained or evaluated,
- the value of the equipment, aircraft or systems you were responsible for,
- the budget you planned, spent or tracked,
- how many missions, flights, shipments or tickets you handled,
- the area, schedule or operation you were in charge of.
Put your rank in one place, the line under the job title, and let the bullets do the rest. An E-6 who writes “managed training and readiness for 32 people and $12 million in equipment” reads as a manager, which is what a screener needs to see.
If you can’t find a figure, estimate it from your records and keep it conservative. Put only numbers on the resume that you can explain in an interview.
Turn each award into the result it was given for
A screener can’t tell an Army Achievement Medal from a Navy Commendation Medal, but they understand what you did to earn it. Go back to the citation or the write-up and pull out the result.
“Awarded the Army Commendation Medal” becomes “Redesigned the unit’s supply ordering process, cutting delivery delays from weeks to days, recognized with a commendation medal”. The result goes first, the award last, in a few words.
Service and campaign medals that everyone in your unit received can go. Keep the ones tied to something you did.
List a security clearance by its level and status
A clearance is worth a line of its own, and that line holds three things: the level, whether it is active, and the date. For example: “Security clearance: Top Secret/SCI, active, last investigation 2024”. If it is no longer active, write “inactive” and the date you left the job that held it.
What you learned under that clearance stays off the resume. That includes program names, locations of classified work, specific targets and anything else your nondisclosure agreements cover. Describe classified work by its kind and leave out its content: “produced intelligence assessments for a joint task force” is enough. If you can’t describe a job without classified details, describe the parts that were unclassified, such as the team you led and the training you ran.
Most private employers outside defense and government don’t need a clearance. For them, one line near the bottom is enough. For remote intelligence analyst jobs and defense contractors, it belongs near the top.
Leave out the jargon, the full course list and anything classified
A military career produces a long list of courses, duties and awards. A civilian resume keeps only what the job you want would use. Cut these:
- Courses that taught military-only skills, unless the job post asks for that skill.
- Additional duties that took an hour a month, such as unit voting officer, unless they match the job.
- Unit names and operation names, which mean little to a screener and can say more than you should.
- Weapons qualifications, physical fitness scores and marksmanship badges, unless you are applying for security or law enforcement work.
- Your Social Security number, your DD-214 and photos.
Keep training that maps to a civilian skill or certification: leadership courses, technical schools, instructor qualifications, safety programs.
Use a simple format, one or two pages long
For private employers, use a reverse-chronological resume of one or two pages: your most recent job first, each job with its civilian title, its dates and three to six bullets. One page suits under ten years of experience, two pages a longer career. Put a short summary line at the top that names the civilian role you want and the field you know, such as “Aircraft maintenance supervisor with 12 years on rotary-wing aircraft and an FAA A&P certificate”.
Plain formatting reads best, both for people and for the software many employers use to sort applications. Use one column, standard headings such as Experience, Education and Certifications, and a common font. Skip tables, text boxes and graphics.
Federal jobs on USAJOBS use their own resume rules. Since September 27, 2025, a federal resume can be two pages at most, and USAJOBS refuses a longer one at upload. Inside those two pages it asks for details a private resume leaves out, such as the month and year each job started and ended, and experience written to match the qualifications in the job announcement. Read the USAJOBS resume guidance before you adapt a private resume for a federal job.
Put your certifications where a screener looks first
Certifications are the fastest proof a screener has, because they mean the same thing in and out of uniform. List each current certification in its own section, near the top if the job post names it. Security+, CISSP, an FAA A&P certificate, a CDL, a PMP or a journeyman license all carry over without translation.
If your military training qualifies you for a civilian certificate you don’t hold yet, it may be worth getting before you apply. The Department of Defense’s COOL websites, one per branch, list which certifications match each occupation, and some programs pay for the exam while you serve. Military pilots can turn their experience into an FAA commercial certificate under 14 CFR 61.73, and military mechanics can qualify for the A&P exams through documented experience.
Make your LinkedIn profile match the resume
Recruiters often check LinkedIn before they read a resume closely, so the two should tell the same story. Use the same civilian titles, the same dates and the same numbers. Put the civilian role you want in the headline, such as “Logistics manager, former Army supply sergeant”, rather than only your last military title.
Add your certifications in the Licenses and Certifications section and your clearance level, if you have one, in the About section. Leave out anything you would cut from the resume.
Check the resume against one job post before you send it
Before you apply, put your resume next to the job post and read both. Each requirement the post names should appear somewhere on the resume in the post’s own words, if you have it. If the post asks for “inventory management” and your resume says “property accountability”, change it.
This matters most for specialist work. The military subject matter expert jobs, cybersecurity, technician, logistics and aviation projects each name the years and the kind of experience they want, and a resume that states them plainly gets through the first screen. For security work in particular, the guide to AI training jobs for cybersecurity experts covers the certifications and tests those projects use.
