For those who have been discharged from the military, finding a job can often be difficult. The problem isn’t that these individuals lack skills, training, or self discipline. For the most part, veterans have these traits is spades. The issues comes when an individual only has military experience on their resume and does not know how to word their skills in a way that translate to civilian employers.

A large portion of military job titles lack a private sector counter part in name, but not in function. When looking for a veteran job one has to analyze the different responsibilities they had while in the military to determine the best way to explain these qualifications to civilian employers. Many ex-service members simply don’t realize the skills that the military has given them due to the fact that a lot of these qualifications are secondary or are more subtle in their daily work. For example, many veterans do not think about their past experience in personnel management, inventory and supply supervision, and project management. These are all skills that are deeply desire by company human resource departments.

Those who are having a problem with deciding how to their talents are relevant to private sector employment should contact their local VA, as the VA has staff members who specialize in this. Another option is using Military.com’s skill translator, which can be done from the privacy of their own home.

Another problem many past military members have, when looking for a job as a veteran, is the fact that they are used to being part of the group. This focus on the larger picture leaves some unable to focus on their own strong points and skills when discussing their time in service.

Some who have trouble locating veteran jobs run into problems due to their lack of knowledge of how the hiring process works. In some cases, past service members have a tendency to be passive in their job search. For example, some individuals tend to forget to make follow up calls to companies they are interested in working for, which can sometimes be necessary to make employers take notice.

For those who are in the process of searching for a veteran job it is always a good idea to attend job fairs held for those with prior military experience. Information and e-mail updates on these career related events can be signed up for at Military.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.