Curriculum Vitae advice for federal workers in transition to the private sector

This test also told is based on a conversation with Marisol Maloney, a writer of Curriculum Vitae living in San Diego. Business Insider has verified his identity. This story has been changed for length and clarity.

I am a writer and a summary job research coach for the military transition, veterans and federal workers who seek to move on to the world of the business.

Recently, I had many federal employees to contact me to ask for help with their curriculum vitae of companies because many of them have been released. About a month ago, I saw an increase of around 30%.

I retired from the navy as an intelligence officer. When I left the army, I started working as a technical recruiter for defense contracts.

During my first month, I saw a lot of poorly written curriculum vitae. SO I started to rewrite curriculum vitae for candidates with their permission. Many had the skills necessary to make the jobs for which I recruited, but the job managers rejected them. I then made curriculum vitae for the military community for a year before deciding to start my business.

My company is called Secret Squirrel Consulting because many Intel analysts are called secret squirrels because we manage top secret information. When I was in the army, I had to work with top secret information, so for me, it is the second nature to go from the top secret to the ordinary language.

These are four tips that I recommend to those who seek to get out of the federal workforce.

1. Discover your skills

Former federal workers can go anywhere with their skills. They could go to non -profit organizations, the private sector or contracts.

I tell people to analyze their skills first and understand what skills they have that they want to continue using.

People are in love with these headlines, but I tell them, maybe you can get a role as an individual contributor or as a program analyst while doing six figures. Do not only focus on roles. Focus on the description of the position and skills.

If you have these skills, be sure to highlight them on your curriculum vitae and you will have a better chance of bringing recruiters to call you than if you focus only on a random role.

2. Cut it

No one has time to read a curriculum vitae of 15, 20 or 30 pages.

Lots of federal curriculum vitae are very long because when you go to Usajobs.gov, you have to fill everything you have done. Curriculum vitae of companies should be more concise. They are just a quick snapshot of your geniality to make recruiters or recruitment officials want to call you for an interview.

Get rid of the objective declaration, the preference of preference of the veteran and the citizenship status – the request will ask for this. Get rid of your GS or GG level, your salary or your hours worked. Get rid of the name and information of your supervisor. If a business wants to speak to your references in the business world, it will ask you.

Remove the long list of college courses and graduation dates. Everything you need is your baccalaureate or listed control. If you only take a few lessons, you can list them. Add only 10 years of experience to work, unless the description specifically requires more than 10 years.

Instead of an objective declaration, you want a solid summary section. Then list your main technical skills and skills if you have them. Then, you want to list your studies, as well as all the certifications you may have and training.

You can add a volunteer section if it is relevant for what you want to do, but in itself, it is a waste of space. The same goes for the awards. In the federal workforce, we have so many medals. People do not understand what these medals simply mean by listing them. If you explain the use of measures and something to quantify how you have obtained this price, civilians will understand this better.

Write an accompaniment letter if necessary. If you make a career transition, this is when the cover letter is useful. The cover letter is simply intended to explain all the differences in your curriculum vitae or to reintroduce certain ideas. It is not to regurgitate what is already in your curriculum vitae.

3. Use the business language

Each person I work with has the skills. The problem is that they do not know that they have these skills or they do not know how to explain it in the corporate language.

Often they list their responsibilities. “I was responsible for the management of 10 people.” You must change this language to “I directed and supervised 10 people”, in project management or in any field that it was.

People do not know how to sell themselves, especially in the army, because we are so used to management positions and to say what our team has done. We have trained our team. We have shown them how to do things, but sometimes we don’t know how to credit the things we have done.

Make sure to use action verbs and detail your achievements.

4. Include measures

In the federal government and in the army, you generally do not have measures because everything is funded by the government. But in the business world, companies want to know how much money you can earn and how much money you can save them.

Thinking in these terms can be difficult, but many people on federal and military workforce work with budgets, especially those who have higher positions or those working in logistics. They order parts for tactical vehicles or aviation or they manage budgets. They just don’t know how to articulate this.

So that’s what I get back. When they say, I managed equipment to a million dollars, I said to myself: “Did you manage it? What did you do any other? Did you order parts?”