![]() No one would have openly ever said to a military veteran, “Do you even think you would be able to let go of your military past?” because that would be illegal according to personnel laws. I have had people ask me, “Do you even think you would be able to let go of your law enforcement past?”. This is quite similar, if not identical, to my own experience after getting out of a long law enforcement career. What was your experience like when applying for jobs? What did you find successful or what hurt your interview? Let us know in the comments below. Since deleting the military from my resume, I’ve gotten more interviews and offers than ever.ĭuring my most recent interview at a technology company everyone hates but won’t delete from their phones, a recruiter extended a generous formal offer and asked, “You were in the military?” ConclusionĪfter a few years of working with folks who were as talented as they were patient with teaching me what I needed to know, I’ve finally got enough on my resume to omit my military experience completely. My resume looked like everyone else’s who’d never qualified a crew for tank gunnery or called an airstrike, except I hadn’t been interning and bouncing between entry level positions throughout my twenties. Listening to village elders who fought the Soviets express the fears and needs of their community in town hall style meetings turned into workshop facilitation. Negotiating flights home for over 500 soldiers and their equipment became a project management bullet. Leading patrols in Afghanistan got reduced to collaborative leadership. I started rewording everything on my resume to sound more corporate, less interesting than it actually was. One interviewer asked me if I’d killed anyone before making me a verbal offer in a coffee shop in Brooklyn. When I did start getting interviews from desperate startups, people seemed scared by my military experience rather than impressed by it. Other things don’t matter to hiring managers scanning profiles and resumes for keywords though. There is no equivalent to occupations like tank gunner, artillery crew member, or infantry squad leader. The obsession with skills matching doesn’t help unless you want to do exactly what you did while wearing a uniform, which for many doesn’t exist. I felt misled by all the public relations campaigns hiring engineers and people with MBAs who also happened to be veterans. Plenty of companies claim to hire veterans, but for what kind of jobs? It hurt, but he did me the biggest favor anyone could have. I won’t even think about hiring you because you don’t have anything I need yet.” My Experience With Companies Who “Claim to Hire Vets” One Naval Academy grad from a Bay Area company everyone loved for a while told me, “no one will hire you until you go to business school. Other than my high school guidance counselor’s career interest test suggesting I’d make a good fish hatchery manager, I couldn’t think of anything further from who I was. The Worst Job SuggestionsĮven before I folded my last uniform into a box and moved to New York, the Colonel whose signature I needed for my separation papers told me I’d make good money as a hazardous materials inspector thanks to a certification the unit made me get. I was lucky and should have taken anything I could get, but was so afraid of getting stuck in a dead-end job that I couldn’t let myself take the first step toward figuring out what I might actually want to do. I turned down offers to be a production assistant, customer service rep at a tech company with an office in the Flatiron, and a barback at a fine dining steakhouse where my friend worked the theatre crowd. Savings Started to Run Out Like My Patience LevelĪs savings dwindled, I insisted on holding out for something I saw a future in. I annoyed a lot of people and didn’t hear much of anything except thank you for your service for months. I reached out to every company that claimed to hire veterans and stayed up late combing LinkedIn for anyone who could make an introduction. After a month traveling through Europe, I got down to asking everyone I knew out for coffee and submitting resumes to those job sites that are mostly a waste of everyone’s time. ![]() It took me a while to get an interview after separating from the Army.
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