Crafting a resume can be a daunting task in itself, but creating one when you have to translate your military skills into their civilian equivalent can be even more difficult. When you are a spouse trying to put everything together for the (ex) service member it becomes complex, especially when you know very little about their day to day responsibilities, as in my case. This is by no means all-inclusive and does not cover every variable associated with each branch of service. I am simply relaying what has worked for us, with the examples presented geared toward the US Navy. Hopefully this series will give you some tips to help in creating an attractive resume and also some that are military specific, including job boards and resources for transitioning military.

It’s often a bit mind numbing when you first sit down to create your resume. You know what you want to end up with but it can be difficult to break things down into individual steps, especially when the military has been your career. There aren’t many people who truly retire when they end their military career. It is much more common to gain civilian employment past your 20 years.

The first step you will want to take is to gather all of the paperwork related to the service member’s time in. This includes evals, course outlines, orders, awards, housing assignments and leases, anything and everything. Often, commendations and letters of appreciation will detail why they were given. Evaluations will detail the service member’s position at their command for that time period, areas of responsibility, the supervisor’s name, any accomplishments and areas they excelled in, such as a 4.0 for work ethic, etc. Course outlines and certificates of completion will detail their training areas, dates and locations. Orders will show where you were and, more importantly, when. Get every piece of information you can because each one is likely to give you something you can use, even if it’s just the name of a supervisor or coworker you forgot about and can use as a reference. You have probably received some decent information from the TAP class, as well.

If you haven’t been accumulating these things during your active duty period, you can usually request copies from your service record.