James Spencer ⋅ Dowell, IL Spencer and Partners LLC ⋅ 23 years experience

Edward,
You are getting some great advice. I can only add a couple of thoughts. First, are you keeping track of the questions you are ask during phone interviews? The best way to become comfortable with phone interviews or online interviewing is to keep track of the questions you are ask, generate answers that are appropriate and find a friend who will practice with you. If you can find someone who is a consultant to practice with that would be outstanding. If you go to some local consulting firms and explain why you are there you will be surprised how many will be willing to help.

I spent years in the carer transition field and the first thing we taught clients was target careers by industry. You select the industries based on the type of companies that would use the skills you developed in previous military jobs. Be sure the skills are presented in you resume in language used in those industries. Each industry has words unique to that industry which are defined differently in other industries. An example of this is the word trailer. To a person in the transport industry it is the trailer that carries the cargo. In the vacation business it means an object people use for housing when on vacation.

Good luck, I am sure you will do well.

Jim Spencer

Jim Jones ⋅ Getzville, NY Fidelis Care ⋅ 35 years experience

Good Morning. Thank you for your service. You have received much solid advice. As one responder to your question put it, "how do your past experiences relate/fit the job." While there is some validity to you can teach experience, but you can't teach talent. When a business has a problem they want to engage someone who has demonstrated experience in not only making a solid recommendation, but also executing the solution. The employers want to know what successes and failures you have had, and how it relates to them. In the end the value proposition is "What can you do for me" and can you prove it? You should consider working for a consulting firm as a researcher or project team member to build experience and credibility so that your talent will shine through. You may also want to consider working for a company that is going through either growth or change. This may allow you to use your skills and develop new skills and talents in creative problem solving.

June Webb ⋅ Chevy Chase, MD JWebb Inspire ⋅ 17 years experience

Hi Edward,

I understand that In the world of technology and virtual platforms, it can be difficult to get the "personal connection" sitting down, make notes and ask direct questions. Do some research of the area that you want to consult in and the "audience" that you want to sell your skills to. Write your profile and skills the way you want your audience to "hear" you. Do it as thought you are already in the consulting field that you want and this will develop confidence. This type marketing will get your foot in the door to sell (sit down and meet one on one). Think of the "cover letter". You do not need to "explain" your career transition, you only need to highlight, market and sell your skills according the "audience that you want as clients.

Good luck in your endeavor.
JWEBB
www.jwebbliving.com

Henry ("Dr. Hank") Stevens ⋅ Fort Lauderdale, FL Human Resources Quality Assurance, LLC (Now Retired) ⋅ 50 years experience

I like most of the previous answers; but, I have a slightly different perspective. I believe that "talent trumps experience every time." You can always learn the experience; you cannot learn talent.

The take-a-way here is to focus on your talents and how they are applicable to the prospective job at hand. For example, I believe that the ability to sell is a talent. Sure, you can learn the details about how to, "close a sale," for but one example. But, if you are not comfortable in the skin of a closer, it ain't a-gonna happen smoothly. The very best salespeople are competitive - they keep scores. A talented and competitive salesperson can sell anything. What is being sold is just incidental to the talent.

So, what ARE your talents and how do they apply to the available position? This (free) assessment should help. Private message me if you need help with interpretation.

Here is the link to Carl Jung's assessment (MBTI):

http://www.humanmetrics.com/hr/jtypesresult.aspx

Regards, Hank

Sara Bagby ⋅ New York, NY Mastercard ⋅ 5 years experience

Edward -

Thank you for your service! As a consultant, there are a few fundamental components that we look for to hire good consultants outside of technical skills (of course, if you're going into a specific field e.g. supply chain consulting you may need specific skills / experience). In general, we look for:

- Strong communicators: focus on the story of developing skills and expertise and how it's shaped your current motivation, not the resume checklist. A firm can teach you technical skills and assign you to projects, but it's much harder to teach social skills and professional communication (aka managing clients and teams).

- Problem solvers: consultants are there to solve a problem that a client didn't have the resources, expertise, or manpower to solve themselves. How have you solved problems, been leader of solutions and teams, and made solutions operational. Anyone can go into a client and tell them what the problem seems to be, but a successful one can tell them how bad it is, what it means in the bigger picture, and how to fix it.

- Flexibility: pitched well and framed correctly, varied experience is actually a huge benefit in consulting. If you can explain how your skills translated between previous roles, you can explain how they'll translate between different client contexts - but the important part is developing, practicing, and delivering that story well. Every project is different, so consultants have to keep moving and learning - which you've done through different career paths!

I hope that's helpful, and let me know if I can expand -

Sara

Diana C. Navratil ⋅ La Quinta, CA Freedom 4 YOU Life Coaching ⋅ 10 years experience

Hello Edward,
The truth... and how your past experiences makes you qualified for the job!!!

Diana, CPC

Ranelle Randles ⋅ Boulder, CO BP ⋅ 30 years experience

Hi, I'm happy to have a call with you and talk through your issue.
Please private message me if you would like to connect.
Ranelle Randles

Jerry Welsh ⋅ Middleville, MI Master Military Transition Advisor/HPS GPO ⋅ 30 years experience

Edward, I have had some good feed back on this article for a LinkedIn profile. Either as and individual or a company you need to offer value. Keep this in mind when compiling your civilian and military career. Be sure to nail the TAG line, right after your name to catch the search engines, use the language of the industry you want to attract and what you want to attract them for. Good luck, thank for your service and sacrifices. God Bless. When More is Not Right: Tips for Veterans’ Developing LinkedIn Profiles During Transition
by Jerry Welsh
Having spent the last four years working with transitioning military, in workshops or one-on-one, my number one observation is that they have a propensity to provide too much information on their LinkedIn profiles. After reviewing more than 1,000 profiles what I see is that the majority contain way too much information for the civilian market place. Especially challenged are those creating brand new profiles, particularly those created by tenured military professionals with ten years or more experience. This speaks to a professional sense of attention to detail in telling what they did, rather than what they consider to be their valued accomplishments. This is a major hurdle many transitioning military professionals need to overcome in order to effectively market themselves to future employers and recruiters.
In looking through new profiles, it would seem that many service members approaching their tenth year of service get a ‘memo’ of the need to document an entire military career on their LinkedIn profile. It’s free! Why not show everyone who views the profile everything you did over a successful career? All of your awards, all the exciting places you went – civilians ask you about it all the time. The biggest issue, however, is 98.5% of Americans never served in the military, much less understand the terminology (i.e., superintendent of wing operations or command sergeant major of the XYZ logistics group). Excessive and detailed information about your military career is then lost to non-military civilians as just so much unintelligible nonsense. Worse, the search engines utilized by employers and corporate recruiters looking for talent are unlikely to touch these prized accomplishments, and the transitioning military professional goes undiscovered.
After previewing a wide variety of ‘DO and DON’T’ articles discussing LinkedIn profiles, the following points consistently show up in the DO list. Thanks to authors John Pullen and Don Goodman for these positive things that recruiters look for in a LinkedIn profile:
• Profile Picture. Believe it or not, a picture is still worth a thousand words… and smile. A good picture – emphasize ‘good’ here – not a selfie or a wedding photo being the last time you wore a jacket and tie (i.e., formal wear typically not interview applicable) and you tell anyone looking at your profile that you present a professional appearance. Consider a clean or neutral back ground, wear a fitting suit jacket, shirt and tie, or a nice blouse or shirt. Hopefully, you get the ‘picture’.
• Tag Line (Headline). The line directly following your name – the ‘tag line’ – is your chance to make an opening statement regarding your value and the career you for which you’re searching. Your tag line needs to say more than your job title, and most recruiters indicate it was the headline or tag line that was their deciding-point on whether or not to view the rest of the profile. If you list ‘operations manager/project manager/human resources manager’ if you seek a career in HR, rather than simply ‘human resources manager’, the chances of the click to view the rest of is slim (TMI!!)
• Summary. Summaries need to be succinct, not a detailed description of your past twenty years and should not include “20+ year experienced retired military XYZ manager”. First, ‘20+ years’ experience and ‘retired’ together potentially over-qualify you. Second, the true civilian may look at ‘retired’ and categorize you a government pensioner seeking a cushy position that requires little or no decision-making, initiative, or risk. Know your market; if the experience range for your desired career runs on average between five and eight years, say you have “8+ years experience”. Your ‘20+ years experience’ in the military more than fulfilled your military obligations, but you’re transitioning the ‘8+ years’ of excellent experience into the civilian career field.
• Connections. To whom you’re connected is of particular interest to recruiters looking to see if you have relevant connections with other individuals in the industry. Employers want to know you network with peers and industry leaders. These connections show an interest in learning more about the career and demonstrate an understanding of ‘networking’ to gain information about the career field as a whole.
• Position Descriptions. Keep them short and to the point. Focus on those searchable skills that translate into value-added to an organization. In one case, I reviewed a profile of a twenty-year military HR professional with a masters in HR list as one of their qualification “9mm pistol” in addition to a plethora of other military-related training. This demonstrates a dramatic use of non-applicable information that every reader understands. Where 9mm pistol qualification is obviously very important to military and law-enforcement professionals, that information may cause emotional reactions in others – not to mention it is utterly not applicable to most HR positions. Bottom line: If the information doesn’t apply to the field or position you seek, don’t list it. If you choose to, it will be noticed – just not in a good way.
• Accomplishments… with value. Too many people draft job function(s) descriptions and fail to speak about their value and what they accomplished performing those functions. Accomplishments are ideally qualified with numbers and/or results that add value to the work you did. The flip side of that coin, however, is you do not want to release proprietary information, so be careful in drafting them.
• Recommendations. Recommendations from supervisors or individuals in the career field you seek speak volumes of your accomplishments. Unlike references not in the resume, recommendations in LinkedIn profiles are looked at by employers and recruiters. A word of caution: Ensure the recommendation is applicable to your career; commentary on volunteer work might highlight your selflessness, but it isn’t relevant to what the employers and recruiters seek.
That all said, what will harm your profile? Again, thanks to authors J.T. O’Donnell and Kat Moon for these profile killers:
• Bad or unprofessional photo. A picture of you standing in the driveway in a flannel shirt with a beer in your hand isn’t what you want to put up as your profile picture. And while it isn’t unprofessional, consider a photo in something other than a military uniform. You take pride in it, but in all seriousness what’s the likeliness that you’re going to wear it around the office once you’re hired? None.
• Wholesale listing of schools or military training attended. Instead of listing the Urinalysis Prevention Liaison, Cyberspace Assurance courses, or weapons qualifications when what you want is to be considered as a program or project manager or otherwise. Consider putting your accomplishments in those specific areas to speak more succinctly to your acumen. Relevant military schools may fit – if a recruiter accepts them (i.e., Master Resiliency Trainer or Instructor Trainer Course if you seek employment as a corporate trainer.)
• Lame tag line or headline. Decisions, decisions, decisions… again, this is the decision point for many recruiters and you cannot afford being seen as being cute, snarky, or begging for work.
• Overly long job descriptions or summaries that add no value (to the career you want to head). Again, provide value in your accomplishment statements, not simply listing functions or skills used. Use of a skill without documented quantified value is meaningless to employers.
• No recommendations. Where references on a resume are discouraged, recommendations on your LinkedIn profile are a must and should speak to your value in the career you want.
In conclusion, while many soon-to-be transitioning military professionals feel compelled to outline their entire career on a LinkedIn profile, much of it is irrelevant to the field in which they seek employment and will only hinder or hobble their efforts at post-military employment. It’s likely that the LinkedIn profile development is as new to the military professional as military acronyms and jargon are foreign to civilian recruiters. More likely it’s simply an indication of fear that someone may question what they’ve done for the past ten or more years. After four years of reading resumes and listening to their stories as they explain their accomplishments using the STAR format (situation, task, action, result), I can confidently assure hiring managers that a typical military career of even just ten years offers a potential employer with more variety and adaptability, a quicker uptake, and far more mission focused potential employee than many comparable ten-year employee produced by a typically-run corporation.
Military professionals need to learn how to present their value. Here’s a quick hint: a tremendously detailed and accountable performance review and reward system documented your value throughout your career. Military performance evaluations and awards all contain quantifiable results and outcomes that that met or exceeded their team goals or organizational requirements. If I had a dollar for every transition workshop participant who commented in documenting STARS (value), “This is just like writing an OPR, EPR, OER, NCOER, FITREP, award, etc.…” Maybe that’s the answer – only applicable, quantifiable and translated statements should describe work history. What a novel idea! The time of questioning the military as a profession is well past. (They always show up early, they pass drug tests, they demonstrate massive amounts of anticipatory thinking and initiative… why would you not want them on your team?)
Thanks to all the servicemen and women for their sacrifices and I hope this assists them in our continually developing world of social media.

Gail Baccetti ⋅ Lake Geneva, WI Retired ⋅ 42 years experience

Edward, you've already received some wonderful feedback. I have not been, nor hired a Consultant, but I did work as an Outplacement Career Counselor. I also had 42 years of work experience, and numerous job searches of my own.

I would be happy to talk to you on the phone about using media to network. I could also do a mock interview with you to provide feedback on how well you are positioning yourself. If you would like to chat, you can email your phone number to me at gbaccetti@hotmail, along with some times that are good to call you. I'm retired, so flexible in my schedule.

Stefan Beyer ⋅ Kirkland, WA Wipro Ltd ⋅ 12 years experience

When questions about your experience come up, directly answer their question then describe how your outside experiences will be a benefit in your job. The most common way is to describe how you will be able to communicate with outside groups that lie within your old experience. Also, the ability to translate between technical and non-technical coworkers is a huge plus.

Also, I wrote an article on a similar issue which might be of help: https://acp-advisornet.org/articles/326/resume-cover-letter-multi-talented-individual

Mike Cottell ⋅ Glen Head, NY Michael T Cottell Consulting ⋅ 42 years experience

Hi Edward, I've only recently become a consultant, but after 40+ years in corporate life, a significant portion as a senior executive, I have worked with many consultants and consulting firms, so I have a point of view to have you consider.
1) Businesses hire consultants for several reasons, but 2 broad categories are:
a) They have a problem and they need expertise and or an outside point of view that they don't have. They want the issue assessed, recommendations proposed and possibly the opportunity to lead the project plan.
b) A large project, very often IT based, needs to be undertaken and the business does not have the expertise, technology or staff to identify solutions and bring the business up on the new platform.
c) Simply put , and I'm being broad and general in 1 a and b, the consulting firms or consultant is brought in to give the entity something it does not have in experience, intellectual knowledge and strategic thinking.
2) All the consulting firms pick the brightest talent right out of school, work them at a furious pace and those that do rise to the challenge, are able to advance and move ahead in the ranks. You have experiences that needs to be showcased right up front to counter this.
3) I believe you have to be on the offensive from the beginning of any discussion or e mail exchange to show the audience:
a) You have a command of the firm or business you are talking to or applying to with respect to their strategies, challenges, successes --do any and all research needed.
b) You show a command of the industry and the competition and how they are evolving--just take a look at retail stores and all the disruption that is going on--for several reasons.
c) You start all dialogue with how you are a solution to their problems and someone who can be a " rainmaker" with driving revenue.
4) Package your experience as "skills" that you can bring to the organization. Think broadly, but not limited to a few areas:
a) Change Agent
b) Strategic Thinker
c) Able to lead and drive execution
d) Selling your ideas
e) use actual examples of what you did to drive change, think creatively etc.
5) Identify your niche and expertise. You should have a point of view that your skills and experience translate into x type of consulting--not just a broad " consulting" role.
a) if you want , look at my LinkedIn profile, I state 3 specific areas that my consulting expertise is focused on--this is important.
b) you don't have to limit yourself too fine, just have a point of view.
6) You should approach any job posting with a cover letter in addition to your resume or any discussion with a " sell approach" of you driving the discussion , in a professional , confident, and persuasive manner.
Happy to talk more off line at mtcottell55@gmail.com if you like. I'm sure some other advisors will come in with great advice as well, just stay strong , stay confident and GOOD LUCK!
Thanks for your dedication and service to our great country.
Best Regards, Mike