Merry Vickers ⋅ Richardson, TX Dallas Police Department - City of Dallas prior to starting with Raytheon 2017 ⋅ 18 years experience

Thank you for your service and I would like to try to answer this for you. There are several suggestions that most services and internet sites recommend, and they are right.
Give your resume a format change and lead with a summary that outlines your skills and qualifications. Share generalities from past positions to translate how it will be beneficial in new roles, like skills, duties, projects or management. Use clear civilian language to describe your career objectives, but highlight key wording from job descriptions and any accomplishments you have achieved. Keep the verbiage in present tense and have others read through it for feedback. If you can pursue any certifications or even CEU (Continuing Education Units) will show how interested you are and make recruiters take notice.
I hope this helps you on this new journey and I wish you all the best.
Kindest regards,
Merry Vickers

Deb Yeagle ⋅ Tampa, FL Plan To Win, Inc. ⋅ 39 years experience

Nancy-
Thanks for your service! The only other comment I have that hasn't already been pointed out by the other advisors relates to your GPA. If you don't want to include your GPA for your Bachelor's then I would omit the other two GPA references. Otherwise it looks like you don't want to share your Bachelor's GPA because it was low? It raises a flag that you can avoid. Honestly, the only time I have screened candidates based on GPA was for entry level college grads. I doubt anyone is going to look at GPAs for someone at your level.
Good luck and if you ever want to get back into training then let me know - I have lots of clients in that field!
Deb

Nancy Flores ⋅ Apopka, FL U.S. Army, Master Sergeant ⋅ 26 years served

THANK YOU for the feedback. I did make a few more changes, and I hope it works. I understand that every resume should tailor the job for which I am applying for (I have ten different resumes so far, each adding keywords from the job description...nothing so far) I hope I can tweak this one for an organizational change job.

Again, I do appreciate your input very much and thank you..thank you...thank you.

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

It's clear from reading your resume that you have a good depth of experience. I second the recommendation to write dates on your sections so employers know how much time was spent in each position, and the length of your experience overall.

One thing I'd recommend that sticks out to me is you mention a lot of what you did, but don't focus much on why it's significant; it's best to not leave making that connection up to the reader. It's okay to leave out some of the details, as you can talk about that during the interview.

Your first bullet point makes for a good example. It took me a few read-throughs to figure out what the "mission objective" was. A possible rewording of it could be: "Made recommendations to senior military leadership regarding daily enlistment quotas, which increased enlistments by 75% in 12 months." The other details can be talked about when they come up.

Some other minor things I'd tweak are:
1) Remove the bolded section starting with "Objective..." and merge that info in the remaining text: "15+ years experience..." You mention your education later, so you have that covered too.
2) The "Uniquely capable of serving in areas" section sounds more like a continuation of the first bullet point. Having one section for experience and another for skills could be helpful.

Overall, it seems like your resume is saying "Here are my skills; where do I fit?" This is good for a master resume to build other resumes from, but for the one you send to employers you'd want to tailor it to the position so it says "I fit in this position because of these skills."

I also have an article that goes over how I construct resumes; it might be of help to you: https://acp-advisornet.org/articles/326/resume-cover-letter-multi-talented-individual

Hope this helps, :)
- Stefan

Nancy Flores ⋅ Apopka, FL U.S. Army, Master Sergeant ⋅ 26 years served

Thank you for your ideas on the resume. I thought about going back to 1994, however, did not want to see how old I am! :-) ...
One question though....does the resume look like a civilian resume (trying to use more civilian terms versus military)?

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

Hi Nancy, first allow me to congratulate you on your extraordinary academic achievements and to recognize that you have tremendous experience and accomplishments for which you should be very proud. A few thoughts on your resume, but please remember that as you read my thoughts, your resume must feel right to you in the end. Reflect on my thoughts, but trust your gut in the end.
1) You have a nicely set up LinkedIn profile and I suggest you list that address right on your resume on top with your e mail, cell etc.
2) You sequence dates for your job history on LinkedIn , but not on your resume. It's traditional to have date ranges on your resume. Either way, they should align.
3) Early career-take a look at the period 1994-1997 on LinkedIn and think about adding something --perhaps not, just a thought.
4) Cover Letters--when you apply for an actual job, you must use a cover letter to accompany your resume. This cover letter will focus on why you are the right candidate for a particular job by expanding your point of view on your skills and experience to address specific requirements posted for that job.
Thank you for your service to our country and please let me wish you the best of luck!
Best Regards, Mike