Kurt Davis ⋅ Tulsa, OK Hewlett Packard ⋅ 20 years experience

My name is Kurt Davis and I work for Hewlett Packard. All comments are my personal opinion. I have not served in the military.

I think there’s a misconception that hiring managers think military folks are soldiers and therefor primarily know how to soldier. Most hiring managers I know understand this is not true. I work for one of the largest private sector IT companies in the world. You work for one of the largest public sector companies in the world, the US government, more specifically the US military. From a practical experience resume perspective there’s very little difference with the exception of the language.

I tell recent graduates entering the workforce to tell me about their GPA and major but just as important tell me about what they did. Highlight coursework that involved any project type work, especially those that were group projects. Although they weren’t “paid” for their work the work was still work and it was evaluated and compensated with an appropriate grade. You should do the same.

As far as being competitive with private sector candidates I think you have an edge there. There are far more constraints and regulations in the public sector than the private. It is much easier to think out of the box in the private sector. I think there is some unwarranted concern by some hiring managers that public sector employees have only one way to get from A to Z and therefor are not “creative” in managing difficult and complex projects. It’s all mapped out for them and they just connect the dots. I would argue that is not generally true. Working within those constraints calls for even more creativity. Play that up. Highlight how you got outside of the box on a project but still dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s.

I would be happy to look at what you have so far and help you translate your military experience into the language a private or public sector hiring manager is looking for. In the meantime I would take a look at the Project Management Institute and consider obtaining certification. In my opinion it’s the best objective measure of your knowledge of Project Management. Your resume should demonstrate your ability as well as your experience.

John Stevens ⋅ Middletown, MD ⋅ 20 years experience

Angela,

Here are some simple equivalents that will get you on your way. Look up the Army definition, then the Project Management Institute (PMI) definition.
Mission = Project
MDMP = PM Process
Campaign = Program
Mission Analysis = Scope Development

Continue on with more comparisons and you'll see how staff work translates to project management.

Good luck - John

Michael Auxer ⋅ Detroit, MI Henry Ford Health Systems ⋅ 25 years experience

Hi Angela,
I did the same transition from the military (active duty) to project management that you are looking to do. I love hiring former military service members, especially officers and senior enlisted, as they performed project management in one way shape or form every single day. Most just don’t realize it.

Kevin hit it on the head. You need to take those things you did while in the Army and frame them into terms of the project management knowledge and processes. The knowledge areas of project management are Integration Management, Scope Management, Time Management, Cost Management, Quality Management, Human Resource Management, Communications Management, Risk Management, and Procurement Management. These fit into the five process groups (or phases) of project management which are initiating, planning, executing, managing and controlling, and closing.

What I look for in a resume is for an applicant to quantify what they did during their career and fit them into these areas. The way I did it was too first to write down the major exercises, deployments, inspections, or other activities I performed during my career. Then I wrote down what I did for each of these events. Lastly, I framed them into the project management knowledge areas and phases. So, as an example, I might have a line in my resume under experience that says; “Participated in the planning, execution, and managing & controlling of exercise Trident Warrior ’12, where I was responsible for identifying resources required to perform specific technology evaluations, coordinating the availability of military assets and human resources to perform the required testing during the defined exercise window, managing which tests could be performed given budgetary constraints, and performing detailed risk analysis to ensure that accurate and timely test results could be gathered to achieve the goals of the exercise.”

Have you looked into the Project Management Institute (PMI) and earning your Project Management Professional (PMP) certification? I would recommend that you check into this as I am seeing more and more clients who are requiring their project managers to be PMP certified. You might even be able to get your G*I Bill to cover some of the costs.

I would be more than happy to take a look at your resume and give you my feedback from what I am looking for when I hire. If you are interested, please send it to michael.auxer-sr@hp.com.

Good luck, god bless, and thank you for your service.

Fouad Malik ⋅ Los Angeles, CA ⋅ 7 years experience

Projects are temporary temporary endeavor with a beginning and end date and creates a unique product, service, result (outcome). As a platoon leader, executive officer and operations officer, you most likely have worked on many projects and they do qualify towards 4,500 hours project management requirement. However, when you describe projects, know that operations work will not qualify. Operations work is on-going and repetitive and follows organizations existing procedures. Your title does not matter to PMI (even if you have been operations officer) as long as you have done projects as a part of your job functions.

In traditional management, a project goes through initiation (developing charter and identifying stakeholders), planning (developing project management plan), execution (carrying out the work), monitoring and control (comparing project management plan and work performance information from your execution process group) and close (close procurement and close project). Above-mentioned work sounds like a part of project but you may want to describe project work by using PMI terminologies when you submit your application to PMI (or on your resume).

Kevin McIntyre ⋅ Loveland, CO Ricoh Production Print Solutions ⋅ 30 years experience

Hi Angela,

I have over 30 years managing people, projects, and technical designs. I hope I can shed some light on this question for you.

For some brief direct feedbak, consider the following:

- Your military service, especially as an officer, IS project management.
- When thinking of project management think in terms of managing Resources, Scope, and Schedule. In PM terms these three things are referred to as the iron triangle. As you already know from your military experience, you can look at these three items as levers you can pull to help the project succeed. You can add or change the people wrking on the project (Resources), you can add or remove tasks and assignments for your team (Scope), and you can accelrate or extend the timeline for a mission (Schedule).
- Think about the misions or assignments you have been involved with or in charge of. How did you go about assessing risks and mitigating them. This is another valuable project management skill.
- Finally, tracking and reporting status is one more very valuable skill that directly tranfers to project management. Your communication skills are vital and anything you can do to demonstrate them will work in your favor. Keep in mind that by communication I mean downward (to team members), laterally (to other project managers and peers), and upward (to management).

As an Advisor +, I would like to offer 1-on-1 help with your resume if you are interested (free of charge, of course). Use my profile email if you would like to take me up on this.

William Barlaan ⋅ Sackets Harbor, NY U.S. Army, First Lieutenant ⋅ 3 years served

I found this question while performing a search through Google and realized how joining ACP would be an invaluable resource. I will be transitioning from the Army this coming November and am interested in working in Project Management. After reading the advice everyone provided I am looking into getting PMP certification.

The question I would like to ask is, and perhaps former veterans working as Project Managers can help me, does my time as a Platoon Leader, Executive Officer and Assistant S3 (Operations Officer) all count towards 4,500 hours of project management required for certification? Correct me if I am mistaken but the planning, resourcing, execution and refinement of everything we did on a day-to-day basis is the same as project management in business, correct?

John Crocker ⋅ New York, NY Enterprise Iron ⋅ 30 years experience

I just want to amplify what a couple of others have mentioned here. I don't work for HP or GE, but run a consultancy that provides services to the financial industry (most of them in the Fortune 1000), and have a number of Program and Project Managers on billing at my clients.

I have my recruiters do quarterly trend analysis (in all sorts of job categories). The overwhelming one in Project Management (especially in the past 5 years or so) is the PMP requirement. At this point (with my clients at least) probably over 2/3s of the Project Management job requirements my folks get flat out state that the PMP Certification is required (and those that don't commonly say "not required, but desired").

Richard Buck ⋅ Patterson, NY EY ⋅ 25 years experience

Good evening. My name is Richard Buck, a Marine Corp vet. If you still need someone to review your resume, I would be happy to review it and help you.

Richard Buck
76warrior85@gmail.com
914 391 3375

J. Rosales ⋅ San Clemente, CA Hewlett Packard ⋅ 20 years experience

If you have interest in my take (edits) of a current resume send it over and let me see what I can do. As many of my peers have noted, it's all about positioning your former role based on the role you are pursuing - send it to jacque@hp.com

Michael Ablondi ⋅ Ridgefield, CT General Electric ⋅ 31 years experience

My name is Mike Ablondi and I have worked 32 year for GE in various positions managing organizations from Engineering to Financial Services. I don't have military experience but spent part of my career as a defense contractor and managing projects as well as having former military people work for me. Managing a project utilizes the same skills regardless of the discipline. My suggestion is on your resume, list Project Management in the skill set section and when describing your military positions outline the overall responsibilities then bulletize a couple of projects that you ran with their resulting impact. When reviewing a resume, the hiring manager will be interested in what was your responsibility and what did you accomplish. Companies want people who can execute. If you successfully managed projects and met the desired goals that will catch the eye of the reviewer.
Thank you for your service.

Kurt Davis ⋅ Tulsa, OK Hewlett Packard ⋅ 20 years experience

.....and thank you so very much for your service to our country.