Jeff Martin ⋅ Ashburn, VA The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ⋅ 25 years experience

My suggestion is to focus more on expressing tangible and specific results on your resume more than just a focus on job title and job lingo. Private sector companies look for results and having a resume with specific and tangible results will set you apart in my opinion. Good luck. Jeff

Steven Fuhrman ⋅ Altus, OK U.S. Air Force, Major ⋅ 11 years served

Thanks everyone for answering! I wasn't an Operations Group Commander (I'm only a Major). But, I have worked directly with Squadron, Group, and Wing Commanders in various jobs. I've also been a Flight Commander and Executive Officer to a Squadron Commander.

For most flying related career fields, I would hope that titles such as these would be understood since a lot of prior military pilots continue to fly outside the military, i.e, the airlines. However, there are a lot of aviation companies that I know who would have no idea what I'm talking about. I feel like I can describe what role I played just fine, but translating the title "Flight Commander" to "Manager" for example is what I want to make sure is properly conveyed.

Squadron Commanders would be in charge of 140+ people. Group Commanders could be roughly 500+ people, and a Wing Commander could be in the thousands. So when I describe my role and who I worked for, I want to make sure I translate it properly into civilian terms. I would imagine the ranks I just listed would be equivalent to "Executive" (Sq Commander), "Senior Executive" (Group Commander), and "Chief Executive Officer" (Wing Commander).

Would I be accurate in saying that? Thanks again for your help!

Carly Jones ⋅ Boulder, CO Lockheed Martin ⋅ 14 years experience

Steven, I agree w/Gail's answer - be honest about who you are / what you accomplished. Every manager looking at a resume will receive information differently. Using my own experience, reading a resume and seeing the military background & the military title, I may not know anything about what that job entails, so it forces me to read your sub-bullets about your responsibilities and accomplishments (and read-between-the-lines attitudes, sentiment, motivations), from which I will determine where in the team/organization/company you could / will be best-fit. For example, as an operations group commander, I would look for things like: how many people were on your team / that you led, what kinds of projects/efforts you led and how successful they were, how often you communicated with your leadership & how effective you were, what kinds of innovations/improvements you implemented.

Hope this helps, good luck!

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

Hi Steven:
Thanks for your service!
ZipRecruiter offers the following translation and equivalencies of military to civilian positions:

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/blog/how-to-translate-military-terms/

Good luck and let me know if you need any help reviewing and providing feedback on your resume!
Deb

Gail Matteson ⋅ Lutherville Timonium, MD CNA Insurance Company ⋅ 33 years experience

Hi Steven,
Could you please provide more detail on what you are trying to accomplish with translating these titles? If it is for your resume, I recommend using your true military title and describing your experience and qualifications in civilian terms, If it is for job hunting for similar types of positions, then I would recommend focusing on a particular industry before matching up the titles as different industries can use different organizational structures with different skill sets.
Let me know if I can be of further assistance.