Michael Mayo ⋅ Bow, NH Olympus Biotech ⋅ 26 years experience

Tim,
One of the most important challenges you (we) face is to 'translate' your heard earned skills, sense of responsibility, leadership, organization and dedication to duty into a set of marketable (understandable) skills that employers need.

Convert all the acronyms into meaningful labels, and as Rod pointed out, make your Linked-In site suitable and attractive to employers. Your purpose here is not to inform your former peers - it is to excite you prospective employers.

This goes for your resume' too - civilianize it.

Priya Malhotra ⋅ New York, NY MetLife ⋅ 18 years experience

Tim,

Given the audience on the Linkedin website, I would agree with the responses posted so far that your experience be written with the civilian reader in mind. I am sure that you have the transferable skills and it would be a matter of rewording/adding some explanation. Key words such as supervising, directing, managing etc. would most likely be applicable. You should also get a good professional photo for the site. Another way to keep your profile active is to login in frequently, comment on applicable/interesting articles, post comments, add your opinion etc.

Good luck.

Mary Rosenbaum ⋅ New York, NY Your Career by Design ⋅ 30 years experience

Your LinkedIn profile should be written so that someone reading it will want to know more. It should be written with a civilian reader in mind. Whoever reads it should want to know more about you - I wouldn't include duty statements or evaluation bullets. What you want to convey is how your expertise in the military can translate into the business world and that's all about your skills - both the hard skills you have (logistics for example) as well as the soft skills (ability to lead, instill trust, focused, etc).

Define what the acronyms mean and focus more on the skill set you used in order to be successful at what you did. Hiring managers don't understand nor take the time to understand what it all means. In your profile summary, put a Skill Set Summary at the bottom including those words that define your expertise - logistics, communications, etc. Often times hiring managers do a search on LinkedIn using only the specific skills they need to fill positions. Which hard skills did you employ to enable you to be successful in your military career?

And I agree with the recommendation above - get a good professional photo taken for your profile.

Tom Cal, CFA ⋅ San Francisco, CA Army Veteran, Investment Manager ⋅ 25 years experience

Tim,

* Focus on effectively communicating the skills and benefits you offer to employers.

Here is a practical exercise I encourage you to complete. Read some of the articles that the searches below retrieve. Then answer these 2 questions, and come back and share your work so we can advise further. Let us know which of the articles were most helpful.

* In 8 seconds, tell us about the skills and benefits you offer to employers. Convince a potential employer they should want to hear more about you.

https://www.google.com/search?q=career+opening+statement
https://www.google.com/search?q=career+opening+ststement

https://www.google.com/search?q=aida+sales

* In-30 seconds, tell us more, again focused on the skills and benefits you offer to employers.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=career+elevator+speech

Morgan Lerette ⋅ Glendale, AZ AAA ⋅ 6 years experience

In my humble opinion, yes. Recruiters have a hard enough time translating military experience into industry skills. Translating your military acronyms for them will help them understand how your skill set.

Jim Thomas ⋅ Clovis, CA Acquired EXCELLENCE Defined ⋅ 40 years experience

The fact that you are asking the question means you already have at least half the answer.

My first gut reaction to your question though is Neither and it also depends on what you see your profile doing for you.

Do you see it primarily as an extension of your resume?

If so, who is your audience or at least the portion of your audience that you care the most about.

Most employers are looking for "Team Players" whereas the picture you posted here is of a cowboy. A romantic image to be sure (and probably a good idea if you want to go onto eHarmony), but it might not convey the correct level of professional sophistication that you would want on LinkedIn. You did not mention the field you are pursuing, so I am unable to be more specific in this regard.

Brett Patron ⋅ Yorktown, VA U.S. Army, Captain ⋅ 23 years served

Your profile needs to be YOU. What is it YOU are and what you want to portray about your knowledge, skills, abilities and experience.

"Civilianizing" anything is dangerous because bad euphemisms are worse than just declaring what your military roles are. If you can paraphrase your background, by all means do so.

But remember you're going to build your network as much by who knows you as anything.. Being authentic matters.

Patricia Cox ⋅ Lewisville, TX ⋅ 9 years experience

Your resume should definitely be civilianized. The majority of the companies will not understand the military terms. Go on line and study the non-military resumes. Find a sample resume that is similar to your military career field, then you will begin to learn the non-military language.

Thomas Hampton ⋅ Thomasville, GA U.S. Army, Sergeant ⋅ 9 years served

This has been one of the most informative posts that I have found online. I have "googled" so much, and yet, this has been the most eye opening.
Thank you for this.

Chuck Beretz ⋅ Carlsbad, CA Cloudforia ⋅ 20 years experience

Civilianized, definitely. Put yourself into the shoes of your audience, which on LinkedIn is a recruiter hiring for a civilian position. A LinkedIn profile serves one and only one purpose: to get you a second look. Recruiters on LinkedIn conduct searches and -- much like searching on Google -- get a results list of matching candidates. In <30 seconds, your profile needs to create sufficient interest to make it to round two, when a recruiter reaches out. At that point, you take over with an initial screening interview and resume.

Timothy Corbin ⋅ Sierra Vista, AZ U.S. Army, Sergeant First Class ⋅ 21 years served

When I built my LinkedIn profile, I started with my evaluations and awards. Over the past week, I have dedicated an hour or so each day to focus on one duty assignment a day. I have spent that time rewriting that description ONLY. For the most part, I have muddled my way through a majority of it. I still need to 'properly word' the awards I have been presented, as well as refine some verbiage...but it looks much better than it did two weeks ago!

Thanks, everyone!

Tim