So, who am I to tell you how to write a CV after leaving the military?

It’s a fair question, so let me tell you a little about myself first. I’m an ex-Royal Navy veteran and, like every other service leaver, I’ve been through the resettlement process myself. If I’m honest, it wasn’t great when I did it, although I know it’s improved a lot over the years. Since leaving the military, I’ve spent over forty years in business, built several successful companies, and, for many years now, specialised in writing professional CVs During that time, I’ve worked with people from every corner of the Armed Forces, from men and women leaving after a few years’ service to senior officers with over thirty-five years behind them. I’ve written CVs for submariners, members of Special Forces, RAF personnel, soldiers, senior NCOs, Warrant Officers and even a Lieutenant Colonel serving with NATO.

I’m telling you that not to impress you. It’s simply so you know that what follows isn’t theory. I’ve been where you are now, and I’ve helped many other service leavers through the same process. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and, more importantly, how much military people underestimate themselves.

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve served four years or thirty-four, leaving the military can be one of the biggest changes you’ll ever make. For years you’ve worked in an environment where everybody understands each other. They know your rank, understand your responsibilities, and speak the same language. You don’t have to explain what you’ve done because everyone around you already understands it. Then one day you find yourself writing a CV for someone who has never served, doesn’t understand military terminology and has absolutely no idea what your responsibilities really involved.

That is where confidence often starts to disappear, and I see it all the time.

One of the first things people say to me is, “I haven’t really done anything special.” It always makes me smile because ten minutes later they’ll tell me they were responsible for a team of thirty people, equipment worth several million pounds, making decisions in high-pressure situations or maintaining systems where mistakes weren’t an option. They’ve done it for so long that they’ve stopped seeing how valuable those skills really are. To them, it was just another day’s work. To a civilian employer, it’s exactly the type of experience they’re looking for.

The military teaches you things that many companies spend years trying to develop in their managers and employees. Leadership, teamwork, accountability, resilience, adaptability, decision-making, problem-solving and working under pressure aren’t courses you’ve attended; they’re skills you’ve lived every day of your career. The problem isn’t that you don’t have those skills. The problem is that you’ve never had to explain them to someone outside the military before.

That’s really what this guide is about. Yes, it’s about writing a CV, but it’s also about helping you recognise the value of the experience you’ve built throughout your career. You’re not starting from scratch, and you’re certainly not starting behind everyone else. In many cases, you’re starting with far more responsibility than people your age have ever had in civilian employment. You need to learn how to explain it.

Let’s treat this exercise as another deployment. Every deployment starts with an objective, and this one is no different. Your objective isn’t simply to write a CV. Your objective is to produce a professional document that explains your experience, demonstrates your skills and gives an employer a reason to invite you for an interview, all without revealing anything that shouldn’t be discussed. That’s actually one of the biggest challenges military people face because you’ve spent your entire career being careful about what you say, where you say it and who you say it to.

One question I hear more than any other is,

“If I can’t say where I served, what I did or who I worked with, how on earth am I supposed to write a two-page CV?” The answer is actually much simpler than people think.

Stop thinking about what you did and start thinking about how you did it.

That single change in mindset will transform the way you write your CV.

Think about it for a moment. An employer isn’t recruiting you because you served on a particular ship, worked on a specific aircraft or deployed to a certain part of the world. They’re recruiting you because of the skills you developed while you were doing those things. They want someone who can lead people, solve problems, communicate effectively, work under pressure, manage risk, learn quickly and take responsibility. Those are the things that transfer into civilian employment, and they’re the things your CV has to demonstrate.

Take HM Submarines as an example. It’s an environment where there’s a huge amount of sensitive information and, quite rightly, there are things that should never appear on a CV. Someone might naturally write a bullet point that says:

Maintained continuous nuclear reactor watchkeeping aboard Royal Navy submarines, ensuring the safe operation of nuclear propulsion systems in high-risk, safety-critical environments.

Technically, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s full of military terminology and specialist language that many civilian recruiters won’t understand. More importantly, it tells them what you worked on rather than the skills you demonstrated.

A much better way of writing the same responsibility would be:

Maintained the safe operation of complex, safety-critical engineering systems through continuous monitoring, procedural compliance, risk assessment and rapid fault response in high-pressure environments.

Nothing has changed. The responsibility is the same, but now you’re describing transferable skills rather than military terminology.

The same principle applies whether you served in the Royal Navy, Army or RAF.

I recently worked with someone from the Army whose first draft contained abbreviations and military expressions that another soldier would have understood immediately but meant absolutely nothing to a civilian recruiter. Once we translated his experience into plain English, the CV became far more powerful, not because we’d changed what he’d done, but because we’d explained it in language the employer understood.

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this guide, it’s this. Don’t write about what you did. Write about how you did it. Once you understand that, writing the rest of your CV becomes much easier because you’re no longer trying to describe military operations. You’re explaining the skills that made you successful.

Avoid Acronyms. They Mean Everything to You and Nothing to Anyone Else

One of the biggest mistakes I see on military CVs is using acronyms. We use them every day in the Armed Forces without even thinking about it. In fact, most of us probably speak in acronyms more than we realise. The trouble is that outside the military they mean absolutely nothing.

Think about it for a moment. If I started talking to you about ATS, SEO, CRM, GDPR or KPIs, unless you’ve worked in those environments, you’d probably ask me what I was talking about. The same is true for civilian employers reading a military CV.

A sentence that makes perfect sense to another soldier, sailor or airman can look like complete gobbledygook to someone in recruitment. They won’t understand your unit, your equipment, your systems or the abbreviations you’ve used. More importantly, they won’t take the time to find out. They’ll move on to the next CV.

Another reason to avoid them is ATS.

Most larger employers and recruitment agencies now use Applicant Tracking Systems, better known as ATS. Before a human being ever reads your CV, software often scans it looking for keywords that match the job description. If your CV is full of military terminology, there’s every chance the software won’t recognise your experience because it doesn’t understand military language either.

That doesn’t mean your experience isn’t valuable. It means you’ve described it in a language the system can’t interpret.

Always ask yourself one question. If somebody who has never served in the Armed Forces read this sentence, would they understand it?

If the answer is no, rewrite it.

Your aim isn’t to impress people with military terminology. You aim to make it easy for an employer to understand exactly what you’ve achieved.

Structuring Your Military Career

Another question I’m asked all the time is, “Who do I actually put down as my employer?”

The answer is straightforward.

Your employer is the Ministry of Defence.

Your ship wasn’t your employer. Neither was your regiment, squadron or unit. They were your place of work. The Ministry of Defence paid your wages and employed you throughout your career.

That’s why I generally structure a military CV slightly differently from a civilian one.

Rather than listing employer after employer, I prefer to show your career progression through rank, dates and appointments. Your promotions tell a story on their own. They demonstrate trust, increasing responsibility and professional development. Civilian employers understand promotion because it shows someone believed in you enough to give you more responsibility.

Let’s take a Corporal as an example.

Someone might tell me they’ve been a Corporal for fourteen years. That’s true, but it doesn’t tell me very much. During those fourteen years they may have worked in Germany, Cyprus and the UK. They may have instructed recruits, managed stores, deployed on operations, supervised workshops and supported humanitarian aid. Each of those appointments required different skills, responsibilities, and levels of accountability.

It does not matter whether you are a Colonel or a Cook.

The same applies whether you leave as a Petty Officer, a Flight Sergeant, a Warrant Officer or a Squadron Leader. You may have spent years at the same rank, but your appointments will almost certainly have changed, and with them your responsibilities.

This is why I always say you’re writing about how you carried out your responsibilities, not simply listing what they were.

For example, don’t tell me you worked in a training establishment.

Tell me you developed new recruits, maintained training standards, mentored junior personnel and ensured operational readiness.

Don’t tell me you worked in logistics.

Tell me you coordinated supply operations, managed stock, maintained equipment availability and supported operational requirements.

The job title rarely gets you the interview.

The skills behind it often do.

AI Can Help, But It Can’t Replace You

People ask me about AI almost every week now.

“Why don’t I just ask AI to write my CV?”

It’s a fair question, because AI is an incredible tool when it’s used properly.

If you give it a list of your military duties and ask it to translate them into civilian language, it can be very useful. It can improve grammar, tidy up sentences, and even suggest different ways to describe technical skills.

I use AI myself, but only as a checking tool for grammar, not for content.

But here’s the important bit.

I don’t let it think for me.

A good CV has to achieve two things.

Firstly, it has to make someone want to meet you. That’s why every CV should be tailored to the job you’re applying for. Sending the same CV to ten different employers rarely works because every employer is looking for something slightly different. Read the advert carefully, understand what they’re asking for and make sure your CV answers those questions.

Secondly, your CV has to demonstrate the scope of your responsibilities.

This is where AI usually falls short.

Ask it to write a CV, and it will often produce something that sounds very impressive. The grammar is good, the sentences flow nicely, and everything looks professional. The problem is that it usually reads like a job description. It tells the reader what somebody in that role would normally do, not what you actually achieved.

That’s a huge difference.

A recruiter doesn’t want to know what a Sergeant usually does. They want to know what you did as a Sergeant.

How many people did you supervise?

What value of equipment were you responsible for?

Did you manage a budget?

Did you introduce improvements?

Did you train others?

How many?

What changed because you were there?

Those are the things that make a CV stand out, and AI can’t invent them.

Think of it like this.

A spanner is a brilliant tool.

But it won’t tighten a nut on its own.

Someone still has to pick it up, know which size to use and apply it properly.

AI is the same. Used properly, it’s an excellent assistant. Used badly, it produces a CV that looks polished but says very little about the person behind it.

When I first speak to a new client, I don’t spend my time asking about operations or classified information because I don’t need to know any of that. Instead, I ask questions that people have often never been asked before.

How many people reported to you?

What happened if your equipment failed?

How much responsibility did you have?

Who depended on your decisions?

What changed because of the work you did?

Those are the questions that uncover the real value in your career, and they’re the answers that employers want to see.

Training and Qualifications

One mistake I see time and time again is people listing every course they’ve ever completed because they think it makes them look more experienced.

It doesn’t.

It simply makes the CV longer.

The purpose of your CV isn’t to show everything you’ve ever done. It’s to convince an employer that you’re the right person for this particular job.

If you’ve completed a course that’s directly relevant to the role you’re applying for, then absolutely include it. If you’ve gained qualifications that demonstrate your technical ability, leadership or professional development, they should certainly be there.

On the other hand, if you completed a course fifteen years ago and haven’t used those skills since, ask yourself whether it still adds any value. The answer is often no.

The same applies to specialist military courses.

I’ve seen people proudly list marksmanship qualifications, specialist weapons courses or interrogation training when they’re applying for management positions in manufacturing or logistics. Those qualifications may have been significant during your military career, but they have little relevance to the role you’re applying for now.

Always remember that relevance beats quantity.

As you approach the end of your service, you’ll also be thinking about resettlement courses and qualifications. My advice is to think carefully before choosing them. If you know exactly what career you want, then your decision is relatively straightforward. If you want to become a police officer, firefighter or work within the emergency services, then choose courses that support that goal.

Many people, however, aren’t quite sure what they want to do.

That’s perfectly normal.

You may have spent years working on submarines, servicing helicopters, maintaining tanks, working with communications equipment or handling munitions. At first glance, you might think those skills don’t transfer into civilian life.

Believe me, they do.

I’ve helped people from every one of those backgrounds move into excellent civilian careers. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of helping them recognise just how transferable their experience really is.

Stop Saying “I Was Only…”

If there’s one thing I’d like every service leaver to stop saying, it’s this.

“I was only…”

“I was only a Corporal.”

“I was only a Leading Hand.”

“I was only a Technician.”

“I was only stores.”

“I was only admin.”

No, you weren’t.

You were trusted.

You were trusted to make decisions, trusted to maintain standards, trusted to look after equipment, trusted to train others and trusted to carry out your job to a standard that most civilian organisations can only admire.

The military doesn’t hand responsibility to people because they’ve been there a certain number of years. Responsibility is earned.

That’s something many veterans forget.

You’ve become so used to doing the job that you’ve stopped recognising how much responsibility you actually carried.

I’ve had clients apologise because they thought they hadn’t achieved very much. Half an hour later we’ve uncovered responsibility for teams of twenty people, engineering equipment worth millions of pounds, operational planning, budgets, training programmes and health and safety.

They hadn’t been exaggerating.

They’d simply forgotten.

One of the things I enjoy most about writing military CVs is reminding people just how much they’ve actually accomplished.

Sometimes all they need is somebody asking the right questions.

Medals

People often ask me whether they should include medals on their CV.

My answer is usually yes.

Campaign medals and service medals represent commitment, professionalism and recognised service. They’re part of your military career, and there’s no reason to hide them.

There’s no need to explain the operation or write paragraphs about why they were awarded. Simply listing them is usually enough.

Like everything else on your CV, they should support the story you’re telling rather than dominate it.

Finally…

If you’ve read this far, I hope you’ve realised something.

Writing a military CV isn’t really about writing a CV at all.

It’s about translating your experience into language that civilian employers understand.

You’ve spent years developing skills that businesses spend thousands of pounds trying to teach their managers. Leadership. Accountability. Teamwork. Problem-solving. Resilience. Adaptability. Integrity. Decision-making under pressure.

Those aren’t just words.

They’ve been part of your everyday life.

The challenge isn’t proving you have those qualities.

The challenge is explaining them.

Don’t ever think that because you’ve spent your career in uniform, you have less to offer than someone who’s spent twenty years in civilian employment.

In many cases, the opposite is true.

You’ve worked in demanding environments, accepted levels of responsibility that would surprise many employers and developed a work ethic that is difficult to teach.

You already have the experience.

You already have the skills.

Now you need a CV that reflects them.

One final piece of advice.

Don’t try to impress people with military language.

Impress them with what you achieved.

Talk about the people you led, the improvements you made, the problems you solved, the standards you maintained and the responsibilities you carried. Show employers the scale of what you did and, above all, show them how you did it.

That’s what gets interviews.

That’s what gets jobs.

And if, after reading this guide, you still feel unsure about how to translate your military career into a professional civilian CV, don’t worry. You’re certainly not the first person to feel that way, and you won’t be the last.

I’ve been where you are, and I’ve helped many others make the same journey.

Sometimes all it takes is someone who understands both worlds to help bridge the gap.

The military chapter of your life may be coming to an end, but everything you’ve learned during your service goes with you. In my experience, that’s something worth being proud of, and it’s certainly something worth putting on your CV.