There I was at the start of March 2020, watching the news with everyone else in my lines, seeing the world shut down from the pandemic and feeling a deep sense of fear — knowing my separation date from the Army had just been finalised for a month later in April that year.
I was paralysed by fear because I thought I had gained zero transferrable skills from my time in the military that would translate to any kind of civilian employment.
Even if I had transferrable skills, surely civilians wouldn't be able to understand them, right?
They wouldn't know what being a section commander during a CASEVAC would involve, or what things like "giving orders" means, or the level of autonomy involved in making initial contact with the enemy.
Not to mention going through all of my course qualifications, field reports and all the other paperwork — of which I had multiple binders worth — to clearly outline what skills I had developed or experiences I may have forgotten about.
On that day in March 2020, I started to dread the idea of leaving the familiarity and certainty of the military purely because of the uncertainty of the civilian world.
The Good News: Those Feelings Are Wrong
If you're in a similar situation and considering transitioning from the military, emergency services, or another similar organisation — all of those feelings are wrong.
The main cause stems from the fact that military service is a unique world with its own unique perspective that doesn't cleanly map to the civilian world.
This difference in perspective causes us to overlook skills and experiences we think are so basic they don't need to be mentioned, or that may be irrelevant to what a job ad lists. You may have qualifications you don't know are significant, or certifications you don't realise are useful — security clearances being the obvious example.
In fact, even by the time you finish basic training you would have received training, developed skills and attained qualifications that would've taken years to achieve in the civilian world.
The Translation Problem
Skills and experiences like operating as a section 2IC — responsible for scheduling piquet/watch, coordinating resupplies, and ensuring controlled stores are maintained — translate directly to:
- Conducting routine operational tasks
- Inventory and stock management
- Undertaking routine compliance tasks
Ever prepared a minute that had to go to your CO or OC? That's collating information and preparing documentation for executive review.
The skills are there. They just need translating.
How to Make the Transition
Step 1: Address the fear.
Understand that the dread and uncertainty stem from the misalignment between the military world view and the civilian world view — not from a genuine lack of ability. You have what employers want. You just need to express it in a language they understand.
Step 2: Adjust your understanding of skills and experience.
In the civilian world there's no assumed knowledge. The workforce hasn't gone through a standardised course pipeline like the military. There's no basic training for finance, HR, or any other profession — every worker has unique skills and employers expect these to be clearly articulated.
So understand your skillset is unique, and clearly articulate your skills — even the basic ones you think are unnecessary to mention. Things like:
- Undertaking routine operational tasks
- Delivering training or presentations to fellow military members
- Receiving and giving orders
- Developing movement plans
These all count.
Step 3: Understand the extra strengths your veteran status brings.
Civilian candidates won't have things like:
- Specific military software platform exposure
- Equipment-specific training
- Active or inactive security clearances
These are genuine competitive advantages. Own them.
This Is Easier Than Ever With AI
This translation work can be tedious and hard to do at first, and you want to be sure you don't overlook anything that could be potentially useful.
The good news is this is all easier than ever with AI.
At Career Seed, we've purpose-built our system for exactly this process. It's simple on your end — you can enter skills and experiences individually, or you can dump every document from your career into our system and the AI will extract and translate everything for you. We then use this to find opportunities that match you and generate your application documents automatically.
You can do all of this on our website or in any job ad online through our sidebar browser extension. Best part — you can trial our services for free.
We are a veteran-owned business that understands this can be a daunting time. But if you take one thing from this post, let it be this:
You are probably significantly more skilled than you realise.