Resume Help Forum

[ThomasMN]

My Resume is pretty much done, but my problems have been keeping it to about a page in length. My problem is that I spent 7 years in the Army and held a lot of different positions during that time and did a lot of things that I would love to include in my resume. Any tips on condensing military service in a resume? Anyone know of any potential resumes detailing military service that I might be able to look at?

[NZA]

Are the things you'd like to keep from your service relevant to legal employment, or are they just interesting things that you think would make you stand out as an applicant?

[ThomasMN]

More to make me interesting as an applicant than any direct relevance to legal employment. I was an infantry staff sergeant. The only real relevance to legal work is that I'm used to working 24/7 on 2 hours of sleep, dealing with a crushing bureaucracy, and keeping track of 9 other hooligans. On the interesting side of things I've been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo. Spent a good deal of time training foreign military units while I was in Germany. I was the UPL ( piss test NCO ) for my infantry company. I was an armorer for about 10 months - basically I was in charge of over a million dollars of equipment. I could keep on going here if you didn't notice, which is kind of the problem at the moment. Namely, what do I keep and what do I chuck.

[NZA]

Hmm...well first off, that is indeed fucking badass.

Second, it sounds like you're describing a few qualities about yourself you'd like to get across to an interviewer: you're a leader, you're used to dealing with responsibility under pressure, you're organized, and you can work with people well.

If you're trying to get those across, maybe you could try and pick a few KSAs or whatever (do they use the term KSA in the military?) that most strongly indicate those qualities and keep them.

Does that make sense?

[ThomasMN]

It does make sense to a point. I am trying to keep my description of my time in the Army down to three bullet points. One for leadership, one for additional responsibilities ( I was trusted), and one for "interesting facts (combat deployments, some of my badges like the Expert Infantryman's Badge that normally has around a 10% pass rate).

[NZA]

Yeah...I mean, if the bulk of your resume is going to be about your service, you could really have a whole section that says "Military Experience," and then have each position you held with a brief description below that, if that makes sense. In other words, you could make it longer, if you'd like.

I mean, it really all depends on how important/relevant your service is in comparison to other portions of your experiences, IMO.

[ThomasMN]

Yeah, the only problem with that is 99% of my experience is "military." I joined the Army when I was 18 and when I got out seven years later I got right into school. Then I up and joined the Reserves for 2 years only a couple of months after my active duty time was up.

Thank you for the advice though, it has been really helpful. I think I've nailed it down pretty well now.

[cinephile]

Is this for law school admissions? If so, it's alright to exceed one page.

[rinkrat19]

I would say that each different position you held in the military is pretty much the same as an additional civilian job. Don't be so desperate to keep it to one page that you lose all detail and 7 years of varying experience ends up as a bullet point. There's still some argument on whether a 2-page resume is acceptable, but the 1-pagers seem to be losing.

[ThomasMN]

Thanks for the advice, I will definitely string out my military experience a little bit. Worst case scenario I can create a one page resume and a two page resume just in case a particular law school demands a one pager.