The experience section of your LinkedIn should closely emulate your resume. The same type of information can be included, however, you can expand on resume bullets and function areas within the experience section. Formatting-wise, you can go the bulleted experience route, or, a brief summary of what you did in the role.
- Optimize so both military and civilian recruiters understand your work.
- Don’t over-translate: if you were a commander or senior enlisted advisor, you were not a CEO/COO.
- In most cases, senior enlisted advisors ultimately act like individual contributors and do not encompass the scope of a COO role. The same goes for Company/Field-Grade Commanders. For Commanders, use a term like Business Unit Leader, or something that lets people understand the scope of your work. The experience itself can further identify what level of scope you managed.
Job Titles
The titles you choose for jobs on LinkedIn do not have to be your official MOS/AFSC/NEC/MOC that you had while in the military. In many cases, those job functions do not carry over to the civilian world or are so specific, that they do not make sense to civilian recruiters. You can scale your experience based on the role you held and commensurate work duties.
For example, an Air Support Operations Operator in the USMC could be exchanged with a Support Operations Coordinator/Manager.
Matching Company Names
In order to ensure LinkedIn’s algorithm can find you when a recruiter is searching for US military veterans, you need to ensure that your listed company matches what currently exists for military-related companies. The branch-specific LinkedIn companies are:
- US Army
- United States Army Reserve
- Army National Guard
- US Navy
- Marine Corps Recruiting
- United States Marine Corps
- U.S. Marine Corps Reserve
- United States Air Force
- US Air Force Reserve
- Air National Guard
