While assigned to the recruiting command, he attended Basic Recruiting School and then attended what the Army calls AG ANCOES (Adjutant Generals' Corps, Advanced Non Commissioned Officers Education System).
Other pure leadership schools should also be demilitarized. For example, change NCO Academy to U.S. Air Force Basic Leader ship and Management Training Program, and change Transportation Officers Advanced Course to Military Transportation Managers Advanced Training Program.
When displaying any service schools, you should include only the name and duration of the course and the year in which you completed it. The course location really has no bearing on your qualifications. If the course was taught by a civilian firm, the name of the firm should be listed.
For those who have attended graduate-level training, that fact should be noted. Examples of graduate-level programs include Air University, Senior Enlisted Academies, Sergeants Major Academy, Command and General Staff College, and War College. In these cases, the course should be listed and explained.
Don't forget to list the course length and the year in which you completed it. When listing course length use a yardstick of measurement that sounds best (for example, "Four weeks" sounds better than "One month").
Residence or correspondence participation in a course is not important and should not be noted. The only important information is that you completed the course.
Many military technicians have completed dozens of training courses. All are significant and add tremendously to a job seeker's overall qualifications. If all of these schools are listed on the resume, it tends to overpower the document and take away from your other significant qualifications. A better approach is to make a single entry under military training and then create an addendum to the basic resume to list your technical training.
In this way the reader can focus on your accomplishments as chronicled on your resume and then review your technical training separately.
A final note for military training
There have probably been many service school courses and training programs that will have no applicability to your capabilities in the civilian job market. We call this A&T Training, which means Ash and Trash and includes such diverse subjects as Projectionist School, Defensive Driving, Defense against Subversion, and Espionage and Other Disorders.
Honors and Awards
These headings are often combined as a single heading called Honors and Awards. Some people will effectively place this information as a subheading under the educational institution where the honor or award was earned. Others reveal honors, awards, or commendations as bulleted information appearing throughout their Military Experience or Work Experience headings. This technique avoids taking up space to explain the source or location of the honor or award. Other people, of course, effectively display their honors and awards in a separate heading.
When writing this section, assume your audience is completely ignorant. They undoubtedly are ignorant of the names and significance of the overwhelming majority of honors and awards given in the United States. So as you list down your honors and awards, include a brief description of their significance. Also, if you were one of two from a battalion, an entire city, or an entire state to receive an award, then you should show this high selectivity of the award, or if you received an honor or award given only to a small percentage of an entire group, then also show selectivity. On the other hand, if you were one of fifty out of a class of one hundred to receive an award, naturally don't breathe a word about how easy it was to receive it.
Of course, some awards are self-explanatory or so well known they don't need any explanation. Everybody knows about the National Honor Society in high school. Certainly recruiters will recognize the value of National Merit Finalist. But for most awards or honors some explanation of purpose and selectivity is definitely needed.
Using Functional Subheadings to Organize Your Military Experience
One of the best ways to organize a varied and perhaps scattered military career is to use a device we call a functional subheading. Suppose you've served in six different locations in six different positions, but that your duties all involved one activity: recruiting, to stick with our example. A typical chrono logical resume would work backward in time, listing each of the six positions in each of the six locations and describing what duties were involved in each assignment. Naturally, the duties were similar if not identical, so the resume writer says essentially the same thing in six consecutive entries, boring the resume reviewer to tears! The better way to present this experience is to look carefully at the market you're trying to crack and ask yourself this question: "What three traits or abilities does my future employer want me to have?" Our resume writer, the recruiter, might answer:
- Recruiting and interviewing experience
- Managerial ability
- Marketing and promotions
You can easily see how this functional subheading approach enables you to organize your military experience, to present just the information about your accomplishments and abilities that targets your market, and to impress your prospective employer that you've got exactly what it takes to get the job done.
