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Military spouse resumé toolkit

Blue Star Families converts volunteer service into strong resumés

Making Volunteerism Work for You can be downloaded from scribd.com for $8.99. Courtesy photo

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Military spouses being unable to find employment or maintain a career are not considered breaking news headlines anymore. The constant moves, prolonged separation among families and generally unpredictable military lifestyle has led to this issue and spouses are trying to find the answer.

Yet what military spouses are doing is volunteering and that can facilitate a job search.

Blue Star Families' 2012 Military Family Lifestyle Survey reported that 81 percent of military spouse respondents volunteered in the past year, but that 34 percent of those did not consider volunteer work relevant to a job search.

To bridge this gap, organization released a toolkit of sorts, entitled Making Volunteerism Work For You, to assist spouses struggling to build a resumé and encourage them to present volunteer positions and military-affiliated roles as valuable work experience, especially when life circumstances prohibited a paid position or job.

When building a resumé, you need to highlight skills and achievements but since that may involve terms that civilian employers might not understand, it is important to spell things out. In other words, spell out acronyms (FRG, PCS, P/X) in order to avoid confusion and also use numbers to explain the audience size, for example, when you're referring to planning events for a squadron versus an entire brigade. Likewise, military slang and language should always be translated into civilian language on a resumé.

From FRG leader to key caller to elected officer for the spouse club, the toolkit provides examples of how to best explain how these voluntary positions demonstrate your skill set.

Furthermore, the toolkit even offers insight into various industries, from federal jobs to work with nonprofits, in order to best capture what being a military spouse could mean through experience related to those fields.

Once the resumé is complete, the interview is the next hurdle for military spouses, who might be out of practice. Many question whether or not they should mention if they are a military spouse during an interview, assuming it wasn't highlighted on their resumé. While it might depend on the type of job or the company, the toolkit authors remind the job seekers that the interview and hiring process should be about how well suited they are for the job and not focus on their lifestyle. That being said, it is always a judgment call based on the interviewer and the workplace culture in that office - though it is illegal for potential employers to ask about your military spouse status.

For instance, if employers question how long you will be living in the area, the toolkit provides some sample answers and tips, like to provide a firm commitment for the minimum time period you will commit to the job, i.e., how much time is left on your spouse's current orders.

While there is no guarantee that the employer will be okay with such a definitive timeline, the good news is that civilian employees are switching jobs more often as of late, so a commitment from the right candidate might be enough to secure the job.

Above all, the authors want to remind military spouses in the job market to continually reinforce how their military lifestyle actually makes them more qualified for the job.

To stress the fact that your military lifestyle makes you more qualified rather than less, you can discuss how the frequent relocations have forced you to be adaptable or how you've single-handedly run an entire household for extended periods of time, showing organizational skills and fortitude.

To view and download the entire toolkit book, go to www.scribd.com/doc/124166791/Making-Volunteerism-Work-for-You

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