Instead of worrying about whether AI will take their jobs, veterans entering the civilian workforce should worry about whether AI will even see their applications in the first place.
A recent post by Navy Federal Credit Union CEO and former U.S. Navy officer Dietrich Kuhlmann highlighted a growing concern among veteran employment advocates: many AI-powered hiring systems struggle to recognize military experience, filtering out qualified service members before a recruiter ever reviews their resume.
Applicant tracking systems increasingly use artificial intelligence to screen resumes, rank candidates, and identify potential matches, but military job titles, acronyms, and occupational specialties often don’t translate well into civilian hiring language.
For transitioning service members, this isn’t just another technology story. It’s a reminder that the resume they submit today has a very high chance of being evaluated by software long before it reaches a hiring manager.
Break the habit
Many veterans still build resumes the way they wrote evaluations or award recommendations in uniform. They write resumes using military terminology that accurately describes their experience, but means little to civilian hiring software. A resume that highlights service as a “25B,” “68W,” or “11B” may make perfect sense to another veteran but fail to demonstrate the technical, leadership, or project management skills an AI system is searching for.
That doesn’t mean veterans should hide their military service. It means they should translate it.
Instead of listing military occupational specialties or unit-specific accomplishments, resumes should emphasize measurable skills and outcomes. Leadership experience becomes team management. Convoy operations become logistics coordination. Intelligence collection becomes data analysis. Communication planning becomes project coordination. The goal is to describe what you accomplished in language both recruiters, cleared or not, and AI systems, can recognize.
AI isn’t intentionally screening out veterans. It simply looks for patterns based on the information it receives. If a job posting asks for cloud administration, cybersecurity, or operations management, an AI tool may miss a highly qualified veteran if those exact concepts never appear on the resume. Even when that experience is represented using military terminology.
The good news is that this challenge is one that veterans can overcome.
An Open-Book Test
Before submitting a resume, compare it to the job announcement. Identify the skills and keywords used in the posting and honestly incorporate those terms where they accurately reflect your experience. Ask someone outside the military to read your resume. If they can’t quickly understand what you accomplished, there’s a good chance an AI system won’t either.
The responses that the system is looking for are right there in the description of the role. If they ask for specific skills, experience, or certifications, just look at your resume and see how they fit into those requirements. Next, rewrite your skills to include those requirements.
Technology continues to reshape the hiring process, but the fundamentals haven’t changed. Veterans remain some of the most adaptable, disciplined and experienced candidates in the workforce.
The challenge isn’t proving their value. It’s making sure both people and algorithms that increasingly stand between applicants and employers can recognize it.
