Soldier CV Examples & Writing Guide

This fictional CV belongs to a Corporal leaving the British Army after nine years and applying for civilian operations and logistics supervisor roles. Notice that the rank appears once per role, the unit names are generic, and every bullet is written for a reader who has never served.

The single biggest reason a strong soldier gets no call-backs is vocabulary. A hiring manager at a distribution centre or a utility company has no idea what a 2IC, a first parade or a CQMS is, and will not look it up. Say the same thing in words they use every day.

Keep your rank once per role, in the job title line, because it shows progression. Drop every other acronym unless the advert uses it. The Career Transition Partnership (CTP) and forces charities run workshops and offer advisers who help match a military trade to civilian job titles; use them for the job titles to apply under, but rewrite the wording yourself.

Managers like hiring veterans but are still nervous about two things: whether your skills transfer to their specific work, and whether you will stay. Answer both on the page.

• Headcount and budget. "Supervised 8 people" and "accountable for £1.8M in equipment" are the two numbers that translate to any industry.
• Scheduling and logistics under pressure: moving people, vehicles, fuel and supplies to a deadline. Almost every operations job is this.
• Safety and compliance record. Zero losses, zero accidents, zero heat injuries. Civilian operations run on the same worries.
• Clearance level if you hold one (SC or DV) and when it was granted. For defence companies and some government roles this is worth real money.
• A clear statement of the civilian job you want. A CV that says "British Army Veteran" and nothing else makes the manager guess, and they will guess wrong.

“I hire veterans for supervisor roles all the time, and the CVs that fail are the ones written in acronyms. Give me a headcount, a budget figure and a safety number, and tell me which job you want. When the trade needs decoding, that file goes to the bottom of the pile.”

Name the civilian role in the first line. Then years, headcount, one money or safety figure, and your clearance if you have one.

Every bullet needs three things: what you did, how big it was, and what happened as a result. These are rewrites of duties that appear on almost every soldier's appraisal report.

Skip anything you cannot describe without classified detail, and skip weapon system model numbers unless the job is with a defence company that uses them.

Choose skills that match the civilian job advert, written in the advert's own words. Here is the honest inventory most soldiers can draw from.

• Supervision, scheduling and performance coaching
• Stock control and equipment accountability
• Operational planning, briefing and post-exercise reporting
• Transport and convoy coordination, load planning
• Preventive maintenance and fault documentation
• Risk assessment, incident investigation, hazard reporting
• Emergency medical response and first aid
• Radio, satellite and network communications
• Physical security and access control procedures
• Working to a fixed deadline with limited resources

Add the tools you have used, because that is where military CVs are usually too modest: Army supply and equipment systems, Microsoft Office, scheduling software, GPS and mapping systems, and any stock or fleet system by name. If you used it weekly, list it.

One more thing worth naming, without dressing it up: you have worked long stretches away from home, with people you did not choose, in bad weather, and still delivered. Show it as an outcome, such as an exercise completed or a deployment finished without incident, rather than calling yourself resilient.

Military training is worth civilian qualifications and funding more often than soldiers realise. These are the records and schemes that do the work.

• Security clearance: give the level (BPSS, CTC, SC or DV) and the year it was granted. UK clearances belong to a post rather than to you, so after you leave write "SC cleared until <month year>"; a defence employer may be able to reactivate a recent clearance faster than starting again. Be honest, because it is checked.
• Civilian accreditation of military courses: many Army courses carry civilian qualifications (ILM, City & Guilds, Pearson BTEC, apprenticeships). Ask your unit education centre or resettlement adviser what yours are worth and list them by their civilian names.
• Appraisal and course reports: plain-language descriptions of your duties, useful for drafting bullets. Use the wording, but do not attach the reports.
• Discharge papers and your certificate of service: keep them, but do not attach them to a private-sector application unless asked.
• Leadership and promotion courses: junior NCO cadres, the Section Commanders' Battle Course, command, leadership and management courses, Sandhurst for officers. Give the year.
• Enhanced Learning Credits (ELCAS) help pay for Level 3 or higher qualifications once you have enough qualifying service, and can be used for a period after you leave; Standard Learning Credits cover smaller courses while you serve. Check the current rules with your education centre.
• CTP resettlement: depending on your length of service you get resettlement time, a training grant and access to Career Transition Partnership courses, job fairs and civilian work attachments. If you are on one, say so and give your availability date.
• Real civilian qualifications you may already hold or can get funded: Category C or C+E licence with Driver CPC, IOSH Managing Safely or the NEBOSH General Certificate, CompTIA A+ or Security+, FREC, PRINCE2, Six Sigma, forklift (RTITB), an SIA licence, ILM Level 3 to 5.
• Funding for study: learning credits (above) and, for some service leavers, help with tuition fees for a first full Level 3 qualification or a first degree. List a qualification in progress with modules completed and an expected date.

• Private sector: one page can work for junior soldiers, and two pages is the UK norm for an NCO with a decade in. Reverse chronological. Group all your Army time under one employer with separate role entries so it reads as promotion, not job hopping.
• Plain single-column layout, PDF, no photo, no date of birth. Do not add a flag, a cap badge or a regimental crest; it reads as decoration to a civilian recruiter.
• Name your unit generically ("British Army, Infantry Battalion, Tidworth") and skip anything sensitive about operations, capabilities or locations.
• Civil Service jobs are the exception: you apply through Civil Service Jobs and are assessed against Success Profiles, usually with behaviour examples or a personal statement written to the advert's criteria as well as a CV. Many employers have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and some offer veterans a guaranteed interview if they meet the essential criteria; check each advert.
• Include a target job title at the top. Recruiters sort by title, and "Veteran" is not a job title.

Mirror the advert's language inside your bullets. Depending on the industry, these are the words that usually connect:

• Operations and logistics: supervisor, shift leader, stock control, cycle count, dispatch, load planning, fleet availability.
• Safety: risk assessment, incident investigation, HSE, RIDDOR, near-miss reporting, toolbox talk.
• Defence industry: security-cleared personnel, programme support, government-furnished equipment, quality control, contract deliverable.
• Trades and maintenance: preventive maintenance, work order, troubleshooting, hydraulics, electrical systems.
• People-facing roles: training delivery, onboarding, performance coaching, standard operating procedure.