How personalized AI image analysis can help you translate your military experience
I highlighted military-to-civilian career transition themes and challenges in a previous post. Some challenges are a need for better civilian job market awareness as well as employer actions involving veteran recruitment and hiring. Fortunately, translating your relevant military experience on application materials and to employers is familiar advice for transitioning service members.
Translating your military experience
Unfortunately, military experience translation is also a common challenge for people leaving service and exploring different careers. Moreover, I’ve heard people say that “translating your relevant military experience” is more important.
Relevance is undoubtedly significant for specific roles, but service members typically have untapped transferable skills, knowledge, and attitudes that can be translated across multiple careers to find a better fit.
But what does “translation” mean when starting or pivoting a career?
This post aims to show how rolemodel’s AI-enabled reflection tool helps veterans translate and transfer their military experience to different civilian careers.
Some simple definitions
First, translation can be defined as:
The action of converting from one language to another and related senses.
Putting military jargon and acronyms aside momentarily, related senses are likely a key insight.
Second, one definition of experience is:
Knowledge resulting from actual observation or from what one has undergone.
Key insights here are knowledge and undergone.
Our approach to observing your related senses
Put another way, our approach to translating your military experience is to help you:
1) Reflect on what you have done (or undergone).
2) Identify transferable and cross-functional (or related) job role competencies.
3) Organize your competencies with our knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs, and technologies (KSABT©) framework.
Reflect, identify, and organize with rolemodel
We know that reflection can seem abstract, so we made it practical. More importantly, we made it visual. Reflecting on what you have done in the military sometimes requires going back in time. One of the best ways to go back in time is through pictures.
Here’s how rolemodel reflection© works
We used machine learning for image analysis, pattern recognition, competencies mapping, and technology identification. The goal was to allow veterans to identify and articulate their relevant experiences and competencies, helping them translate their military experience to different civilian careers and roles.
Below is the working three-step process:
Step 1: Upload up to 50 of your favorite military photos.
Step 2: Choose diverse KSABT elements and add them to your civilian career design template.
Step 3: Complete your design template and explore role matches.
Show me don’t tell me
Ok. I chose one of my favorite pics as a demo.
Picture 1 input description: Vehicle convoy briefing as part of the “Last Patrol,” a mass convoy consisting of 360 vehicles, including 320 Strykers traveling from Baghdad to Kuwait.
Picture 1 output competencies:
· Resource management and operations
· Problem solving
· Critical thinking
· Industry-specialized
· Working with people
· Active listening, communication, and information exchange
· Following instructions and procedures
· Assisting and supporting coworkers
· Leadership and social influence
· Building trust
· Initiative
What about “hard skills”?
Ok. One more.
Picture 2 input description: Routine mounted and dismounted security patrol and local Iraqi elementary school visit while class was in session.
Picture 2 output competencies:
· Project management
· Computer hardware and networking
· Human-technology interaction
· Technology use, monitoring, and control: cybersecurity and application security
· Multilingualism
· Teaching and training
· Leadership and social influence
· Social cultural awareness
Last one
For the readers, can you guess my consistent behaviors, emotional intelligence traits, and beliefs? The same ones I exhibit 13 years later.
The line between the military and civilians
Nowadays, multinational militaries live within and work closely with civilian communities. Our AI-enabled military experience reflection is not limited to combat operations. It includes everything from German-American volksfest planning to regional critical national infrastructure analysis.
If you would like to try rolemodel reflection©, sign-up here. We’ll let you know when it’s ready to…..roll.
Victor R. Morris is a former US Army Captain and experienced international defense consultant. He was a training facilitator in over 20 European countries from 2013 to 2021. Victor is currently the rolemodel founder as well as a London-based social impact entrepreneur and certified professional resume writer working with Europe-based transitioning military members. His interests include talent management, machine learning, natural language processing, and writing children’s books.