From our founder
The real story behind BMR
Before the Navy, I was homeless. I worked two part-time jobs and slept in my car, looking for any path out. I didn’t come from a military family. I walked into a recruiter’s office because I liked the idea of eating three meals a day and having a roof over my head.
I served nearly a decade as a Navy Diver. I deployed to Japan (where I met my wife), Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. I led dive teams through high-stakes underwater operations: salvage, demo, leadership. The skills were real. The translation, as I’d find out later, was nonexistent.
I figured nearly a decade of military experience would translate to something good on the civilian side. It didn’t. I spent 16 months unemployed and another 14 months severely underemployed. I was also going to college full-time for an IT degree, mostly so my GI Bill BAH could pay the rent. We moved four times. My daughter was born during all of it. I eventually took a minimum-wage job and lost 50 pounds I didn’t have to lose from the stress of barely making rent.
“What the f*%k is this? This is garbage.”
That conversation was over ten years ago. The decade since hasn’t been spent looking back. It’s been spent climbing. Federal roles, private-sector moves, lessons I had to learn the hard way at every step. That’s the second half of the perspective behind BMR: not just a veteran who once struggled, but someone who’s been navigating civilian career moves for a full decade and made the climb work.
The method behind BMR was tested before it was built. In the ten years since I got out I have moved between the private sector and federal service, through five different careers: property, environmental, logistics, contracting and engineering. For more than eight years of that, at every new place, I found the highest-ranking person I could and asked them to tear my resume apart. The last one, a GS-14, stopped giving me notes and started taking things out. That is when I knew it was done. I used it to mentor the veterans on my own teams first. Then I built it into something 23,726 veterans have used, and they are landing on both sides: six-figure private-sector roles and federal jobs on the first application.
That conversation is also why Best Military Resume exists. It’s the tool I needed back then and didn’t have. For three years now I’ve worked directly with veterans on their resumes and watched them land six-figure private-sector offers and senior civil-service roles. Those stories aren’t mine to tell, so we let them tell their own.
The free resumes are the mission, and they’re staying free. No veteran should be priced out of getting their experience translated correctly. That’s the whole point.
Brad Tachi, founder
Two free tailored resumes, two cover letters, LinkedIn optimization, elevator pitches, and interview prep, for every service member, veteran, and military spouse.
