A resume lands on your desk. The most recent job is a project coordinator role at a logistics firm. Before that, an operations job at a mid-size company. Keep scrolling and you find it near the bottom. Eight years in the Army. Then nothing about the military for the last six years.

This candidate left service more than five years ago. Since then they have worked civilian jobs, maybe switched fields once or twice, and now they want to switch again. The military is old news on paper. So a lot of recruiters skim past it.

That is a mistake. The skills that made this person valuable in uniform did not expire. But the way this resume reads forces you to work harder to see them. This guide shows you how to read a resume where military service is buried, how to keep age and recency bias out of your screen, and where to find these candidates on purpose.

This is a narrow slice of the veteran pool. If you want the broader play for established veterans, read how to source mid-career and second-career veterans first. This article stays on one problem. The candidate served years ago, the military is not their most recent role, and they are pivoting industries again.

Why Does Military Experience Still Matter Years After Service?

Some hiring managers treat military experience like a perishable good. If it was more than a few years back, they figure it has gone stale. That logic does not hold up.

Think about what the military actually trains. It builds people who lead under pressure, run complex operations, and own results when the stakes are real. Those are not skills that fade in five years behind a desk. They are the base layer under everything the person has done since.

Here is the part recruiters miss. A veteran who left service and then succeeded in two civilian jobs has already proven the hardest part. They proved their military skills transfer. The civilian roles on that resume are the receipt. You are not betting on potential. You are looking at a track record.

The numbers back this up. Veterans who served during Gulf War-era I (August 1990 to August 2001) make up 3.3 million of the veteran population, and many of them left service well over a decade ago. The overall veteran job market stayed tight in 2025. Veteran men had an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent, lower than the 4.3 percent rate for nonveteran men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Experienced veterans are working. The strong ones are not sitting in a stack of open applications.

How Do You Read a Resume Where the Military Is Not the Most Recent Role?

On a recent transition resume, the military sits at the top. It is easy to find. On a re-career resume, it sits in the middle or the bottom. The reading job is different. You have to read in two passes.

First pass: read the civilian jobs like you would any other candidate. What did they own? Did they grow? Did they get promoted or take on more scope? This tells you how the person has performed in your world.

Second pass: go back to the military section and use it to explain the rest. The military line is where the leadership and the scale come from. A person who ran a 30-person section in the Army and then became a civilian operations supervisor is not a junior hire. The military explains the ceiling.

What Should You Look For in the Military Section?

You do not need to decode every acronym. Focus on three things. Look at the rank to gauge how senior they were. Look at how many people and how much equipment or budget they were responsible for. Look at how long they held leadership roles.

If the military job title throws you, that is normal. A guide on how to read a military job title on a resume walks through the common ones. For a deeper screen, our veteran resume evaluation guide covers the full read.

How Do You Keep Age and Recency Bias Out of the Screen?

Two quiet biases hurt this candidate. The first is recency bias. You weight the last job heavily and discount the military because it was years ago. The second is age bias. Someone who served eight years and then worked civilian jobs for six is likely in their late thirties or forties. That should be a plus. Too often it gets read as "set in their ways."

Both biases cost you good people. The fix is a process that judges the whole record, not just the top of the page.

Score the candidate against the job, not against a mental picture of an ideal hire. Write down the must-have skills before you read the resume. Then check the resume against that list. This keeps you from making a snap call based on how old the military line looks.

If your applicant tracking system filters by recent keywords, it may be hiding these people from you before a human ever looks. A resume where the military terms sit at the bottom can rank lower than a resume that repeats your exact keywords up top. The system does not reject it. It just never rises to the top of the list. We cover this failure in detail in why your ATS is burying qualified veteran applicants.

How Do You Evaluate Transferable Leadership From Years Back?

Leadership is the strongest thing this candidate brings, and it is the part that does not age. A person who led a team at 24 in a high-stakes environment carries that wiring for life. Your job is to confirm it is still active.

Do not just take the military line at face value. Connect it to the civilian record. Ask in the interview how they led their first civilian team. Ask what they changed when they moved from a military chain of command to a civilian one. Their answer tells you whether the leadership transferred or stalled.

Look for the through-line. The best re-career candidates show leadership in uniform, then leadership again in their civilian jobs. That repeat pattern is the proof. For a structured way to grade it, see how to assess leadership from a military background.

What If Their Field Does Not Match Your Open Role?

Re-career candidates pivot by definition. The label on their last job may not match your req. That scares off recruiters who screen by title. It should not.

The military teaches people to learn fast and run things they were not born knowing. That is the whole point of the pivot. A veteran who went from infantry to logistics to your sales operations role has shown they can cross lanes. The pattern of crossing lanes is the skill you want.

Map the underlying skills, not the job titles. A supply sergeant who later managed a warehouse and now wants a planning role shares one thread the whole way through. They move material and people on time. Read for that thread. Our guide on how to map a military career field to your open reqs shows the method.

And drop the old assumption that a veteran with a varied path only fits entry-level work. A career that spans the military plus two civilian fields is a senior profile, not a junior one. We unpack that bias in stop assuming veterans only fit hourly roles.

Where Do You Find Veterans Who Left Service Years Ago?

You will not find these candidates at a transition fair. Those events are full of people leaving service this year. Re-career veterans separated long ago. They are already in the workforce. You have to go where working professionals are, then filter for the veteran signal.

Build a real sourcing process instead of waiting on inbound applications. The strong re-career candidates are employed and not scanning job boards. You have to reach them. Our veteran candidate search process lays out the steps.

For employer hiring resources straight from the source, the Department of Labor VETS program lists free tools for reaching veterans at every career stage.

How Do You Pitch the Role to a Re-Career Veteran?

This candidate is employed and choosy. They left one field and are picking the next one with care. A generic job post will not move them. You have to speak to where they are.

Lead with the scope of the role and the mission behind it. Name a real title that reflects their level. State the pay range up front. A re-career veteran has bills and a track record. They will not chase a vague offer or a title that demotes them from where they already are.

The fastest way to lose this person is to treat the pivot as a reason to lowball. They are not starting over. They are bringing a full career and choosing to point it at you. Price the role at what the work is worth.

Where BMR Fits

The hard part of reaching re-career veterans is finding them while they are still working. They are not in the inbound pile. Best Military Resume gives you a pool of veteran candidates you can search by skill and experience, including people who served years ago and are open to the right move.

The pool stays fresh. More than 1,000 new profiles are added every month, and over 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. That means you are searching real, current candidates, not a stale list. When you find a fit, you reach out directly instead of waiting for an application that may never come.

If you want to put experienced veterans in front of your open roles, reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool. We will help you find the candidates other recruiters skim right past.