Armed service members who hang up their military uniforms to transition into civilian life don’t have an easy go of it, especially in the job market. The unemployment rate for veterans who served in the military since Sept. 2001 stands at 11.7 percent, higher than the national average, which has hovered around 9 percent, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.

By training if not by nature, most service members are disciplined, organized, loyal and punctual and they work well under pressure. They are mission-oriented. They are accustomed to leading and being led. These are all attributes that any employer would prize. Yet many men and women who have proudly served their country in the military cannot find a way to be of service in the civilian workforce.

One of their biggest challenges is matching their skill set with the civilian workplace equivalent, says Mike Starich, president of Orion International, a Cary, N.C.-based recruiting firm that specializes in placing former military members into the civilian workforce.

While it’s true that the military can prepare people for specific professions and trades, the average enlisted man or woman “doesn’t have a clue how their skills fit into the civilian world,” Starich says.

The fact that an ex-infantryman can fieldstrip and reassemble a rifle in 50 seconds flat probably has no place on his résumé; however, his mechanical ability is something he should highlight.

So are transferable “soft skills” the military instills like working with individuals from diverse backgrounds and understanding complex processes.

Former service members should start their job search by making a list of such soft skills as well as the “hard skills” they learned in the military and their civilian world equivalents. A recruiting firm that specializes in placing former military members can help create a skills inventory. In addition, the military offers a Transitional Assistance Program to teach job-search skills.

“Once those strengths have been identified, these days with the Internet they can do job searches by keyword or go to job boards and read job descriptions,” Starich says.

Many times, this exercise reveals to jobseekers that they’ve performed similar job functions in the military, but they describe them differently.

“The military uses different nomenclature,” Starich says.

Then, for résumé writing and interviewing, jobseekers must translate their military experience into jargon-free civilian speak,” says J.P. Sniffen, Orion’s West Coast recruiter.

“Think about going back home and talking to your grandmother who doesn’t know anything about the military,” Sniffen says.

The average hiring manager is in the same boat. She won’t understand the significance of a candidate’s role as an HM3 (Navy hospital corpsman 3rd class) or the responsibilities it entails. But if told the candidate provided emergency medical treatment in combat for a platoon of 20 Marines and also maintained $1.5 million worth of medical equipment, the hiring manager can see the applicability of the corpsman’s experience.

In business, “Numbers are a universal language,” Sniffen says. “Use numbers to quantify your results.”

Here are seven job-search tips and insights to help former military members prove they can get the job done, in or out of uniform.

• While the military is all about teamwork, job seekers must be prepared to tell in an interview how they as individuals contributed to the success of an organization. This takes practice, Sniffen says.

• Many former military professionals looking for private sector jobs also try for government jobs, which have different application requirements including multi-page résumés. “If you try to send a six- or seven-page resume to Frito Lay or HP or Honeywell, the HR department will laugh,” Sniffen warns. A one-page résumé is the norm for private sector jobs.

• Ex-military members should refrain from saying “sir” or “ma’am” in an interview because it reinforces the “robotic” stereotype, Sniffen says.

• “If you’re asked to tell about a time when you resolved a conflict, don’t describe a situation where you ended up pulling rank,” Sniffen says, “because you can’t do that in the civilian world. There’s more of a consensus style of leadership where, essentially, you try to get buy-in from all levels of the organization.”

• Civilians don’t know what an achievement or commendation medal signifies. But they will understand and appreciate what it means to be awarded or recognized for specific accomplishments and outstanding achievement. Former service members should revise their résumé s accordingly.

• In the civilian world, a battalion, platoon or company equates roughly to a department, unit or group within a corporation. A mission is more clearly understood as a task, function, objective or goal.

• Military roles have civilian counterparts. For example, a field grade officer is responsible for leading projects and supervising workers, not unlike executives, department heads and managers in the civilian sector. In this case, the key in an interview would be to emphasize the managerial nature of the role and responsibilities.