Conventional wisdom tells laymen that military and civilian cultures are different in many ways. But as career professionals, we must dig deeper if we are to help our military clients well and establish trust with them from the start.

Perhaps the largest difference goes to the heart of how the uniformed services evaluate and promote people. It’s all about leadership.

When a civilian asks a military person what he or she does, the services want the military person to say “I am a commissioned (or non-commissioned) officer on active duty.” The services want their members to think of the rank or grade they hold first.

Of course, people in uniforms have different MOSs (Military Occupational Specialty for the Army), AFSCs (Air Force Specialty Code), or Ratings (Navy).

These indicate the kind of job each person is holds now. My career is typical. I was, at different times, a flight instructor and examiner, an air operations staff officer, a curriculum designer, a public relations officer, an educational instructor, and an education administrator. But the Air Force, and I, always thought of me as a commissioned officer. And the system used to promote me measured my effectiveness as a leader.

Military professionals know leadership is not the euphemism used in so many parts of the civilian world where it is confused with financial support, political gain, or winning a marketplace advantage.

The military leader feels his responsibility very deeply, and personally, to those who help him or her do the mission. Therefore, it’s completely natural for military clients to say their career field is “management” or “leadership.”

What they don’t realize—what may come as a shock—is there are no such specific career fields in civilian life.

Employers create jobs based on a capability they need. They describe that capability with a job title or career field. Helping our military clients find the one career field (from the many they may have worked in on active duty) that is right for them is our responsibility.

If we don’t guide our clients, they will chase one disconnected “opportunity” after another. That’s because job announcements almost always talk about “leadership,” “people skills,” “problem solving,” “strong communications skills,” and the like. But the military client may miss the skill sets unique to each career field.

For example, a non-profit executive director needs all the skills listed in the previous paragraph. But if she isn’t practiced in cultivating the donors, if she cannot build and enlarge upon a market brand, she won’t succeed.

As a result, our military client will always feel unprepared. Endless “tweaking” of the résumé follows. In the end, even if that person does find a job, how satisfying it will be is open to chance. And since so many Americans are unhappy, or very unhappy, in their work, the chances aren’t good.

You have many tools to help military clients match up with the right career field—as they define “right.”

As you use those tools, reassure your military clients their leadership and management will make them successful in their new careers just as it did when they are on active duty.