Here’s how to learn it faster than you think
Mar 25, 2026
Yesterday I was in an Army meeting.
One officer said “out” every time he finished speaking. Others were dropping “ack” into every other sentence.
It started on time, exactly on time, ran for thirty minutes, and ended clean.
If you’d been a civilian in that room, you’d have followed most of it.
But not all of it.
Here’s the thing. Civilian workplaces are no different.
People might turn up a few minutes late. Meetings drift. But they have their own language, shorthand, and unwritten way of doing things. Every workplace does. Construction. Finance. Engineering. They all sound slightly foreign on day one.
And all you have to do is learn it.
When I moved into recruitment, I had no idea how the commercial world worked. It took me the best part of a year to feel completely comfortable and recruitment isn’t even a technically complex industry. It just had its own rhythms, its own language, its own rules that nobody writes down.
So when people tell you to translate your experience into civilian speak, they’re right.
But they make it sound harder than it is.
Read around your sector. Listen to podcasts. Watch YouTube. They all help.
But nothing moves the needle faster than talking to someone already doing the job.
Not reading about it.
Actually, speaking to someone in the role, asking what the work really looks like, and where someone with your background would land.
Then get exposure. Be in rooms with civilians already doing the job.
Choose course providers where the delegates are not just people like you leaving the forces, or better still find work experience. That’s how you close the gap.
And more often than not, it’s smaller than you think.
Speak to a recruiter too. They’ll tell you straight how you stack up.
The language will come.
It always does.