Making Your Federal Experience Private Sector-Ready
On October 21, 2025, Marcelle Yeager, offered her suggestions on how to best translate your federal experience for the private sector. This session was her second with the Pivot with Purpose initiative, and Laura Sheehan (Georgetown SFS) moderated the discussion. (Please feel free to view and learn more about her first session! )
Many of us are curious about the private sector world and the opportunities it holds. Yet we may be equally stumped as to translating our federal experiences into private sector language – especially on our resumes and LinkedIn profiles.
After helping us craft resumes that open doors (with expert AI tips and tricks), in this session, Yeager went deeper into explaining how to best frame our federal experience for the private sector audience.
According to her, any time you present yourself or your skills and background (and in any context!) it is crucial to frame it using a “You, Me, Us” model. In other words, it is vitally important to address your audience (the “you”), discuss your background (the “me”), and show your fit in that organization by describing what you can offer them and how you can help solve their challenges (the “us”).
Moreover, Yeager offers four key tactics that should help us all gain more traction in the private sector:
- Express your federal work experience in private sector- friendly language;
- Identify the best fitting job titles and position your skills and strengths for these roles;
- Broaden your understanding of industries and roles you may have otherwise overlooked;
- Use AI to help you get unstuck when identifying skills, words, and titles that resonate with the private sector.
There can be no doubt that the private sector lean on different formats, language, and descriptors when evaluating candidates for a position opening. Despite the differences between federal and private sector resumes, Yeager stressed that we all have the skills and experiences private firms prize – it’s simply a matter of explaining it in a way that “hits” with our intended audience.
For example, we have all navigated complex organizations and cultures to achieve results; we have all learned to work quickly in new environments or contexts; and we are familiar with diverse industries and regions of the world. All of these competencies are valuable int he private sector. Thus, it is critical that we do not undersell ourselves.
During her presentation, Yeager also stressed that knowing the best language to use both influences how we express our experiences and reveals which opportunities are best fits for our skills, too.
Here, AI can be an indispensable tool. For instance, we can use it to help us identify key skills in our resumes or background that may help us learn more about certain sectors in which to pursue employment. We can also use these programs to identify private sector equivalent job titles to those we have held in the federal government. We can even, of course, prompt AI to name companies or organizations with which we have yet to familiarize ourselves.
Considered together, having a better handle on our own skills, private sector job titles, and new organizations can help assist our efforts to pivot into new career paths successfully.
Furthermore, Yeager emphasized the importance of doing our research into companies and sectors to get a better handle on their preferred language and develop a closer understanding of the challenges these companies or sectors face.
In addition to preparing us for our interview (should we make it to that stage), this research also grants us the opportunity to taking a deeper look into industries and roles we may otherwise never consider. Yeager reminded us that our skills are broadly applicable across a variety of positions in the private sector – though there are a dizzying number of opportunities to be seized, learning where to look for new roles and career fields benefits us as we look to pivot into new careers!
Finally, Yeager advised us to not feel too discouraged should we get stuck. As many other presenters have stated, searching for a new job and career is a a marathon, not a sprint.
Again, using AI to help identify new skills, words, and titles that resonate with the private sector may be of particular help. Similar to how Jeremy Schifeling instructed us to “prompt” AI tools to develop our resumes and enhance our job search , we can direct these same applications to better tailor our language and job searches to fit private sector preferences.
Whether you are interested in applying to your first private sector role or actively applying, these tips and tricks will hopefully help make your federal experience private sector-ready. We all have the skills and background needed to thrive in these roles; it just comes down to finding them and (when we see an opportunity we want to pursue) using the right language to frame and contextualize our expertise to get a hiring managers’ attention!
Other Previous Sessions
Please feel free to browse our other previous sessions to access summaries, video content, and more information about our other events!