Teacher → Instructional designer or corporate trainer
What carries over: Designing a curriculum, explaining complex material to mixed audiences, using assessment data to adjust instruction, running a classroom for several hours a day.
The gap to close: Corporate e-learning tools, measuring business results rather than test scores, and a portfolio of two or three sample modules.
How to prove it: Rewrite one unit you built as a short workplace course and show the before-and-after results you measured.
Military logistics or supply specialist → Supply chain, warehouse or operations manager
What carries over: Accountability for high-value inventory, moving people and equipment on deadlines, supervising and evaluating teams, working inside an ERP system.
The gap to close: Civilian vocabulary for the same work, commercial carrier and vendor management, and in some roles a supply-chain certification.
How to prove it: Translate ranks, systems and acronyms into plain terms: team size, inventory value, on-time rate, inspection results.
Retail store manager → Distribution center or operations manager
What carries over: Multi-shift scheduling, labor and payroll budgets, inventory accuracy and shrink, hiring and coaching, receiving and vendor coordination.
The gap to close: Warehouse management system experience and workplace-safety programs at warehouse scale.
How to prove it: Lead with the operating numbers (labor cost, inventory accuracy, deliveries per week), not the customer-facing side.
Registered nurse → Clinical informatics, utilization review or care coordination
What carries over: Clinical judgment, documentation in electronic health records, patient education, prioritizing under pressure, quality and safety work.
The gap to close: Varies by role: experience configuring or training others on the health-record system, payer criteria for utilization review; some employers ask for a specialty certification.
How to prove it: Name the quality projects, super-user or charge roles and documentation improvements you led.
Restaurant or hotel general manager → Customer success or operations manager
What carries over: Keeping a busy team on standard, hiring and training, controlling costs, recovering unhappy guests, reading daily performance numbers.
The gap to close: Software tools such as a customer-relationship system, and the language of renewals, retention and account health.
How to prove it: Show guest-satisfaction, retention and cost results with real figures, and the systems you introduced.
Office administrator → Accounts payable, bookkeeping or office manager
What carries over: Processing invoices and payments, reconciling accounts, preparing statements for an outside accountant, managing vendors.
The gap to close: Formal accounting coursework for anything beyond bookkeeping; accountant roles usually need a degree and a license is required to call yourself a CPA.
How to prove it: Quantify the volume (invoices a month, accounts reconciled, offices supported) and the software you used.
Sales representative → Recruiter or account manager
What carries over: Prospecting, qualifying, handling objections, managing a pipeline, building long-term relationships, hitting targets.
The gap to close: Employment-law basics and applicant-tracking systems for recruiting; deeper product knowledge for account management.
How to prove it: Show pipeline and quota results, and the relationships you kept and grew over time.
Written by NWTS as general guidance. Requirements vary by employer and location; check licensing rules where you plan to work.