How to turn your evaluations into résumé bullets

Your evaluations already record what you did, how much of it and what came of it. They also carry box checks, praise and promotion forecasts an employer can't use, and names and ID numbers that should never leave your own copy.

If you're getting out and writing your first civilian résumé, your evaluations are the best record you have of what you actually did. DoD's own help page for the Verification of Military Experience and Training (VMET) says the jobs listed on that document may not reflect what you did or what your annual evaluations say.

The trouble is that an evaluation is written to rate you for promotion, not to get you hired. The Air Force, for one, says its performance briefs inform promotion recommendations. So each one mixes facts about the job and its results with judgments, such as box checks and rankings, and with forecasts about your next promotion. Only the facts belong on a résumé, and most forms tell you where they sit.

This guide goes through every branch's forms: where the facts are, what to leave out, and how to handle rankings, praise and the names printed on every page. For the rest of the résumé, see our guide to translating military experience into a civilian résumé. Here is the change on one Navy evaluation.

Facts, judgments and forecasts

The evaluation rules we could check all separate what you did from what your raters think of you. The Army says it most plainly: rater comments are about performance, and comments about potential are reserved for the senior rater. On officer reports, intermediate raters may comment on potential too, and so may raters on colonel and brigadier general OERs. The Marine Corps tells reporting seniors to list only results and achievements in Section C of a fitness report, with no mention of personal qualities.

So ask three questions of every line. Is it a fact about the job, such as how many people you supervised? Is it a result, something that happened because of what you did? Or is it a judgment or a forecast: a mark, a box check, a ranking, a recommendation, an adjective? Facts and results become bullets. Judgments and forecasts stay off the résumé, with one narrow exception for written rankings, covered below.

Each evaluation is also a dated slice of one job. Army comments must cover only the rating period, so an evaluation's dates and duty title tell you which job on your résumé its facts belong under. The Labor Department (DOL) says to list your achievements from each job you've held, under that job.

Work from your own copy, offline

Part II of every Army evaluation lists the rater's and senior rater's names, SSN or DoD ID numbers, ranks, positions and email addresses, and Part I holds your own ID number. The Army says the contents are personal and may contain personally identifiable information, and that completed forms need special handling.

Don't upload or paste your evaluations into any website, résumé builder or AI chatbot, OperationMOS included. Keep them on paper or your own device, and copy out only the fact you need, in your own words, one at a time. The same goes for an Army award recommendation on DA Form 638, which carries your Social Security number in block 6.

Nothing from the header blocks goes on a résumé. Neither do the health details in the body: the Army's fitness-test and height-and-weight blocks, or any comment about a profile, a pregnancy exemption or weight control.

Army NCOERs and OERs

The Army uses three NCOER forms: DA Form 2166-9-1 for sergeants, 2166-9-2 for staff sergeants through first sergeants and master sergeants, and 2166-9-3 for sergeants major and command sergeants major. Officers get one of four OER forms by grade, DA Form 67-10-1 through 67-10-4, from warrant officer one to brigadier general.

On both, start with Part III, the duty description. On an NCOER the rater enters it and you verify it, and the Army says the scope should include the number of people supervised, equipment, facilities and dollars involved. Block e lists appointed duties, which is where additional duties show up. The OER's Part III does the same job in a short paragraph: duties, people supervised, resources controlled and scope. Either way, Part III describes the job, not what you achieved.

Results are in Part IV. NCOER rater bullets are short by rule: no more than two lines, in the past tense, and starting with "his," "her" or an action verb. Raters are also told to use a specific example only once, so each fact sits in one block and you have to read them all. Achieves, Leads and Develops are the blocks most likely to hold results. Character, which covers Army Values and how you promoted a climate of dignity and respect, rarely holds anything an employer can use.

OERs are different. Bullets aren't allowed on officer evaluations, so the rater writes a narrative "word picture," and you'll pull the facts out of sentences. On both forms, the senior rater's section is about potential: promotion, command, schooling and the assignments you're recommended for next. Those are forecasts, and a recommended assignment isn't a job you held.

A rater may also cite an award from the period, which you can confirm against the award's own record. And school results, including the Basic Leader Course, go on a DA Form 1059 academic evaluation report, not the NCOER.

Navy EVALs, CHIEFEVALs and FITREPs

The Navy has three forms. EVAL, on NAVPERS 1616/26, covers E-1 through E-6. CHIEFEVAL, on NAVPERS 1616/27, covers chiefs, E-7 through E-9. FITREP covers officers, on NAVPERS 1610/2 for W-2 through O-6 and 1610/5 for O-7 and O-8.

The written comments are in one block, which the instruction calls Comments on Performance: block 43 on an EVAL, block 40 on a CHIEFEVAL and block 41 on a FITREP. BUPERSINST 1610.10H tells reporting seniors to write directly and factually, to prefer bullet style, to give examples of performance and results, and to quantify wherever possible. It also says to use everyday language, without flowery adjectives. Where a reporting senior followed that, the block is close to résumé-ready.

Several other blocks look like data but aren't résumé material. On an EVAL, block 40 is the average of your trait marks, and block 41 holds one or two career recommendations of up to 20 characters each. Those are recommendations, not jobs you held. Your promotion recommendation is compared within a summary group. That's generally everyone in your paygrade with the same promotion status who gets the same type of report from the same reporting senior on the same ending date. The summary block, block 46 on an EVAL, 43 on a FITREP and 48 on a CHIEFEVAL, shows how many in that group got each recommendation.

We couldn't confirm the current rules for the Navy forms' other blocks, so we don't cover them.

Marine Corps fitness reports and JEPES

Fitness reports cover Marines from sergeant through major general, and MCO 1610.7B splits the facts across two sections. Section B, the billet description, should reflect the significant duties and responsibilities you performed over the reporting period. Section C, billet accomplishments, is about what you accomplished. The order tells reporting seniors to list only the results and achievements themselves, with no reference to personal qualities or potential impact. Section C is close to a ready-made list of bullets, though it's left blank on extended and not-observed reports.

Section I holds the reporting senior's directed and additional comments, which can mix facts and praise, so read it the way you'd read Navy comments. Section K belongs to the reviewing officer: a comparative assessment, marked on a pyramid in K-3, and a comment in K-4. The relative values and reporting senior profile on your Master Brief Sheet are the fitness report system's own comparisons. None of those is an achievement.

If you kept the worksheet you gave your reporting senior, the MROW, read it too. The order expects you to submit a list of billet accomplishments with it, so it may hold facts the final report left out.

Marines from private through corporal are evaluated under JEPES instead. It's mostly marks, but it also carries comments from your chain of command, and you can view them once they're complete. Read those comments for facts and skip the marks.

Air Force, Space Force and Coast Guard

The Air Force now uses the Enlisted Performance Brief (EPB, AF Form 716) for every enlisted grade and the Officer Performance Brief (OPB, AF Form 715) for warrant officers and O-1 through O-6. Both are completed in myEval. Your older evaluations may be Enlisted Performance Reports (EPRs) or Officer Performance Reports (OPRs), which Air Force guidance still listed in 2024. We couldn't confirm the EPB and OPB section rules, or the Air Force's rules on stratification statements. Until we can, read every written line for what you did, how much and what came of it.

The Space Force is separate. The Air Force instruction no longer applies to Guardians, and the Space Force's own policy, SpFI 36-2401, Guardian Evaluations Systems, governs instead. We couldn't confirm the current names of its evaluation forms, so we don't name them. In 2023 the Space Force pointed Guardians to MyFSS for evaluation guidance.

Coast Guard enlisted members get the Enlisted Evaluation Report (EER) at every paygrade, E-1 through E-9. We couldn't confirm which parts of the current EER hold written facts. One mark to ignore: a February 2025 message told rating chains to give every enlisted member a placeholder 4 for Respect for Others, and said it isn't a measure of performance.

Coast Guard officers get an Officer Evaluation Report (OER) on the CG-5310 forms, in use since February 2019. Section 2 holds the position title and description. On the CG-5310B form, Section 3 comments support only the performance dimensions the supervisor selects, not every mark. A 2024 message adds that the reporting officer's comments must align with that officer's own marks.

Rankings, box checks and "promote now"

A box check, a promotion recommendation and a ranking all look like measures, but none of them translates on its own. DOL's rules cover it: use real numbers, and never be dishonest in a job search.

Army box checks are relative and capped. On OERs for lieutenant colonels and below, the rater must keep "Excels" under 50 percent of the officers of that grade they rate, and the senior rater must keep "Most Qualified" under 50 percent too. On NCOERs for staff sergeants through command sergeants major, the senior rater can give "Most Qualified" to no more than 24 percent. Each cap counts only the people that one rating official has rated in your grade. So a top box doesn't mean "top 24 percent of the Army," and it shouldn't appear on a résumé as a percentile. The Army even bars rating officials from writing "top box" language or board shorthand like "definitely a 6+ Soldier" in comments.

Navy promotion recommendations are also compared only within a summary group rated by one reporting senior. And a line like "promote now" or "ready for chief" is a forecast, not a result. The honest civilian version is the promotion or selection that actually happened; DOL suggests making your promotions stand out, so list them with your job titles.

A written ranking, like "#1 of 14," is different, because it names its group and its count. It's still one rating official's judgment, and no branch rule we found says how to use one on a résumé, so this is our suggested practice. Keep a ranking only exactly as the record states it, with its group and its count: "Ranked 1st of 14 staff sergeants," if that is what the record says. Don't round it into a percentage, don't widen the group, and don't add a count the record leaves out. If the record says only "my #1 NCO," leave the ranking off and use the facts around it.

Rewriting rater language

The rewrite follows the same rules as any résumé bullet, which our military-to-civilian résumé guide covers in full. Three problems come up constantly with evaluation text.

First, raters write in the third person, so an NCOER bullet may start with "his" or "her" instead of a verb. DOL says to drop personal pronouns, avoid the phrase "responsible for" and start with an action verb. Second, evaluations use military abbreviations a civilian won't know, so spell them out. CareerOneStop, the Labor Department's career site, calls an OER or NCOER a "performance appraisal" in civilian terms. Third, praise comes out: cut the adjectives and keep the fact underneath.

CareerOneStop does suggest including what supervisors said about your work. From an evaluation, that means a short paraphrase of a comment that states a fact, with the adjectives gone and never the rater's name. A made-up rater line such as "Absolutely superb technician; diagnosed a recurring radar fault that grounded 2 aircraft for 3 weeks" becomes "Diagnosed a recurring radar fault that had grounded 2 aircraft for 3 weeks" on the résumé.

Keep each bullet to one or two lines, close to the Army's own two-line limit for rater bullets, and aim for about 5 to 8 per job. If your last three evaluations cover two jobs, that's room for about 10 bullets. Then match the wording to the posting, because DOL warns that applicant tracking systems can screen out qualified people whose résumés lack its keywords. Federal résumés on USAJOBS follow different rules, including a two-page limit since September 27, 2025.

If you don't have an evaluation

The Army's evaluation reports start at sergeant, so privates through specialists get none, and corporals are counseled on the NCO support form, DA Form 2166-9-1A, but get no NCOER. Junior Marines get JEPES. Navy EVALs start at E-1, and Coast Guard EERs cover every enlisted grade. The Air Force EPB form covers every enlisted grade too, though we couldn't confirm when an Airman gets a first one.

If you're an Army private through corporal, use the other records DOL lists: performance reviews, collateral duties, awards and training records. An Army Achievement Medal or Army Commendation Medal recommendation on DA Form 638 lists up to four specific achievements in block 20. The Army requires award narratives and citations to be factual, concise and corroborated. Citations for those awards are limited to six lines. Your awards are recorded in your official Army file, the same one that holds evaluations.

The support form is worth finding at any rank from corporal up. Page 2 has columns for your major performance objectives and your significant contributions and accomplishments, and Army counseling guidance says objectives should be measurable and verifiable. The rater decides what reaches the NCOER, so the form can hold facts the evaluation left out. The rater gives you the original after each counseling, a corporal's record copy need be kept only one year, and it's a local document, so your copy may be the only one.

One example, start to finish

Example (fictional) Andre Mills is a Marine Corps staff sergeant (E-6), a motor transport maintenance chief who is separating next year and aiming at fleet maintenance supervisor jobs. He requests his fitness reports through milConnect, then works from printed copies at home, not in any website or chatbot. His last three reports cover two billets: two as maintenance chief and one from his earlier tour as a vehicle maintenance instructor.

From the two maintenance chief reports, Section B gives him scope: a 22-Marine section and 61 tactical vehicles. Section C gives him results: readiness raised from 78% to 93% in 5 months, a 140-job maintenance backlog cleared, 9 Marines trained and licensed as vehicle operators, and an outside maintenance inspection passed with no major findings. His MROW adds one thing the reports left out, a dispatch procedure he wrote that 3 other sections began using.

His Section I comment has three parts: praise ("the finest maintenance chief I have served with"), a ranking ("#1 of 6 SSgts in the company") and a forecast ("Promote ahead of peers"). He cuts the praise, keeps the ranking with its group and count, and drops the forecast; his 2024 promotion to staff sergeant goes with the job title instead. He skips Section K, the Master Brief Sheet and the names in the header. From the instructor report he takes 4 courses taught, 118 students graduated and a lesson he rewrote.

That's 6 bullets for his current job and 2 for the instructor tour. The readiness line credits the fleet, because that result belonged to the whole section, and every number is on a page he kept offline.

With a free OperationMOS account, the Evidence Extractor gives you separate boxes for what you did, the scope, the number and what changed, then drafts bullet wording for you to check against your evaluation. You type each fact in yourself, and there's no document to upload. If you press Save, the typed facts and the draft bullets are kept in your OperationMOS account.

This guide covers reading your evaluations for résumé facts, not the whole résumé. For the rest, see how to translate military experience into a civilian résumé, or the Labor Department's free Employment Workshop participant guide.