I'm a résumé writer for people transitioning out of the federal workforce. Here are my 4 tips.

• Marisol Maloney worked as a recruiter after retiring from the military.
• She observed a gap between the skills federal workers had and how they communicated them on a résumé.
• Maloney suggests figuring out your skills, cutting your résumé down, and switching to corporate lingo.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marisol Maloney, a résumé writer living in San Diego. Business Insider has verified her identity. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a résumé writer and job search coach for transitioning military, veterans, and federal workers looking to switch over to the corporate world.

Lately, I've had a lot of federal employees reach out to me asking for help with their corporate résumés because a lot of them have been let go. About a month ago, I was seeing about a 30% increase.

I retired from the Navy as an intelligence officer. When I left the military, I started working as a technical recruiter for defense contracting.

During my first month, I saw a lot of poorly written résumés. So I started to rewrite résumés for candidates with their permission. Many had the skills to do the jobs I was recruiting for, but hiring managers rejected them. I then did résumés for free on the side for the military community for a year before I decided to start my business.

My business is called Secret Squirrel Consulting because a lot of intel analysts are called Secret Squirrels since we handle top-secret information. When I was in the military, I had to work with top-secret information, so for me, it's second nature to go from top-secret to regular language.

These are four tips I recommend for those looking to transition out of the federal workforce.

1. Figure out your skills

Former federal workers can go anywhere with their skills. They could go into nonprofits, the private sector, or contracting.

I tell people to first analyze their skills and figure out what skills they have that they want to continue using.

People are in love with these big titles, but I tell them, maybe you can get a role as an individual contributor or as a program analyst and still make six figures. Don't just focus on the roles. Focus on the job description and the skills.

If you have those skills, make sure to highlight them on your résumé, and you'll have a better chance of getting recruiters to call you than if you just focus on a random role.

2. Cut it down

No one has time to read a 15, 20, or 30-page résumé.

A lot of federal résumés are very long because when you go to USAjobs.gov, you have to fill in everything you've ever done. Corporate résumés should be more concise. They are just a quick snapshot of your awesomeness to make recruiters or hiring managers want to call you for an interview.

Get rid of the objective statement, veteran's preference statement, and citizenship status — the application will ask for that. Get rid of your GS or GG level, salary, or hours worked. Get rid of your supervisor's name and information. If a company wants to talk to your references in the corporate world, they will ask you.

Remove the long list of college courses and graduation dates. All you need is your Bachelor's or Master's listed. If you only took a few courses, you can list those. Only add 10 years of job experience unless the description specifically asks for 10+ years.

Instead of an objective statement, you want a strong summary section. Then list your top skills and technical skills if you have them. Then you want to list your education, as well as any certifications that you may have and training.

You can add a volunteer section if it's relevant to what you want to do, but on its own, it's a waste of space. The same applies to awards. In the federal workforce, we have so many medals. People don't understand what those medals mean just by listing them. If you explain using metrics and something to quantify how you got that award, civilians will understand that better.

Only write a cover letter if it's required. If you're doing a career transition, that's when the cover letter comes in handy. The cover letter is just meant to explain any discrepancies in your résumé or reintroduce some ideas. It's not to regurgitate what's already in your résumé.

3. Use corporate language

Every person I work with has the skills. The problem is they don't know they have those skills or they don't know how to explain it in corporate language.

Often, they just list their responsibilities. "I was responsible for managing 10 people." You need to change that language to "I led and mentored 10 people," in project management or whatever area it was.

People don't know how to sell themselves, especially in the military, because we're so used to being in leadership roles and saying what our team did. We trained our team. We showed them how to do things, but sometimes we don't know how to take credit for things that we did.

Make sure you use action verbs and detail your accomplishments.

4. Include metrics

In the federal government and in the military, you don't usually keep metrics because everything's funded by the government. But in the corporate world, companies want to know how much money you can make them and how much money you can save them.

Thinking in those terms can be challenging, but many people in the federal workforce and military do work with budgets, especially those in more senior positions or those who work in logistics. They're ordering parts for tactical vehicles or aviation or they're managing budgets. They just don't know how to articulate that.

So, that's what I pull out of them. When they say, I managed million-dollar equipment I'm like, "Did you manage it? What else did you do? Did you order parts?"