A step-by-step guide for logistics service leavers: name what you did, find the civilian equivalent and put it on a CV. Built on the Royal Navy's own published role descriptions.
Analysis of the Veterans' Survey 2022 (GOV.UK, April 2025) found that just over half of veterans, 52.5%, had at some point taken a job below the level of their last military role. The figure for Royal Navy veterans was 52.8%, and one of the two most cited reasons was that employers did not recognise transferable military skills. The survey is classed as official statistics in development and its sample is self-selected, so the figures indicate a pattern and are best read as a guide.
That reason is a translation problem, and a service leaver can act on it. A title such as Leading Hand, or a task such as a stocktake, means little to a civilian reader, yet the work behind it nearly always has a civilian name. This guide gives a method, a translation of the logistics trades as the Royal Navy publishes them, a translation of the training most logisticians hold, and CV lines to adapt.
The vocabulary is usually the only thing missing. Work through the method on your own tasks, check the result against a published source, and only then decide what training you need.
Scope, scale and authority, with the consequence of failure. Write the task precisely, for example "checked each consignment against its paperwork before signing, on an account worth £Xm".
What would have gone wrong if you had skipped the task, and who relied on the result?
Match it to the nearest civilian role or control language. A plausible match is enough to start a conversation.
Close the gaps that are real. Leave the ones that are only gaps in vocabulary.
Part 1
Supply Chain Rating
Manages the delivery of vital stores and equipment to Navy personnel worldwide; trains to NVQ level, with an Intermediate Apprenticeship in Warehousing and Storage.
First-line inventory and supply control: receiving, issuing and recording stock.
Inventory controller, stock controller, stores or warehouse coordinator, supply chain administrator.
Leading Hand
Runs a stores account, and sources and allocates key equipment.
Personal accountability for an account of assets and its record.
Stock control supervisor, inventory team leader, materials coordinator.
Petty Officer
Becomes a line manager, mentoring and supporting others.
Supervising a team and approving the first-line checks it prepares: maker-checker.
Supply chain team leader, section manager, inventory or materials manager.
Logistics Officer
Leads logistics teams across supply chain, personnel and finance, coordinating the movement of supplies and personnel worldwide. Chartered routes include CILT and CIPD.
Operational management across supply and finance.
Logistics manager, supply chain manager, operations manager.
Writer
Responsible for HR, legal matters and financial administration for the ship’s company.
People administration and pay.
HR adviser, HR administrator, payroll.
Catering Services Rating
Runs a commercial kitchen, including ordering, receiving and accounting for provisions.
Commercial food operations and stock accounting.
Kitchen supervisor, catering manager, food safety lead.
The left column paraphrases the published careers pages (Logistics profession, Supply Chain Rating, Logistics and Personnel Officer, Writer and Catering Services Rating, read on 21 October 2026). Where the civilian reading says "my reading", it is my interpretation and is not on the careers pages. Civilian titles are search terms, and levels vary by employer. The pages describe the role at entry and at each promotion, so what you did at your own level may be wider.
Part 2
Stocktaking and stock verification
Cycle counting, physical inventory verification, existence and completeness testing, and variance investigation.
Inventory control and stock accuracy roles; inventory audit support in finance and audit teams.
Inventory and stores accounting
Inventory management, materials management, asset register upkeep and reconciliation of physical stock to records.
Inventory controller, materials planner, supply chain analyst. CILT and CIPS routes for progression.
Dangerous goods: air, sea and road
Regulated goods compliance: classifying, packing, marking, documenting and moving hazardous cargo.
Dangerous goods coordinator, hazmat or DG compliance, freight forwarding DG specialist.
Movements and customs documentation
Transport planning, freight forwarding, and import and export compliance.
Freight and transport planner, customs compliance, trade compliance.
Supervising contractors and suppliers
Supplier and contractor management, and contract governance.
Supplier manager, contract manager, third-party risk.
Delivering training, for example dangerous goods awareness
Safety-critical training delivery and competence assurance.
Training coordinator, compliance trainer.
A note on dangerous goods. IATA requires recurrent training at least every 24 months for air shipments, and an out-of-date certificate means retaking the initial course. For road transport, the statutory Dangerous Goods Safety Adviser is a separate exam-based qualification, with a certificate valid for five years and specific to transport modes, so holding military dangerous goods training does not make you a DGSA. Employers often want a current certificate from an approved civilian provider for the mode they use. Check the current exam and approval arrangements on GOV.UK before you book anything.
Part 3
Monthly checks against a standard question set
Answers a fixed set of control questions, with evidence, and raises exceptions.
Control self-assessment
First-line key control testing.
Approving checks that others prepared
A second person approves the first person’s work.
Maker-checker and supervisory review
Formal handover of an account
A certified baseline of the account’s condition at each change of custody.
Custody transfer and handover certification
Preparing for external inspection
Showing that records match the physical state before independent testers arrive.
Audit readiness and evidence preparation
Inspection findings with an owner and a date
Findings tracked to closure, with evidence of closure.
Issue management and corrective action tracking
Escalating losses above a limit
Materiality decides who may clear a loss, and the escalation creates the trail.
Delegated authority and exception reporting
Controlled documents and need-to-know
The right version reaches the right people, with a record of who holds it.
Document control and information classification
Keeping output going under disruption
Continuity is tested by real disruption, not only by the plan.
Operational resilience and business continuity
The full fourteen-row version, with the framework references, is in Same Control, Two Vocabularies.
Part 4
Maintained stores records and prepared the unit for inspection.
Operated first-line inventory controls for an account of £X, reconciling physical stock to records monthly and supporting independent inspection.
Carried out stocktakes.
Ran cycle counts and investigated variances to root cause, bringing an account from [state] to [state].
Supervised the section.
Led a team of [n], approving the monthly control checks they prepared and escalating exceptions.
Dangerous goods awareness.
Held current dangerous goods training for [modes], and delivered awareness training to [n] personnel.
Handed over the account.
Certified the account’s condition at each change of custody, so ownership passed on a documented baseline.
Dealt with contractors.
Oversaw external contractors against contract requirements and verified their work to standard.
Part 5
Engineering, warfare and healthcare are mapped in outline in Independently Verified Skills Mapping, and communications, personnel and operations are covered in the worksheet. Those mappings have not been checked by people who held the jobs. If you served in one of those trades, run the method on your own work and send me your best translation lines, and I will credit you only with your permission.
Support
The Career Transition Partnership, delivered by Reed in Partnership, supports leavers with transferable-skills identification, CV development, employment fairs and funded training. In most cases support is available from two years before discharge, so check your own eligibility with them. Use the CTP alongside this guide: do the translation first, then choose the course.
It is a translation aid for people describing their own experience. The frameworks named are pointers to where an equivalent control is written down, and they are not claims of conformity. Knowing that a handover certificate is a custody transfer control does not make a logistician an auditor, and the civilian job titles are search terms, not equivalence claims.
A caution also applies to the guide itself: naming a control is no evidence that it worked. Keep the figures you can defend in an interview, and say plainly which parts of a role you held.
A printable PDF of this guide, with the method and the tables, plus a worksheet to fill in with your own tasks. Chain of Custody is the free newsletter where I publish practical supply chain assurance writing, if you want more of it.