Top 12 Marine Skills to Put on Your Resume

The job market is noisy. If you want to rise above it, show skills that actually move the needle at sea and in the field. Whether you’re aiming at maritime posts or Marine Corps–adjacent roles, these 12 marine skills punch hard on a resume and signal you’re ready for rough water, long hours, and mission pressure.

Marine Skills

1. Navigation
2. Marksmanship
3. First Aid
4. Survival Techniques
5. Radio Communication
6. SCUBA Diving
7. Physical Fitness
8. Leadership
9. Risk Management
10. Operational Planning
11. Cybersecurity Fundamentals
12. UAV Operation

1. Navigation

Navigation is plotting and directing a vessel’s course over water, fixing position, choosing safe routes, and tracking progress with charts, compass, GNSS, radar, and time-tested methods when electronics go dark.

Why It's Important

It keeps ships off the rocks, on schedule, and inside the rules. Good navigation avoids hazards, reduces fuel burn, and delivers people and cargo safely.

How to Improve Navigation Skills

Sharpen navigation with a blend of old-school rigor and modern systems:

1. Keep charts current: Update paper and electronic charts; verify notices to mariners before you sail.
2. Use multiple sensors: Cross-check GPS with radar ranges, visual bearings, AIS targets, and depth soundings.
3. Master ECDIS: Build routes, set guard zones, and understand alarms; know the backup if power fails.
4. Practice celestial and dead reckoning: When satellites hiccup, skills with sextant, time, and log keep you honest.
5. Weather and currents: Plan around sea state, fronts, tides, and set/drift; update the plan when conditions shift.
6. Passage planning discipline: Berth to berth. Limits, contingencies, no-go areas, waypoints, and abort criteria baked in.
7. Know the COLREGs: Collision avoidance lives or dies on rule comprehension and consistent application.

Blend technology with redundancy. Verify, then verify again.

How to Display Navigation Skills on Your Resume

2. Marksmanship

Marksmanship is the disciplined ability to place accurate fire on target, on demand, across distances and conditions. Fundamentals over flash.

Why It's Important

Precision protects teammates, conserves ammo, and closes missions fast. Every Marine a rifleman isn’t a slogan; it’s a standard.

How to Improve Marksmanship Skills

1. Own the basics: Stance, grip, sight alignment, sight picture, trigger press. Boring reps build gold habits.
2. Control breathing: Break shots during natural respiratory pause; don’t chase the wobble.
3. Dry fire: High-frequency, no-ammo practice to engrain a clean press and stable sights.
4. Live fire progression: Slow to fast, near to far, benign to stress; track hits, not hopes.
5. Mental reps: Visualization, pre-shot routine, and recovery between strings.
6. Coaching and feedback: Diagnose groups, adjust one variable at a time, confirm with data.
7. Strength and stability: Core, grip, and shoulder endurance reduce shake and fatigue.
8. Know your weapon: Zeroes, holds, offsets, malfunctions, maintenance—no surprises on the line.

Consistency beats intensity. Show up, shoot smart, log results.

How to Display Marksmanship Skills on Your Resume

3. First Aid

First aid is immediate care for injury or sudden illness to preserve life, prevent deterioration, and promote recovery until higher care arrives.

Why It's Important

In remote, maritime, or combat settings, minutes matter. Early bleeding control, airway management, and rapid decisions change outcomes.

How to Improve First Aid Skills

1. Train to TCCC standards: Learn the MARCH sequence (Massive hemorrhage, Airway, Respiration, Circulation, Hypothermia/Head injury).
2. Hands-on practice: Tourniquets, wound packing, chest seals, airway adjuncts, CPR, recovery positions—under time pressure.
3. Scenario drills: Low light, confined spaces, moving platforms, multiple casualties. Make it ugly, then make it smooth.
4. Kit mastery: Build and inspect your IFAK; know where everything lives and how to use it gloved and wet.
5. Refresh often: Skills decay. Schedule recertification and after-action reviews to close gaps.

Simple, fast, correct beats complicated and late.

How to Display First Aid Skills on Your Resume

4. Survival Techniques

Survival techniques cover the core set of fieldcraft to endure isolation or hostile environments: navigate, shelter, water, fire, food, signaling, self-aid, and mindset.

Why It's Important

When plans crack, survival keeps you in the fight, functional, and findable.

How to Improve Survival Techniques Skills

1. Navigation under stress: Map, compass, pace count, terrain association; practice without GPS.
2. SERE basics: Build shelters fast, manage heat/cold, maintain security, and protect information.
3. Water and fire: Find, filter, disinfect; master multiple ignition methods in wind and wet.
4. Food and traps: Small-game snares, improvised fishing, and safe foraging; know local hazards.
5. Signaling: Mirrors, panels, flares, smoke, ground-to-air codes; prioritize contrast and timing.
6. Mental resilience: Micro-goals, breath control, and routine. Calm is a force multiplier.

Practice in real terrain, real weather, with real constraints.

How to Display Survival Techniques Skills on Your Resume

5. Radio Communication

Radio comms move critical information between ships, aircraft, and shore—routine traffic to mayday calls—using standardized procedures and disciplined brevity.

Why It's Important

Clear comms prevent collisions, coordinate operations, and shave minutes in emergencies. On the water, silence or confusion can cost lives.

How to Improve Radio Communication Skills

1. Equipment readiness: Inspect sets, power, antennas, cabling; log checks and correct faults fast.
2. Antenna placement: Height and line-of-sight matter. Reduce interference and shadowing.
3. Procedures and prowords: Standard phraseology, phonetic alphabet, call signs, channel discipline, and read-backs.
4. GMDSS and DSC familiarity: Distress, urgency, and safety routines; test periodically per policy.
5. Training reps: Scripted drills, loss-of-comms protocols, and handover briefings that stick.
6. Logs and debriefs: Record traffic, identify friction points, tighten brevity without losing clarity.

Say what matters, once, so it lands.

How to Display Radio Communication Skills on Your Resume

6. SCUBA Diving

SCUBA diving enables extended underwater work with self-contained breathing systems for recon, inspection, salvage, and repair.

Why It's Important

Underwater access opens routes and options—stealthy approaches, hull checks, cable work, evidence recovery, and more.

How to Improve SCUBA Diving Skills

1. Conditioning: Swim volume, finning efficiency, breath control, and overall endurance.
2. Advanced training: Navigation, deep, night, rescue, and, where applicable, combat diving modules.
3. Buoyancy and trim: Precise control saves gas and energy; practice hovering and task loading.
4. Underwater navigation: Compass patterns, natural references, and team signals.
5. Environmental awareness: Currents, surge, entanglement hazards, marine life protocols.
6. Gear mastery: Configure, pre-dive check, and maintain equipment; practice emergency drills.
7. Repetition in varied conditions: Cold, low viz, current, overhead-like constraints (within training).
8. Calm mind: Stress inoculation, visualization, and deliberate pacing under task saturation.

Slow is smooth; smooth becomes efficient.

How to Display SCUBA Diving Skills on Your Resume

7. Physical Fitness

Fitness for marine work means strength, endurance, agility, durability, and the mindset to grind when conditions bite.

Why It's Important

Stronger bodies carry heavier loads farther with fewer injuries. Stamina sustains decision-making when everyone else fades.

How to Improve Physical Fitness Skills

1. Strength: Compound lifts and bodyweight staples—pull-ups, presses, squats, deadlifts, carries.
2. Cardio: Run, ruck, row, swim; mix steady efforts with intervals for engine and recovery.
3. Work capacity: Circuits that combine lifts, sprints, and task work (drags, climbs, sandbag moves).
4. Mobility: Daily joint prep and stretching to keep ranges open and aches away.
5. Nutrition and hydration: Protein-forward, fiber-rich, smart carbs; hydrate early, often, and with electrolytes as required.
6. Recovery: Sleep like it’s part of training. Deload weeks. Address small pains before they roar.

Train across PFT/CFT–style domains if you’re Marine Corps bound; specificity pays.

How to Display Physical Fitness Skills on Your Resume

8. Leadership

Leadership is setting direction, earning trust, and delivering results while safeguarding your people and the mission.

Why It's Important

Teams win or wither based on leadership. Clarity, example, and care build cohesion under friction.

How to Improve Leadership Skills

1. Self-assessment: Know your tendencies under stress; set concrete growth targets.
2. Education: Study mission command, decision cycles, and communication in chaos.
3. Mentorship: Seek it and provide it; candor travels both ways.
4. Reps in the arena: Rotate roles, manage cross-functional tasks, and own outcomes.
5. Feedback loops: Ask, listen, adjust; make changes visible.
6. Ethics under pressure: Integrity is nonnegotiable; model it when it costs you.
7. Fitness of mind and body: Calm leaders think better and last longer.

Leaders create leaders. Build capacity, not dependence.

How to Display Leadership Skills on Your Resume

9. Risk Management

Risk management identifies hazards, evaluates likelihood and impact, and controls exposure to protect people, assets, and the environment.

Why It's Important

At sea and in operations, small oversights become big incidents. Good risk work cuts surprises and keeps momentum.

How to Improve Risk Management Skills

1. Use a structured approach: Apply Operational Risk Management (identify, assess, decide, implement, supervise).
2. Map hazards early: HAZID, checklists, and pre-mission briefs to surface what can go wrong.
3. Quantify where possible: Severity versus probability; set clear risk tolerances.
4. Mitigate smartly: Engineering controls, procedures, training, and protective equipment in that order.
5. Test and audit: Drills, equipment checks, and compliance reviews to see if controls actually work.
6. Capture lessons: Debriefs that feed updates to SOPs, training, and planning assumptions.
7. Leverage tech: Navigation aids, monitoring sensors, and data analytics to spot trends early.

Safety culture is a habit, not a memo.

How to Display Risk Management Skills on Your Resume

10. Operational Planning

Operational planning turns intent into action—resources, timelines, contingencies, and control measures wired to mission objectives.

Why It's Important

Clear plans speed coordination, reduce friction, and let teams adapt without losing the plot.

How to Improve Operational Planning Skills

1. Define decisive points: Write SMART objectives and the conditions that signal success.
2. Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace: Terrain, weather, threats, and civil factors mapped to courses of action.
3. Risk integrated: Build mitigations into the plan, not bolted on later.
4. Resource realism: Align people, logistics, maintenance windows, and comms; no wish-casting.
5. Rehearsals and simulations: Walk-throughs, talk-throughs, and red-team stress tests.
6. Branch and sequel plans: What if X fails? Where do we pivot? Codify triggers.
7. After-action reviews: Tight loop from execution to learning to updated SOPs.

The Marine Corps Planning Process mindset—understand, decide, act, assess, repeat—keeps plans alive.

How to Display Operational Planning Skills on Your Resume

11. Cybersecurity Fundamentals

Cybersecurity fundamentals are the guardrails for networks, devices, and data—confidentiality, integrity, availability—especially vital for mission systems and comms.

Why It's Important

Operations ride on digital rails. Breaches distort decisions, expose positions, and stall missions.

How to Improve Cybersecurity Fundamentals Skills

1. Hygiene first: Strong, unique passwords, MFA everywhere possible, timely patching, and minimal admin rights.
2. Phishing resistance: Train, test, and verify; report suspicious traffic instead of guessing.
3. Device and network hardening: Firewalls, encryption at rest and in transit, secure configurations, and logging.
4. Data discipline: Classify information, limit access, and control removable media.
5. Zero-trust mindset: Verify explicitly, least privilege by default, monitor continuously.
6. Incident readiness: Clear playbooks, roles, and drills for detection, containment, eradication, and recovery.

Security is a process, not a product. Keep learning; threats evolve.

How to Display Cybersecurity Fundamentals Skills on Your Resume

12. UAV Operation

UAV operation covers planning, launching, piloting, and recovering unmanned aircraft for reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting support, and damage assessment.

Why It's Important

Eyes in the sky expand reach, reduce risk, and speed decisions with real-time views.

How to Improve UAV Operation Skills

1. Procedural fluency: Checklists, emergency procedures, and airspace rules—smooth, automatic, correct.
2. Simulation and reps: Fly often in varied conditions; practice sensor employment and handoffs.
3. Mission planning: Weather, terrain, comms links, deconfliction, and lost-link contingencies.
4. Technical currency: Firmware, payloads, datalinks, and control station updates; verify post-update performance.
5. Maintenance discipline: Battery health, props, airframes, and logs; no-fly cues respected.
6. Team comms: Standard callouts, geo-references, and brevity for clean integrations with ground or maritime units.

Precision flying plus sharp sensor work equals intel that commanders trust.

How to Display UAV Operation Skills on Your Resume