When Government Experience Gets Lost in Translation: Why Our Skills Deserve Recognition in the Private Sector

One of the most persistent challenges I’ve seen—both personally and in conversations with peers across agencies—is how government experience is underestimated once we step into the private sector. The issue is not just about pay bands, HR filters, or rigid job descriptions. It is about perception: how private companies misread our résumés because the titles we carry do not match their corporate hierarchies.

The truth is that many of us have been operating at the manager, senior director, or vice president level for years. We’ve been doing the work, managing the people, and carrying the weight of strategy. The only difference is that in government, titles don’t always translate.

The Title Gap: Why Government Looks “Smaller” on Paper

In the private sector, hierarchy is explicit. “Manager” signals a clear span of control. “Director” carries authority and strategic scope. “Vice President” implies accountability for an entire business function. These labels are standardized, universally understood, and rewarded accordingly.

Government operates differently. A person with the title “specialist” may be leading enterprise-wide strategy. An “officer” may be influencing thousands of employees across multiple agencies. An “analyst” may be directing work that, in corporate language, would equate to organizational design, risk management, or executive strategy.

That disconnect is where undervaluation begins. Recruiters look at the title without understanding the mission, the scale, or the stakes. The private sector reads “specialist” as entry-level; in reality, it often signals someone who has been trusted with national-level responsibility.

My Story: Leadership in All

When I think about my own trajectory, the gap is obvious.

As a Senior Strategist and Team Lead in the Department of Homeland Security, I wasn’t just “producing reports.” I was guiding national collection strategies, aligning intelligence posture with emerging threats, and representing DHS in interagency forums. In corporate terms, this looked like a Director of Strategy & Partnerships with direct influence over enterprise risk.

As the Senior Accessibility Officer to the U.S. Intelligence Community, I was charged with coordinating accessibility across 18 agencies. This was not an HR function—it was organizational health at scale, ensuring that an entire workforce could operate effectively, legally, and sustainably. In the private sector, the equivalent is a Chief Accessibility Officer or a VP of Employee Experience & Well-being.

And as a Workforce Health & Accessibility Coordinator, I was responsible for balancing workforce readiness, compliance with law, and the lived experience of thousands of employees. That work sits at the crossroads of Organizational Health, HR Strategy, and Risk Management. In any Fortune 500, it would be mapped to a Senior Director of Organizational Effectiveness.

The Weight of Government Work

Another overlooked factor is responsibility under pressure. Government decisions are not measured by quarterly returns—they are measured by national security, taxpayer trust, and human impact.

Where a corporate executive might be managing a $50M line of business, a government officer may be overseeing programs that affect millions of people or safeguard sensitive intelligence. The budget may not look the same, but the accountability is often greater. When you operate in environments where a misstep can mean lives, international consequences, or congressional scrutiny, the stakes redefine what it means to lead.

And unlike in the private sector, government leaders often do this with fewer resources, tighter rules, and a microscope of oversight. That builds resilience, creativity, and systems-level thinking that is invaluable—but often invisible—when read through a corporate lens.

Why the Misalignment Matters

For transitioning professionals, the challenge is translation. Many of us walk into interviews and undersell ourselves because our language is still government-first. We describe duties instead of outcomes, processes instead of impact. We need to reframe:

Not: “I coordinated accessibility initiatives.”

Instead: “I built and led an enterprise accessibility framework across 18 agencies, directly improving workforce performance and compliance at scale.”

For the private sector, the challenge is recognition. Recruiters and hiring managers must look past the job titles to the substance of the work. A government “specialist” may have been running interagency task forces, managing enterprise-wide reform, or negotiating across stakeholders larger than entire business divisions. If companies ignore that, they are overlooking leaders with proven ability to manage complexity, pressure, and transformation.

A Call for Recalibration

As I reflect on my own experience—and the experiences of countless colleagues—it’s clear that government professionals are not just “ready” for the private sector. We are already operating at the levels companies seek. The issue isn’t capability; it’s communication.

Government professionals must learn to tell their stories in corporate language: outcomes, ROI, scope, and results. We must claim the weight of our responsibilities rather than shrink them down to match an undersized title.

Private sector employers must recalibrate their lens. Stop dismissing résumés because the titles don’t look familiar. Look for the scale of influence, the systems-level leadership, the crisis-tested decision-making. Recognize that public service has cultivated leaders who can thrive in high-stakes, resource-constrained, mission-driven environments—the very qualities companies say they need in disruptive times.

Closing Thought

I often tell peers this: titles don’t transfer across sectors, but leadership does. Many of us have already been doing the work of managers, senior directors, and vice presidents in everything but name.

The private sector’s challenge is to see that clearly. And our challenge, as government professionals in transition, is to tell the story in a way that makes the reality undeniable.

Because at the end of the day, impact is impact. And the skills forged in public service are not second-tier—they’re exactly what organizations need to thrive when the stakes are high.