Is military good work experience?

[studentcj]

I'm currently a college student looking to get a federal job after graduation. I know the majority of agencies want their applicants to have work experience. For the past couple of years I've been thinking about joining the air force. Would this look good on my resume?

[mcsap]

Military looks GOOD on a resume' . Especially if the department is required to give veterans preference points towards your score. Our dept does and adds 10 points to the final score of any vet. Must have been a full timer, no Reserves etc.

I have ALL of my training records from when I was in the USAF. We even had training on protection of the president ( wink ,wink) but the records looked good.

[Switchback]

The military can be a real asset. For federal jobs, it gets you 5 points preference. Beyond that, how much it actually benefits you depends greatly on the MOS/branch. Whether that same amount of time spent working for a local department would not help your package as much is hard to tell. This, to a good extent, depends on the agency.

For example, the FBI likes linguistics and the hard sciences (right now). If you get linguistics in the military, that would be a huge advantage.

he DEA tends to use those with LE experience. However, I know they like a lot of spec ops guys too.

The flavor of the day for us (the USMS) is those just getting out of the military. But it changes often and quickly. For a while we were hiring co-ops out of college (that sucked, for the most part). Other times we hired those with military and LE.

I guess, what I am saying is to think long and hard about what agencies you are most interested in and then look at how they are recruiting. Then, temper that with the fact that some of this may change by the time you finish your military obligation.

The bottom line is that BOTH routes offer great experiences that the feds are looking for and that there is no hard and fast rule to their hiring practices.

[Island_Girl]

IMO, there are no drawbacks to being in the military (in regards toa future employment).

[CXT_180]

As someone else said, YES, but how much depends on MOS, branch, etc. Someone branched MI (military intellegence) would probably help more than someone branched Adjutant General, etc. Also as IG said Military Experiance can't hurt you, unless you get discharged under less than honorable conditions.