Join military before I graduate, or after I graduate? How would each choice affect a career in finance?
I posted about a week or too ago about joining the air force, and got some pretty encouraging answers. I have one other question that I'd like to have some experienced finance people weigh in on. Should I join before I graduate, or after I graduate? The way I see it, I have two options:
1. Graduate College, enlist because of the long officer wait-list, get into grad school, work hard for an interview.
2. Enlist now, finish my undergrad when I get out, work at a consulting/ accounting firm, go to grad school, work hard for an interview.
Which option sounds more reasonable?
Before you graduate. I'm guessing this is mandatory conscription? It's always easier to recruit traditionally rather than breaking in offcycle
Enlisted? Don't bother. While you can find some advantages those advantages will pale compared to the placement opportunities available to officers. Several BB Firms run placement programs that are open only to junior officers and as an enlisted person you won't be able to take advantage of that.
Also, I'm just coming off a term of service on the officer side(Army). Honestly it's a waste of time for future career purposes unless you are able to leverage that experience to get into a top-tier MBA program or you graduated from a service academy. Some people will also say "ivy league" as well but being an officer won't give you any advantages you wouldn't already have coming out of an Ivy league school.
If you must look into Army National Guard options. The Army reserve components are actually expanding(they're shifting the balance of the force in favor of reserves). Furthermore it will allow you to put most of the same bullet points on your resume that your active duty peers will have, and do it while gaining private sector experience. I've even seen some GS people who were in the reserves while working there.
^ utter nonsense, OP if you would like to chat about the actuall pros/cons of joining the service PM me.
Man, you sound like you were a great officer.
OP, most places will not know the distinction between officer vs enlisted, and it is rare to run into someone as ignorant as Easy C who seems to consider himself superior to enlisted soldiers. I would be very interested in seeing which programs at BB's are only open to junior officers. I have several enlisted friends from within my community who did these "programs for junior officers" who now work full time at GS and JP Morgan. I know enlisted veterans at every single BB who work in IBD.
When it comes to networking with other veterans, none, maybe with the exception of Easy C, will care if you were officer or enlisted. As long as you can show you are worth your salt they won't care.
The military aspect of finance leans heavily toward officer because there simply aren't that many enlisted veterans who seem to pursue finance or business as a career afterwards.
You will be able to leverage your military service just as well if you were enlisted, including at business school. In some places it is a bonus because you break from the normal mold of O-3's who business school.
Hey Cayo, thanks for your replies on my last post by the way, they were extremely helpful. In regards to the two options I posted above, which would you recommend?
If you want to talk about it in more detail off of this forum I would be happy to do that. Shoot me a PM. I always like trying to help out guys trying to take the road less traveled. However, I will also write some stuff here as well on my observations of the enlisted path, just to publicly mitigate any of the dribble spewed by people like Easy C.
Here is the tl/dr:
Whichever one works best for you is the right path to choose, there is honestly no right or wrong answer on the enlisted vs officer debate and how it will benefit you in the future.
Enlisted: Probably get to have more fun to be honest. If you are competent you will rise quickly and be given levels of leadership and responsibility. Also, if you really are interested in pursuing special operations, this is definitely the way to go.
Depending on how much college you have done before, you can probably use your GI bill to cover the remainder of undergrad and an MBA, allowing you to finish both debt free. Also, as a vet trying to return to school, there are a lot of great target schools that love veterans and are making a push to get more of them on campus in their undergraduate programs. These are places that it is normally almost statistically impossible to transfer into.
Stanford has like a 1% transfer rate but about 5-7 of the 24 they accept each year are vets. Dartmouth has a 2-3% transfer rate, but about half that were accepted last year were vets.
Veterans are very successful transfer applicants to Stanford, Dartmouth, Duke, UChicago, and Columbia. Lesser target schools that accept even more vets are places like Georgetown and George Washington University. So if you are at a semi/non target right now you have a very real possibility of transferring to a target to finish undergrad.
Because your military experience is great work experience, it gives you the dual options of either going straight for an MBA after undergrad, or going and working as an analyst and fleshing out what you want to do from there.
Networking wise it doesn't matter if you were officer or enlisted, it just matters that you served. It ends up being a strong military network, so it isn't even branch specific. I have actually received more help and advice from veterans of other branches than my own.
Follow the officer or enlisted path based on whatever your goals are and what you are hoping to do in your life.
Reading some of your other posts, you talk about seeing a number of friends dying, intense survivors guilt and being driven to alcoholism as a coping mechanism. While I admire you for turning your life around, I'll never understand how you can go through something like that and then recommend to others to follow the same path.
I would concur with Cayo's assessment. My experience has been that most officers within IB are more than willing to help any vet that are taking the steps necessary to be succesful. You will not get the same experience regardless of which route you choose (officer/enlisted) in the National Guard in comparison to active duty. I have spent time on both sides and the experience bullets (outside of deployments) carry more weight coming from an active duty E-5 versus an E-5 or Lt. in the national guard. If you do choose the enlisted route definitely try to get into SFAS or Ranger Regiment or if you end up in the "Big Army" and go the Infantry route try to get into a battalion scout platoon or LRS unit and complete Ranger School before your enlistment ends. Knocking out one of the above will help you stand out even more and each of these units have their own niche within IB and at some of the Ivy league schools.
In regards to your questions if your college is currently paid for and you're already attending I would finish up school and then join the Military. Going this route will allow you to use your G.I. bill toward your MBA. All of that being said, I have buddies that have gone different routes and it really comes down to you and how assertive you are going to be in pursuing your goals.
"Superior to enlisted soldiers"?
Ass. I am not "superior to enlisted soldiers", I'm talking about the harsh and unfair reality of the job markets.
In terms of opportunities that you get from military service, academy graduates get far and away the best opportunities such as exclusive recruiting events hosted by F500 companies, tight knit alumni networks, and preferential treatment by military headhunters. I've also yet to see any service academy graduate who wanted to work in IB fail to get a job with a BB firm, although it is worth noting that not all were front office roles.
The networking opportunities are obviously going to work whatever your rank is, but the reason I recommend going to the O-side is that it allows you to put "managed a team of 40 direct reports" and so on into your resume within a year (in most cases) of joining the service.
I also recommend going reserves for a simple reason: You get all of the benefits (including the networking advantage) and access to all the veteran's placement programs without the drawbacks. Quite frankly, the media is largely bullshitting you when it says that "military experience is valued". Most of the officers I've known got entry level jobs in law enforcement, federal bureaucracy, or contract jobs. The best placement was one guy who got into a back office job at GS....which he got mostly on the basis of previous network connections and being a West Pointer rather than "military service".
Don't fall for the lie that employers will "value your military service". It's still a hirer's economy and 9/10 they're going to hire someone who has experience doing the exact job you're applying for instead of a military hire.
Also, don't take it from me. Take it from Jack Reed: United states Military Academy class of 1967, platoon leader with the 82nd airborne, and Harvard Business School MBA.
Here's his (scathing) take on it, and it's much more accurate to the reality that myself, my peers, and my soldiers experienced after exiting the military. The caveat I'll add is that ironically, a lot of the enlisted soldiers did better than the officers by going into well paying blue collar jobs.
http://www.johntreed.com/unemployment-higher-among-recent-vets.html
He also got an email from a reader testifying the same thing:
The letter accurately describes my own experiences. Most jobs that JMO headhunters had at their conferences were blue collar, entry level supervisor jobs or sales paying 40-50k/yr. I also got some borderline-harassing calls for companies that wanted to hire me for retail assistant manager jobs and wouldn't take no for an answer. The flip side is that I also found that my military resume was fairly impressive to B-school admission staff so I'm going to go in that direction.
I think it's a bit telling that someone who was selected to attach to a special forces mission, managed operations for a 500 man battalion as a Lieutenant(A captain's job), and managed an entire infrastructure improvement program(program manager = a step up from a project manager).....has experience that apparently is worth jack shit in the civilian world except insofar as it opens up some rewarding graduate school options.
There's also another captain I knew who got out at the same time I did. His resume was a company commander in a combat zone, West Point with a 3.8 GPA, former airborne ranger platoon leader (both of us artillery). He also wasn't able to get any job he wanted and has been forced go to back to business school(he's going to a regional school for family reasons) in order to get into a good career track.
.
The caveat is that from what I've seen military service + a degree at a target school is a very strong combination......but military service alone isn't.
I also note that some of our peers did get lucky with placement. It's definitely possible, but do not labor under the illusion that employers are lining up to hire you for choice jobs just because you're a "vet". You need to bring more to the table than just military service.
Last fall, I attended a conference where Mr. Blankfein put it very well: most companies aren't willing to hire veterans because they have to invest about a year to retrain you and most companies aren't willing to make that investment. If your long term goal is to enter finance then don't join the military without an answer to the question of "how am I going to address that objection to hiring me?"
I'm a little confused by all of this. This was all supposed to be an answer to a question asked by someone on a forum for people interested in investment banking. The guy is clearly motivated, has charted out goals of what he wants to do, and is very interested in going to grad school when he is done with the military.
You go on to reference some article about unemployment among veterans, which clearly wouldn't apply to someone like OP who has his head on his shoulders, is focused, and is driven to be successful. Then as a reference point, you use your own difficulty trying to find a job, because you feel you deserve something more than a blue collar $40-50k job, when all the work experience you have is as an artillery officer? Are you that self entitled or just taking crazy pills? No one owes you shit because you were in the military, and no one here is saying that. Obviously you probably have to go and get an MBA to get hired, because you worked with artillery for a living. That seems like a very logical next step. Is anyone here debating that? Why would you ever think that you should be able to walk into any F500 job as an artillery officer and think you should beat out the competition?
You and the person who wrote that letter come off as nothing but incredibly entitled. That guy is upset because he cant find a F500 job with no relevant work experience, and refuses to go back to business school?! Are you shitting me?!
Look at the advice people have been giving OP. Everyone has been telling him to use his military experience to leverage it for something else, like target schools and great MBA programs, not to sit there and expect good things to happen to him because he was in the military.
As for John T. Reed, if I graduated from West Point and HBS and all I had to show for it was some 90's era website powered by Yahoo E-commerce and a couple of shitty e-books, I would probably feel the exact same way. Then again, I don't think I would list "qualified expert on an M-14" as a crowning achievement on my about the author page.
My lash out was mostly directed against those who suggested that people get results just by being in the military.
\The rest of your points strongly support my argument that military service does not directly support a finance career, and you definitely shouldn't serve in the military's "front office" roles. Its doubly true for another reason. you state that it's "incredibly entitled" to expect something other than 40k or 50k blue collar job coming out of the military. That's exactly what the OP does NOT want, and if he doesn't want that then military service doesn't have intrinsic value to him.
Everyone is basically advising to do it just on the chance that he can leverage it to get into something better later. It's a very dicey proposition, and unless the OP is not currently competitive for a T15 school then he's going to find the traditional route to be a much easier entry into finance.
Also: to this poster:
You might be better served by not making assumptions about who you're talking to. I started out enlisted, and quite frankly most of the career NCO's I worked with were of a distinctly higher caliber than the lifers on the officer side( key word "career"). I make the statement because I've seen a lot of NCO's get shafted when it came to post-miltary employment, such as one 17 year E7 who was told that he was "not qualified' for one management training program while an LT with 3 years of experience(and no supervisor experience) apparently was.
Yes, some employers are that dumb.
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