I heard that university students who are working towards a degree or received a degree from a Canadian post-secondary institute can qualify to become infantry officers in the Reserve Force? Can anyone elaborate on this...or correct me? Because I am currently in second-year and I'd like to be an officer...or train to become one
Infantry officer Requirements
- Thread starter shadownet
- Start date
It *can* happen... I can't remember the last time I've seen it though. Been a while.
Most reserve units have no trouble recruiting officer applicants. I know that my unit has, in recent years, extremely rarely recruited anyone off the street for officer. Every officer we've had for some years now either transferred in from another unit or commissioned from Cpl / MCpl. The alst guy I remember who got recruited to be a reserve officer in my unit whilst a civilian was a no-shit doctor in real life with quite a bit of education already out of the way.
The blunt truth on this- if we have a good, tour experienced Cpl who would like to commission and is suitable, why would we bother taken an unproven civilian?
Most reserve units have no trouble recruiting officer applicants. I know that my unit has, in recent years, extremely rarely recruited anyone off the street for officer. Every officer we've had for some years now either transferred in from another unit or commissioned from Cpl / MCpl. The alst guy I remember who got recruited to be a reserve officer in my unit whilst a civilian was a no-shit doctor in real life with quite a bit of education already out of the way.
The blunt truth on this- if we have a good, tour experienced Cpl who would like to commission and is suitable, why would we bother taken an unproven civilian?
Shamrock said:
Excuse me? A 'peddled agenda'? Not hardly. You're well outside your arcs casting those kinds of aspersions.
The commanding officer of a reserve regiment has several options to fill his need for new subalterns. He may elect to employ a recruiter who will fill that need out f whatever SIP is assigned to the unit. He may offer vacant lie serials to interested junior officers requesting transfer from elsewhere (common in a city with good grad schools). He may allow experienced and proven (and often well educated) non commissioned members who have expressed interest in commissioning.
Given an already trained officer, or an experienced NCM who may require only their last phase to hit OFP, or a civilian with zero military experience, why would a CO resort to the last unless faced with a dearth of the first two? The attrition amongst junior reserve officers from walking off the street to OFP is - at least in the infantry - pretty high. Why not go with the options that solve the problem most effectively?
I as a recruiter have offered to my officer corps the option of using my officer SIP to recruit a couple of suitable civilians, because it's my job to present that option. My years in the unit have also let me see and contrast various junior officer entries and careers. Going with the more known quantity has been a winning bet in nearly every instance. What I didn't mention is that the driver we recruited off the street a few years back never could finish his phases in the infantry.
The plural of anecdote, of course, is never 'data'. But I've observed rather a lot anecdotally at this point.
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 430
Because the last time I looke at any entry standards, there were few listing former service as ideal or preferred. I that's your CO's standard, that's his - but I would assume he would write that down somewhere.
Edit: As another poster has put if far more eloquently than I was going to, I'll remove this portion. However, there are other advantages beyond commissioning from within - I believe the salary for some entry schemes don't come from Regimental coffers.
Edit: As another poster has put if far more eloquently than I was going to, I'll remove this portion. However, there are other advantages beyond commissioning from within - I believe the salary for some entry schemes don't come from Regimental coffers.
PPCLI Guy said:
The majority of our subalterns have transferred in from other units. Thinking off the top of my head we have two or perhaps three off the street into our unit as officers. I think they all recruited while I was on tour, and slipped my mind- two have worked out well. One, not so much. Two were MCpl to 2lt elsewhere then came to us for school or employment. One was a reserve DEO in another unit. One was a reg force 2lt in another trade who did his VIE then went reserves and changed trades. One was a Cpl with us but has not yet been able to get time off work for DP1.1. So a decent variety actually. A few more 'off the street' and one officer VOT had singularly brief and inillustrious careers with us in the past few years.
Were all of our Jr Os from the ranks in house, that would be one thing. But we have all kinds of people come from other cities who have already proven themselves. And we've recruited civilians who have produced some successes and proportionately more lacks thereof than when we commission troops or accept transfers of already qualified officers.
But it's not a question of 'policy' do much as, post-Kandahar, we have a very healthy platter of excellent. And usages with prior service in the ranks, and good junior officers who move into town are providing us with many already qualified candidates. Why hire someone who needs to do BMOQ, BMOQ-L, and DP1.1 when you can get a guy who has all that, or gets half of it PLARed via PLQ and has your experience? They are, in my mind, more meritorious candidates. And we're also not short of officer aspirants who, facing no vacancies, are quite happy to join in the ranks and see if they can earn consideration for commissioning as a similarly meritorious candidate down the road.
We're not the regs. We can't lock in a guy for six or eight years and accept that it might take a quarter of that to get them trained. Taking someone who's already much of the way to OFP and/or has prior service just makes sense. It's neither formal nor informal policy; just that each time we have a position in the past few years, the calculus comes out pretty close to the same.
