Any military transition is a challenge – the rules you knew so well change, the game has changed, there is less structure, and far less publicly available information about how to leverage benefits.
For example, leveraging military pay benefits is just a google search away to give you endless articles and forum posts on how to understand, calculate, and maximize military pay.
Conversely, in the private sector, these types of clear guidelines often do not exist, and only the largest companies provide specific information available from an internet search.
Civilian federal service falls into an uncanny valley. Government service is very formalized, codified, and structured, not unlike the military, but has its own unique aspects, and the folks who want to get the most out of a federal career, whether it’s opportunities, benefits, or compensation, have to learn how to navigate it.
A key point for vets is that the specific benefits you receive as a veteran transitioning to civilian service are different depending on a wide variety of factors- what pay schedule you’re on, what you negotiate for, and even whether you retired from the military or just separated.
As someone who has gone through this transition recently, here are 5 things I wish I had understood when I started the process.
This is not a “how to get a civilian job” article. This is tailored to veterans who are considering the career path, have received an offer, or recently entered government service and simply want to get a bit more of a perspective of what they’re looking at.
- Civilian work is different- but also similar
DOD agencies exist to support the uniformed services goals and mission sets. Even the non-DOD agencies have a similar understanding that you are in a position of service with a mission focus, which will be an anchor point of familiarity in military transition.
That said, the mission is often less present in the day to day work- You’re not wearing a uniform anymore, and you aren’t flying sorties, carrying a weapon, or digging foxholes. Many civilians provide the background planning, preparing, and organizing that may go unnoticed, but provide the needed parts and pieces to execute the mission.
That’s part of the reason that there is less of a public perception of the role of civilians in the DOD. Flying a jet is cool, but doing the paperwork to acquire the spare parts for that jet from the right contractors is a less dramatic yet still completely necessary factor.
Not all civilian jobs are so drastically different from their uniformed counterparts- don’t assume that going to the civilian side will be boring or even necessarily a desk job! The important thing is to keep an open mind and recognize that while there is a marked context switch, that doesn’t equal a mission shift.
Here’s where you have an advantage- you can “hook into” something you already understand as a veteran! You already have a mission mindset, which can be less challenging than going full-on private sector where your performance is often measured in shareholder profits and company schmoozing rather than crises averted or lives saved.
- Everything is negotiable- IF you learn to speak the language.
When your NCO accosted you for the new haircut, you’d go to the regulation and point out how you’re still in regs to get them off your back. The federal civilian world doesn’t have a parallel uniform regulation – not to say that there aren’t rules, written and unwritten, about presentation, but the rules are different, and so is the method of enforcement.
It is still largely a world that is dictated and codified by public instructions, and you can use this to fight for your entitlements. Just like wrangling with finance, if you have the documents on your side, it’s your fight to win, (albeit at the pace of government sometimes).
The Office of Personnel Management website houses the regulations for everything from locality pay, to leave accrual, to promotion requirements and beyond. Sometimes you’ll have to sift through these documents to understand why you are eligible for a promotion or should be accruing more leave (see point 4), but you can explain clearly and politely to your HR department and make a lot of things happen. OPM is regulated by documents called “Codes of Federal Regulations” which can be searched via: https://www.ecfr.gov/.
Be wary that trying to read CFRs is a great way to cure insomnia, and sometimes these wordy documents do not spell things out in clear English, but if you really need to dig into the “source code” of why you are eligible for a certain thing, that’s where the rules come from.
Yes, they’re all written this way!
A frequently less frustrating experience is to visit the opm website and look through FAQs or similar pages for a situation, where the CFRs are often explained in much less confusing terms.
Federal rules change, and sometimes federal organizations are slow to adopt new rulings. Agencies have low turnover and high stability by design. It’s a good thing when parts of the government are predictable (to some extent), even though the price can be inertia. Don’t take it personally. Just like navigating the byzantine military processes that got you that PCS you wanted or funded some nice MWR gym equipment, federal processes have a method and a timing. You can definitely learn to speak the language by putting in time and effort.
- Many people just don’t “get it.”
People transition out of the military in a variety of ways. The way you transition into federal service may be different than the way someone else does. Three situations that each have different implications are retiring, guard/reserve, and getting out after just 6 years of active time. You unfortunately can’t expect your new team to understand all these implications, and often you’ll have to do your own research on how to best take advantage of your unique situation.
This is another situation where it really helps to not take it personally- The federal government is a big organization, and there’s always more to learn. It can be a great experience for a team, especially if your team is mostly not prior military personnel, to learn and understand the perspective that you are going to bring, but you must do so with a good dose of humility.
- Your military service counts.
It’s arguably well known that you can “buy back” military time, which counts it towards a federal retirement. What is less well known is that your title X active duty time should automatically count towards leave accrual. This means you will immediately earn 6 hours per pay period, or even 8. Read the OPM regulation very carefully to understand the implications for your own situation.
oh look, a link to the all powerful opm website:
This is a neat point that should factor into your decision to take a federal position, but it belies the broader concept that your military background counts towards things that will directly affect your overall compensation. 4 or 15 years of active duty then a transition to a job that gives a decently generous amount of PTO is important to many of us. Before you get hired, you can negotiate pay from this background as well. It doesn’t always mean you’re going to succeed, but if you can map your military experience to the job duties, you often can come in a bit higher in a pay band than otherwise. Guess what? You have some relevant experience, on some level. (See points 1 and 2)
I mentioned buying back time earlier- Did you know you only need 5 years of qualifying service to be eligible for a pension? It may not be a ton of money, but worth factoring in even if you only plan on staying a few years, since an extra year or month plus buyback time might mean an extra $3k per year in retirement!
In addition to these, and possibly some other military benefits (veterans preference points for hiring among others) you also have important intangibles. Depending on your situation, you may have to consider a paycut or a responsibility cut to get into government service, but you don’t have to take an effectiveness cut. For example, I had a fair bit of abnormal red tape when first hired. I was able to deal with it and even negotiate a bit of a pay band bump just because I already understood how to hurry up and wait. A few years in, my military background has definitely helped me meet goals that I don’t know how we would have been able to achieve otherwise.
- The world is bigger than the General Schedule.
I know there are military folks who get out and have tunnel vision on a comfortable GS11 or 12 position that allows them to work 40 hours and then go home. Nothing wrong with that. But if you’re in cyber or certain other sectors, there’s a whole world of opportunities in the government that provide better compensation, more interesting work, and greater impact than what you may initially think you’re qualified to perform. You’ve already served in the military, and that reflects well upon you in a variety of tangible and intangible ways when you come over to the civilian side. Look into opportunities like Cyber Excepted Service(CES), Acquisition Demo, Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories, and Senior Executive Service. Does that sound like word soup? It did to me when I started doing this kind of thing. Here are some quick explanations of these.
Cyber Excepted Service(CES)
https://public.cyber.mil/wid/dod-cyber-excepted-service-ces/
An incentive program that allows you to move up pay scales much faster than normal GS positions, with positions that can qualify you for other incentive pays like Targeted Local Market Supplement (TLMS). CES positions can also be some of the coolest government jobs out there for us cyber folks. (One day I’ll get one…)
Acq Demo
https://acqdemo.hci.mil/faq.html#collapseThree
and
Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories (STRL) https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/11/25/2022-25690/department-of-defense-dod-science-and-technology-reinvention-laboratory-strl-personnel-demonstration
These programs can also get you faster pay raises and bonuses that you don’t see in “normal” GS programs. For example, under an STRL program, given the right circumstances, you can come in at around the pay rate of a GS 11 step 1, and within 2 years be in the pay range of a GS 13, garnering yearly bonuses each time you bump up as well.
Senior Executive Service (SES)-
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-service/
This is the executive part of the government world, and the pay scale is beyond GS15. (Parallel in many ways to military flag officers) Yes, you heard that right. DOD agencies (and even some other federal agencies) have SES positions that are way less out of reach than you may think. If you want to get into the upper management of the federal government, there are a wide variety of opportunities.
Depending on where you live, of course you can make more money in the private sector, but the Government doesn’t always lag as far behind as people perceive, and the opportunities are broader and deeper than you might have been led to believe.
These are just a few examples- there are many niches within the government that need very smart and qualified people to solve challenging problems, and for better or for worse, there are a wide variety of different ways they court talent. The big takeaway I’d like to give isn’t to go after CES or SES or whatever per se- but to recognize that there is a whole world out there that can potentially provide you with the compensation you need to meet your personal goals and responsibilities, while also allowing you to be a part of the mission in a unique way after your uniformed service.
(Another interesting incentive program I’ve heard about is overseas service, which provides a tax-free housing allowance on top of your salary!)
Conclusion
As I stated at the beginning, this isn’t meant to tell you how to break into a federal career, or provide an exhaustive list of specifics on what it’s like when you get here. It’s an informational review of the avenues open in the federal world that you might not be aware of. Keep an open mind, be willing to learn, discover opportunities, and share them as well!
For further reading, you can start with any of the links here, network with other government civilians, and look around online for good websites that have more in depth information. Personally I’m also usually available in the vetsec slack to help answer questions and share memes.
– Sam Wong
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