Hank Fletcher

Arguably, the general population is the intended audience! Most of those jobs are open to anyone, provided they have the desirable civilian training. An engineering degree might suit you for a number of officer positions, or the music instructor position might suit you if you're experienced in that field and are willing to sign on as an NCO. All you'd have to do is get in touch with the recruitment office, let them know the position you're competent for, and get the paperwork going to pass the military aptitude and medical checks. That doesn't seem very apparent or attractive from their job listings, which is something I think they ought to consider when they consistently have the same sorts of jobs up without a large enough pool of applicants. The perogatives of military protocol have their place, but if they want the best, they should be wary of imposing any unintentionally superficial barriers to attracting what might be the best recruits for the job.

quixotron

I have to make a confession. I have an IOD and I listen to classical and 80's music. However, I do not feel it hels me at work. In fact I feel it distracts me since when I'm listening to music I can't hear anyone talk and its a bother to take off the headphones.

Torben

I agree with your general point, but I think that perhaps what they're getting at is that an ability to communicate effectively with peers is an important part of the job. As I see it, if you see a posting with jargon like that, there are three choices:

1) You already know the lingo, so bonus to your application.

2) You say "what the hell is that?", but you really want the job, so you study up and learn enough of the lingo to get by.

3) You say "what the hell is that?", and move on to another posting.

If your answer it 3) then perhaps the employer would prefer someone with equal qualifications, but who falls in choice 1) or 2).


Torben

3v0

It must be my age showing, I do not know what an IOD is. The Free Dictionary has nearly 30 versions of what IOD is and none seem to fit the context/

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Hank Fletcher

That seems about right - the onus should probably fall to the applicant to be aware of all the details related to their job application. My question is: in this DND job posting situation, is that actually possible? After working fairly closely with PERS in the LOC ART REG for almost two years, no one has tipped me off to an army-to-English dictionary.

You'd be inclined to think, "Well, maybe in the interest of national security, definition of those abbreviations aren't readily available to the general public." But the more involved I get with the army, the more I get this sneaking suspicion that nobody really knows for sure what's going on with abbreviations. I mean, a commanding office sends you a memo with a somewhat ambiguous abbreviation - what do you do:
- risk looking stupid by asking?
- call out your officer on a trivial detail?
- try to figure it out the best you can, keep your head down, and go with the flow?

It's a fairly trivial detail at the end of the day, and to be fair, I haven't spent a lot of time looking for an army-to-English dictionary, so the answers might very well be apparent and easily at hand - I just haven't got around to making them a priority yet. I'm just looking out - as a matter of PR interests for the army's human resources, well, it's not like they take out ads in national papers advertising the specific positions they need at any given time is it (with the high turn-around, that'd be a lot of ads)? So you'd think it'd be in the army's interests to attract more flies with honey, and then crush their spirits into soldiers after they've signed on the line.