RNR Officer Branches. - Advice

Afternoon All,
Can any one offer any advice on RNR Branches for a Direct Entry Officer. I have looked at the 1 paragraph descriptions in "Your career guide" that they give you on the recruits evening.

 

And?............................................

 

I had hoped that people could post reasons why they felt that their branch is worth
joining.

What are the perks of going into Logistics as opposed to Mine Warfare (or vice
versa), or Amphibious Warfare? Or would perhaps Maritime Trade Operations be
more interesting.

 

Go Info Ops. Uses your civilian mind set in a military HQ where most officers are only thinking inside the military box, you think outside of that!

 

Amphibious Warfare - All the other branches look gay.

 

Olah,

What do you want to know G&B?

The branches available are all shown on the websites and information booklets. Let me know which branches you're interested in and i'll give you any info i can on what's involved.

I'm not an officer but have a reasonable handle on recruitment and will do my best to answer your questions. PM me if you would prefer.

 

Find one in which the demographic is going to lead to a lot of Lt Cdrs retiring over the next decade.

 

If you haven't joined you're at least two years from having to make a choice, and there will be plenty of time to meet people in different branches before you have to make your mind up. If you have a generous CO you might be able to go along to branch weekends to see what they're like.

Oh and you have two years of the AW branch being extolled by all the training officers, who for some reason are AW.

 

I see what you're saying Cdrkeen but would you go for a job without knowing what you're going to end up doing at the end of it? Especially one that is a difficult to get in as the RN/RNR.

Personally I wasn't bothered - I just wanted to join a branch of the RN but it's completely understandable that people want to know more about what options they have. That's one of the reasons I didn't go full time. Their was very little information on what you actually did day to day and I saw it as too big a jump from a good, well paid civilian career into a poorly paid military career when they couldn't tell me enough info.

 

I have been advised that the question "which branch do you want to join and why" is likely to come up at sift interview and AIB. As my local unit doesn't have a holding class this is very difficult to get any ideas about.
I completely take your point about time before a hard decision is required, but I believe they want to see that you have thought about what you will be doing, rather than just a the uniform.

 

I'm slapping in for AW, the main reason being that I want to go to sea. I'm led to believe the chances of doing this in the other branches are slim. Coming from a Warfare Branch background (as a rating), I reckon I'll have a slight head start when it comes to things like Ops room stuff, which AW officers do in the ship to shore role.

The part of the job which appeals to me the most though, is acting as a SNO onboard RFAs and civvy ships. My last RN draft was on RFAs so I have a bit of experience working in that sort of mixed environment and also with booties in the force protection role.

Also as an ex dabber I basically did everything the Sea (Res) lads currently do. If deployed as a SNO, leading a team of Sea (Res) lads who are doing a force protection would be a fairly natural progression for me. Given the fact that I know their job inside out, I like to think I'd be reasonably good at understanding their needs and managing them.

Look at where your own skills lie and think about where you might fit in best, if you work as a logistics manager, chances are you'd probably be fairly comfortable in the logistics branch for instance. Of course some people join the reserves to do something completely different from their civvy career, but do consider the difficulties of learning an entirely new job from scratch. You might as well give yourself a head start by doing something you know you have a better chance of being good at.

Just my two cents.

Good luck.

 

Cheers Walk