Stories
How people got here, and what the work is actually like.
Success stories
- VideoFrom the Motor Pool to Logistics ManagementTwelve years in an Army motor pool, a SkillBridge placement in the last six months of service, and a job offer before separation.Logistics Management Specialist · Boston MEPS
- A Nursing Career That Stayed Close to HomeTwo years of hospital nursing and a ninety-minute commute, traded for a medical section eleven minutes from home.Medical Administrative Assistant · Denver MEPS
- VideoTwelve Years in Uniform, Then the Other Side of the DeskProcessed through a station as an applicant in 2011, came back to one as a civilian human resources specialist in 2023.Human Resources Specialist · San Antonio MEPS
- Keeping the Stations OnlineA national network, a small team, and a lot of buildings that cannot process anybody if the morning starts with an outage.Information Technology Specialist · Headquarters
In Their Words
Honestly? I took it because it was eleven minutes closer than the last one and I was tired. That's the whole reason. And then about four months in we had one of those days where everything goes wrong at once, the bus from Pueblo is late, two people forgot their documents, and it's four o'clock and I'm thinking none of these kids are getting home tonight. And we got them all through. All of them. I drove home that night and I was, I don't know. I was proud of it, which I had not been about a job in a while.
Every building on the map has to be up before five in the morning local, and there are six time zones in that, so somebody's five in the morning is always happening.
People ask if federal IT is slow. It was at my last place and that was a bank.
There was a kid last spring, maybe nineteen, absolutely rigid with fear, would not look at me. Turned out he'd never been to a doctor. Not once, not ever. I sat with him for maybe ten minutes before we started anything just talking about nothing.
You get one of those every week or so. Nobody puts it in the job description. I'd tell anyone thinking about it that the medical part you can learn (I did, I came from a ward and this is nothing like a ward), but that part you either have or you're going to find it very long days.
Twelve years in a motor pool. You learn where everything is or people yell at you.
Same job here, bigger building, and now when something's missing it's my name on the record instead of somebody else's. I'd say that's the main difference. That and nobody makes me run.