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CEC DCO Appplicant
This weekend I finished up my reserve DCO application package with interviews by CEC officers at my local Seabee unit, 3NCR in Marietta, GA. Hopefully this information will be helpful to future applicants.
I met with three officers together: an O-3 with prior enlisted service, an O-4, and an O-5 with primarily active duty service. The setting was informal with the officers in their typical drill weekend uniform of Type III NWUs. They each introduced themselves and told me a little bit about their Navy careers thus far.
The first questions they had for me focused on why I wanted to join the Navy and the CEC in particular. I told them about my personal motivations for joining and how I thought my professional experiences will serve me well as a junior officer. They were interested in my personnel management experience as this is the primary responsibility of junior officers.
They were interested in how much I already knew about the Seabees and the CEC. The context was not a knowledge quiz, but they were trying to gauge how much they needed to tell me about what I might be getting into. They described how the Seabees are different from a typical Navy unit and what different duties a new junior officer would expect to undertake. They spent some time trying to describe the changes going on in the NCF right now. Several units are decommissioning at the end of FY13 (including theirs, 3NCR) and the picture of the immediate future was not very clear. Their most current gouge was that a detachment of NMCB14 was going to move into their facility in Marietta, GA when 3NCR is gone, but that was still not set in stone.
We spoke about my employer’s positions on reserve service and how my family would be prepared both for regular drilling and possibly long deployments. Thankfully, my employer is very supportive and my wife and I have discussed at length how we would be able to handle training and deployment obligations.
The bulk of the session was me asking questions of them. I asked them about the different jobs they had done within the Seabees and other parts of the CEC. I asked which jobs or duties they enjoyed the most. We spoke at length about additional training & service opportunities & obligations beyond the drill weekends and annual training. My major concern was that in my first year as a DCO I would be required to attend DCOIC and then attend CECOS Basic in my second year. I wanted to know how I could meet those obligations without missing out on the unit’s normal training activities. They told me that the main factor in those situations was my employer and how I could coordinate Navy training and my work obligations. Obviously, every person’s situation is different on that front. They wanted to make it clear that a new junior officer should expect to spend quite a lot of time beyond the monthly drill weekend with Navy duties. There is a lot of day to day activity to stay on top of as well as training requirements and just getting up to speed with Navy life. They did say that it gets better after the first couple of years.
I think they turned the general format of the interview around to get an idea of how much research I had done into their community and what sort of picture I had of the real obligations of a reserve officer beyond what one finds in the recruiter’s pamphlets. We didn’t get into formal interview questions such as “What is your management style?” or “What have been your greatest accomplishments/failures?” or those types of questions, though I was prepared for them. They didn’t get into my academic career or any extracurricular activities, but I have been out of school for 12 years.
They wrapped it up by encouraging me not to get discouraged if I’m not picked up the first time around. They stressed that not being selected was not necessarily an indication that I’m not qualified or competitive, but that there are a lot of factors that come into play with who gets selected when. I let them know that I plan to reapply as many times as I can, should that be necessary.
So now my recruiter can finalize my package and get it sent to the board.
I met with three officers together: an O-3 with prior enlisted service, an O-4, and an O-5 with primarily active duty service. The setting was informal with the officers in their typical drill weekend uniform of Type III NWUs. They each introduced themselves and told me a little bit about their Navy careers thus far.
The first questions they had for me focused on why I wanted to join the Navy and the CEC in particular. I told them about my personal motivations for joining and how I thought my professional experiences will serve me well as a junior officer. They were interested in my personnel management experience as this is the primary responsibility of junior officers.
They were interested in how much I already knew about the Seabees and the CEC. The context was not a knowledge quiz, but they were trying to gauge how much they needed to tell me about what I might be getting into. They described how the Seabees are different from a typical Navy unit and what different duties a new junior officer would expect to undertake. They spent some time trying to describe the changes going on in the NCF right now. Several units are decommissioning at the end of FY13 (including theirs, 3NCR) and the picture of the immediate future was not very clear. Their most current gouge was that a detachment of NMCB14 was going to move into their facility in Marietta, GA when 3NCR is gone, but that was still not set in stone.
We spoke about my employer’s positions on reserve service and how my family would be prepared both for regular drilling and possibly long deployments. Thankfully, my employer is very supportive and my wife and I have discussed at length how we would be able to handle training and deployment obligations.
The bulk of the session was me asking questions of them. I asked them about the different jobs they had done within the Seabees and other parts of the CEC. I asked which jobs or duties they enjoyed the most. We spoke at length about additional training & service opportunities & obligations beyond the drill weekends and annual training. My major concern was that in my first year as a DCO I would be required to attend DCOIC and then attend CECOS Basic in my second year. I wanted to know how I could meet those obligations without missing out on the unit’s normal training activities. They told me that the main factor in those situations was my employer and how I could coordinate Navy training and my work obligations. Obviously, every person’s situation is different on that front. They wanted to make it clear that a new junior officer should expect to spend quite a lot of time beyond the monthly drill weekend with Navy duties. There is a lot of day to day activity to stay on top of as well as training requirements and just getting up to speed with Navy life. They did say that it gets better after the first couple of years.
I think they turned the general format of the interview around to get an idea of how much research I had done into their community and what sort of picture I had of the real obligations of a reserve officer beyond what one finds in the recruiter’s pamphlets. We didn’t get into formal interview questions such as “What is your management style?” or “What have been your greatest accomplishments/failures?” or those types of questions, though I was prepared for them. They didn’t get into my academic career or any extracurricular activities, but I have been out of school for 12 years.
They wrapped it up by encouraging me not to get discouraged if I’m not picked up the first time around. They stressed that not being selected was not necessarily an indication that I’m not qualified or competitive, but that there are a lot of factors that come into play with who gets selected when. I let them know that I plan to reapply as many times as I can, should that be necessary.
So now my recruiter can finalize my package and get it sent to the board.
