Hacker News Reader

In the UK in some areas such as finance and business there are many people who apply to be an Army officer, and go all the way through selection, but never intend to join up. They do it just so that they can put on their CV (resume) that they've passed Army officer selection.

View on HN

Not to say that it's not true, but in a decade in finance I've never heard of anyone having gone through Officer Selection to help their career prospects.

If you want to have a good start in finance, having a degree (preferably a 1st) in Maths, Physics or Economics from Oxford, Cambridge or LSE is probably the most useful thing you can do!

Isn't Officer Selection where candidate for officer training are selected, not after the full training? According to this link it looks like a ~5 day process:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8359547.stm

[NB Not sure I approve of people using up forces resources just to pad their CVs]

I think the Army likes it because it reinforces the idea that Army officers are an elite, and it exposes more future leaders to a little bit of Army life, so they're more positive about the Army when they make decisions when they're running a business or a government department.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com