Contract confusion

[jahuski35]

Evening Marines,
I've been reading through posts and online articles about signing your contract. I am just a little bit confused at the moment.
So at MEPS, you swear in and then go to your Marine Corps Liaison, and he/she tells you what jobs are available, you pick your top three. When you get back to the office you sign your contract based on what job you were picked for? I read posts that said that people should wait for infantry slots to open up (If they want infantry, because i do) before they sign a contract. But when exactly do you get to wait for an open slot in the infantry field? I thought you pick 3 jobs and based on the Marine Corps needs, thats where they put you. Thank you for any clarification.

[Failla]

You simply go to MEPS and DEP. Unless you're a reservist, there will be no job guarantees in your contract at that time whatsoever. After you finish at MEPS and have a ship date, you will go back to the recruiting office and select three job fields. From there, you will be assigned to one of those three fields, based on the needs of the Corps coinciding with your ship date. If you have a genuine recruiter who really is looking out for your best interest, he will indeed do all he can to get you your "top" choice before you ship, but even from there you won't know your specific MOS until boot camp (or sometimes, MCT), you'll just know you're infantry, or intel, or communications, or logistics, etc. Once the office hears back on what contract code you've been assigned/approved, you'll sign a statement of understanding at your recruiting office that basically holds that for you until you go to MEPS on the day you ship, where your new enlistment contract into active duty will indeed include the "guarantee" for that job field.

Disclaimer: It already sounds like you're aware of "needs of the Corps" so please, should your experience be any different from this and you somehow don't get a job you want at all, don't one day in the future think back to this jerk who lied to you on this forum and make me a bad guy. I'm simply trying to explain to you how it works / is supposed to work 99% of the time.

Best of luck.

[Sergeant M]

You should also consider that just because you don't get the job that you want now, doesn't mean that you won't enjoy your job in the future. There are plenty of guys that were put into a job that they didn't originally want, that have a great time. Make the best of the situation that you are in; that's part of being a Marine. The biggest accomplishment of all will be earning that title.