When you join the United States Air Force, there are conditions that you must meet to reserve or guarantee a specific job for your military career. There are actually two programs that serve this, one is called the Guaranteed Aptitude Area, and the other is called Guaranteed Jobs. The jobs in the Air Force are called Specialty Codes. The Guaranteed Job part is where a person joining the Air Force can receive a specific Air Force Specialty Code or job. The Guaranteed Aptitude part is the process that a recruit is promised and guaranteed that they will receive a job or specialty code that matches up to on of their aptitude areas. All Air Force specialty codes are divided up into one of four different aptitude areas: Administrative, Electronic, Mechanical, and General.
Some jobs are not released to be given out under the guaranteed jobs program. This is because about sixty percent of the jobs are reserved to be distributed under the guaranteed aptitude program. These available jobs are then given to recruits in basic training who joined under the Guaranteed Aptitude program.
When a recruit participates in the Guaranteed Aptitude process, during the second week of basic training a job counselor will give the recruit a list of available specialty codes or jobs that they are qualified for. The qualifications are based on ASVAB scores, medical history, and moral history among other things. It will only contain jobs that have open billets at Air Force Schools at that particular time. Everyone that joined at the same time and is in the same week of training, and who participates in the Guaranteed Aptitude program receives that same list.
Air Force Job counselors meet with recruits, and give them the list that is open to them and that they qualify for, and recruits then have to select the top eight choices off that list. The counselors then will be giving each recruit a “rating” which is taken from the qualifying factors we just mentioned. The top rated recruits are filled into the jobs, as they are available. If a job has eight slots, and nine different recruits want it, the top eight rated recruits will be chosen to fill those eight jobs.
It is possible to get a guaranteed job in the Air Force, but not very likely. This is because the Air Force has more applicants for enlistment spots than open spots. Recruits who are participating in either the Guaranteed Jobs or Guaranteed Aptitude programs normally find out along with everyone else around the fifth week of training, after they come back from “Warrior Week,”
