Why have dignity when you can have experience instead?

THE LONG ROAD TO AN INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTOR JOB

Your hard work is finally paying off. You did some solid time in the military, or you have been slaving away working security at a federal building or Army base for years, or you were a cop or in corrections.

You managed to get a low-level security clearance, and you have the baseline for this industry in certs and education. Throw in some of the advice we have written about here that got your resume noticed and past our robot overlords in HR.

INTERNATIONAL FORCE PROTECTION JOBS

Getting a Force Protection Job is a great opportunity to get overseas and put some very solid experience on your resume. I’m talking about when you apply to your dream overseas security job years later, your resume will shine like the sun on a clear spring day.

YOU WILL START AT THE BOTTOM

If you choose this path, the next few years will be the most miserable years of your life. Even knowing in advance that sticking with this job for a few years straight will be the key that opens the door to your dream overseas security job, most still quit halfway through their second year. Sometimes people just never return to the job site after their first vacation.

WHAT COUNTRIES WILL YOU BE WORKING IN?

These entry-level static force protection jobs are mostly on U.S. military bases in strategic positions around the world. These are the bottom of the barrel in the overseas security job market. Despite that they get tons of applicants every month, making them very competitive. But because they suck and have a high turnover, they are always hiring.

WHAT ARE STRATEGIC POSITIONS?

It is a country close enough to the bad guys, but not close enough to be in any danger (most of the time). Or it could mean countries the U.S. wants a presence in "just in case," or as a show of force to their neighbors. “Bad guys” means anything from an actual active conflict zone with U.S. troops currently deployed in combat operations.

BALLAD OF THE BLUE BERETS

Throw in a U.N. mission in a country you didn’t even know existed and weapons testing physically on some island literally in the middle of nowhere. You have the least desirable collection of bases with the worst possible weather for working outside on 12-hour shifts that could exist.

THE PAY?

One would think that getting a security job for a U.S. military contractor overseas would at least be a good-paying gig. Well, you’d be wrong—because the pay is complete garbage compared to other force-pro jobs in ‘spicier’ countries. And once you factor in all the expenses of living in a country thousands of miles from home, even most security guards back home will earn more than you.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cost of off-base food. After about four months if you have to eat at the DFAC one more time, you will want to throw yourself in front of a tank.

ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK

And if you are single, you will also blow a ton of money. Why bother flying back to the U.S. just for a couple of weeks off after you already put all your stuff in storage six months ago? You'll end up paying for hotel rooms, Uber rides, and eating out seven days a week. So most guys end up going to Bangkok or some other spot they think will be fun and cheap, just to blow through everything they made over the past six months because they are so stressed out and depressed.

MY FIRST PROJECT MANAGER STOLE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FROM ME

How do I know this? Because yours truly did it. After years of suffering, I finally had enough time and experience, fattened up my resume, and eventually got on a crazy high-paying security contract. All I wanted was to never think of that place again—until almost six years later, I got a letter in the mail.

It turned out the retired Sergeant Major running the contract had been skimming everyone’s per diem and pocketing it. The government spotted it as a rare case of competency and forced them to compensate everyone.

I did get a check for four grand over a half-decade later.

At that point, I was making that much in a week on a cushy contract working my dream overseas security job, so all it did was make me angry because I could have really used that money back then.

FORCE PRO IS A GREAT FILLER JOB

Heck, during a mid-career slow period, I went back on one of these garbage jobs just so I could get back in-country and network for a real job. It worked. After slaving away on probably the most boring static security gig in Iraq, I got picked up by another company that wanted guys with a CAC card in hand for working on the road doing "cool guy stuff."

So it may not be your last time when you finally get a better gig, so make sure to leave your employer on positive terms because you never know if you will ever have to come back and ask for more gruel hat in hand.

CAN A MARRIED GUY TAKE THIS JOB?

The married guys have it even worse because the chances of your marriage making it through you being halfway around the world for 10 or 11 months out of the year while bringing in peanuts is about zero. If you somehow do manage to make it through the first year because you have a strong marriage, your wife will demand that you are done with this “stupid dream.”

BABY, I AM WORKING FOR OUR FUTURE

If you go back anyway because you know you have to get at least three years in a row on crappy static security jobs (preferably on the same contract) for it to make a big impact on your resume, then get ready for the following.

SHE EVEN TOOK THE ICE TRAYS!

You will come home in six months on leave to find an empty house, all your accounts drained, and a Dear John letter on the kitchen floor. By the time your divorce is finalized and you can finally see your kids, they will be calling another dude “dad.” Brutal, but I have seen this exact scenario play out so many times I can’t even count how many guys back from leave told me it just happened to them.

THE STATE OF THE OVERSEAS SECURITY INDUSTRY

One-third of these lower-tier security contracts at best break even for the contractor. Some are just part of an overall prime contract for base services, and security will only be seen as an unprofitable drain on other profitable parts of the contracts.

The only reason they even bother bidding on these garbage security contracts is that it pads the bottom line when they release their quarterly earnings reports, thereby pumping the stock price up and giving the top .0000000000000000001% of executives a fat year-end cash bonus.

LARRY DAVID CAN’T EVEN TOUCH THIS

The other one-third of the lower-tier static security contracts are what I like to call “Spite Contracts.” Military contractors will bid so low it guarantees they win the contract, so low not only will they not make any money, but they will lose money.

And why would a for-profit company purposely lose money bidding on a contract that they will be in the hole on from day one?

So no other government contractor can win it.

Yes, It is literally a hate bid. Why give your upcoming competitor a chance to make a single penny if you can prevent it, even if it costs you money? In the end, they don’t lose money, at least on paper. Any losses become a tax write-off, which increases profit on paper. Stock prices go up, rinse, and repeat.

CONTRACTOR WORD GAMES

The last one-third of these security contracts are for companies that, by federal law, must be bid on by certified Small Businesses, Minority-Owned Businesses, Veteran-Owned Businesses, and Women-Owned Businesses.

In reality, all of these contracts are won by cut-out subsidiaries or LLCs owned by the aforementioned billion-dollar government contractors.

Because again, why let anyone get a piece of the pie?

In 20 years, that small contractor who wins a tiny security contract on some base in the butthole of the world could be your competitor someday.

Welcome to the world of government contracting and the PMC business.

HOW THIS AFFECTS YOU

They will hire a former Sergeant Major who was in charge of the sanitation department on some base in Alabama and is on his third divorce. Give him zero civilian management training, and even fewer resources, and then never talk to him again outside of emails. He will then hire all of his jagoff friends he served with for all of the good-paying management positions.

HAVE FUN

In the end, you end up with the most disorganized, dog-poop-run contract where you are treated like nothing because you are nothing to them but another guy they can replace with the next desperate schmuck trying to break into the industry back in the States when you inevitably never return from leave.

I WILL WORK WITH SECURITY PROFESSIONALS WHO ARE ADVANCING THEIR CAREERS, RIGHT?

Yeah can probably guess where this is going by now, but yeah, that would be a hard no. Most of the people on the low-tier static security contracts on crap bases are, quite frankly, losers and scumbags. You will work side by side with a mix of people completely unemployable in the States, barely functioning alcoholics, and guys who got booted off high-paying, good contracts for being too dumb or undisciplined.

You will be lucky if none of your colleagues are just people who slipped through the cracks and have no business being there but were hired in desperation after the last mass wave of resignations.

SINGLE INSANE MALE

You will surely get housed with a guy who won’t stop talking about his girlfriend in Thailand he met on leave nine years ago and is in a forever loop of work/go on leave to see her/work/go on leave to see her.

Regardless, they will all be lazy, and incompetent to a level you could not have imagined existed on planet Earth. They will steal, screw up and pin it on you, be outright aggressive toward you, or pretend to be your buddy just to stab you in the back for no personal gain—just because you are at the front end of your career in overseas security work, and they are jealous.

SILENCE OF THE GUARDS

I am not even going to get into how many certified sociopaths and outright psychopaths I have run into on this type of contract. All you have to do is Google “UN contractors human trafficking DynCorp” to get an idea. Because (ALLEGEDLY) when all those guys got fired and moved around in the cover-up, where do you think they all ended up?

I WILL GET HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE WITH THE LATEST GEAR, RIGHT?

No, you will be issued barely functioning electronics that were outdated a decade ago, uniforms made on the local market for the least amount of money possible, and anything that goes bang was issued to your father when he joined the Army at 17.

AN M-16 IS CONSIDERED STATE-OF-THE-ART EQUIPMENT ON THESE CONTRACTS

On my first contract of this type in the early 2000s, I was issued night vision goggles from the Vietnam War. Yes, the actual Vietnam War. I would have been using newer and better equipment if I had been in the Vietnam War.

WILL I GET MEDICAL AND BE ABLE TO EAT AT THE CHOW HALL?

On the same static security job in that not-to-be-mentioned Middle Eastern hairdryer of a country (because it felt like there were a million hairdryers constantly blowing on you), we were issued the type of CAC card that didn’t have medical privileges.

So whenever I got sick, I had to pay out of pocket to see some local “doctor” who always had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, just so he could give me antibiotics every time, no matter what I came in for. Another time, I had the wrong tooth pulled by a local dentist. He still made me pay before I could leave.

I was never issued footwear and had to buy my headcover.

I also had to pay for all of my meals at the Army chow hall when on shift out of my pocket despite being told by the recruiter that meals would be provided. On long shifts, when I had to buy multiple meals, I would lose money working.

You may get lucky and get provided meals, but if you do after eating the same 12 menus for 9 months straight you will wish you didn’t.

I WILL HAVE A DECENT FREE PLACE TO LIVE WHEN I GET THERE, RIGHT?

If you live off-base, it will be in the cheapest place that the U.S. military will allow civilian contractors to live in. It will be in the middle of nowhere, and you will not have a vehicle. The only way to get anywhere is by a taxi that will refuse to turn on the meter.

YOUR ROOMMATES WILL SUCK

Every room will be occupied by one of your scumbag colleagues, and you will have to padlock your door shut just to go downstairs for a second to grab something out of the never-once-cleaned kitchen. Your only company will be the one chirping cricket that you have been trying to find for the past three months.

ON-BASE HOUSING IS NOT MUCH BETTER

If you live on base, it will still be the same hell, just with more randos and less privacy. But hey, at least you will have the privilege of sharing six toilet trailers with 300 dudes. To make things even better, you probably won’t ever be able to leave the base, so expect insanity to come on even faster

THEN WHY ARE YOU SUGGESTING THIS AS A STARTING POINT FOR OVERSEAS SECURITY JOBS YOU MANIAC?

Because while suffering for years and probably even going into debt scraping by, eventually you will, by default, be the “last man standing.” Meaning, that whenever management needs someone to get a Security Clearance or a clearance upgraded to a higher level, they will choose you because they think you won’t immediately jump ship when you get it.

RESUME WORTHY TRAINING

The same goes for any training like the Combat Lifesaver course and every other specialized certification. If someone gets certified and then takes off, it’s a pain for them to get another guy certified. By being this last man standing, simply by the metric of “time here,” you will eventually get promoted to shift lead or higher. That’s not only a banger to have on your resume, but it will also make your life there a tiny bit more tolerable.

TRUE GRIT

So if you have the fortitude to stick it out for three years (ideally on the same contract), you will gain an amount of time overseas on security contracts that will get you to the minimum qualification for employment on one of the good, high-paying contracts. More importantly, you will show the people who have the final say on whether you get hired that, “This guy is reliable for this contract because the poor SOB stuck it out for four years on a garbage contract.”

KEEP YOUR EAR TO THE GROUND, AND YOUR MOUTH SHUT

Or maybe you will hear of a new security contract hiring somewhere nice with crazy pay while dropping one in the bathroom and listening to two idiots you work with whispering about it like schoolgirls talking about a boy. They will have no chance of ever getting hired onto it, but you now do. More people have jumped from a bad security job overseas to a great one this way than you would ever imagine. Just do not break a contract, ever.

THE POT OF GOLD AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW

Or even better, what happened to me after sticking it out on a dog-crap static security contract for almost four years could happen to you. Positions with the same contractor I was working for opened up on a new contract that paid triple what I was making with close to half the hours I was currently pulling.

The retired Colonel running that contract offered lateral transfers to everyone on my current job who had more than three years straight on and had security clearances.

FREE AT LAST

I jumped at the offer. The new job, in a better, more exciting country, sponsored me for the highest possible security clearance one can get because I was one of the most senior people on this brand-new contract with the company at that point. Fast forward a few more years, and I was getting a paycheck deposited with seven numbers on it, and the rest, as they say, is history.

DON’T SAY I DID NOT WARN YOU!

To put it simply, if you can’t see yourself sitting in a van with Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne in that scene in Dumb and Dumber for three years straight, then don’t waste your time attempting it. But it is how I and a bunch of other people got into the lucrative side of overseas security jobs with mediocre stateside security experience.

Either way, you have no choice, it is the only starting point to get you from a Level 2 Candidate to a Level 3 Candidate. And then it’s all six-fig contracts in wild places around the world, probably.

READ JOB LISTINGS FOR SECURITY CONTRACTS CURRENTLY RECRUITING HERE:

Here at OverseasSecurityCareer.com, we post these exact static base security jobs from time to time, so check out what’s currently posted and keep checking back.

-INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTOR JOBS THAT ARE ALWAYS HIRING

If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments below, we check them every day.

Good luck!