I absolutely recommend that all my subordinates utilize the CSP (that’s what we call it in the Army), prior to ETS. My MOS doesn’t offer a lot of transferable skills, unless you’re a senior NCO with a lot of leadership time and schools to pad your resume. I’ve been on the fence whether I will use it or not before I retire.
Agree it’s a good program and I have approved a handful of packages for it in previous positions.
That said it is unfortunately frequently abused by members (and industry).
I retire in a few months and don’t plan to use it. But only because it wouldn’t add any value to my planned career field post retirement and frankly I had some superiors use it just to avoid work and it pissed me off….
Luckily most get good use of it and pick up some new skills or get to preview a career field to aid in making post separation/retirement decisions.
I was in it last fall. I i used it to get a Google Project Management certificate and a PMP cert through PMI. I really enjoyed the experience. You can pretty much do nothing or you can prepare yourself for separation.
I did, absolutely do it! I was an Environmental Science Officer and got approved to do the program with the Nature Comservancy. I found out pretty quick that environmental nonprofits aren’t where I wanted to be, but I got to get wildland firefighter certified and conduct prescribed burns, which was awesome.
Even though it would have been more useful if I’d picked a career field that I’d ended up liking, I got to try out a field I’d always been interested in while making 03 pay and job hunting for 5 months.