Military MOS to federal job series — what we can and cannot claim¶
Technical version: MOS ↔ occupational-series crosswalk join feasibility
The hope¶
Map a military specialty (for example 25B) to federal occupational series (for example 2210) so search can say “roles like yours.”
The measured truth¶
There is no reliable complete public chain of MOS → O*NET → OPM series.
- MOS → O*NET is reasonably covered by published military crosswalk data.
- O*NET → OPM series has no standard published crosswalk file. Reverse joins are almost empty.
- Intermediate military/federal occupation codes mismatch (especially cyber). Many military rows miss the structural join entirely.
- Keyword matching fans out to many series and includes false friends.
What product should build instead¶
A hybrid search-seed builder: normalize the MOS, gather structural candidates when present, add careful title matching, rank a short list of series + keywords, and always show a disclaimer. Emit search seeds, never “this MOS equals that series” equivalence.
If nothing survives filters, fall back to keyword-only search from MOS and occupation titles — never invent series codes.
What not to build¶
- Hard-coded “MOS equals series” claims
- Copy that sounds like an OPM classification decision
- Sole reliance on any single incomplete table