Originally Posted by sailingfun

I was a hybrid pilot with both military and civilian training. The big difference for me was civilian training was a lot of theory but practical training was mostly center of the envelope flying. It also was low stress as you could train as long as your money held out. Military training was far more stringent academic work and theory followed up by actually doing those things in a aircraft. With 100 hours total time I was doing spins and every kind of departure from stable flight including 3 axis coupled departures in a twin engine jet as a example.
The military fighter guys might be short on flight time but almost all of it is hands on stick time with far more approaches and landings per flight hour. 80% of civilian flying is at cruise on autopilot. You also only get half the landings.
I had a friend who did the hiring interviews for Delta at a time when they hired 95% military. He was a Civilian pilot. I asked why he was not hiring more civilian pilots. He said that he really tries but the military guys were so much more polished in the interview process and their non flying backgrounds generally much stronger including academics. The polish part probably came from giving hundreds of flight briefs and presentations not to mention murder boards. He did state that civilian pilots who had non flying backgrounds that matched the military guys and showed up looking like they wanted the job and could present themselves well were always snapped up.