If you're looking to get a lot of high speed courses and technical training, don't become an officer. If you are interested in planning and administration, Officer is what you want.
typical career of a Regular Force Infantry Officer is as follows:
Complete Occupation Training (Basic Training, Common Army Training, Platoon Commander, Mechanized Training 1-2 years) you will be badged and posted to a Regiment upon completion of your last phase. Your choices are RCR, PPCLI, R22R.
Once you're badged in, you will be posted to one of your Regiments three Battalions. The 1st and 2nd Battalions of each Regiment are Mechanized Infantry Battalions while the 3rd Battalions are Light Infantry Battalions with 1xParachute Company each.
Once you arrive at the Battalion, if you did well/near the top of your phase training, you'll be immediately given a Platoon Commander billet, if you don't receive one you'll go in to an Administrative role until a position opens up which could take anywhere from 6 months to 1 year. This may sound crappy but if you don't have a platoon you may have the opportunity to go on some courses (Parachute Training, Mountain Ops, Unarmed Combat, etc). You'll also have time to catch up on Professional Development course (CAFJOD, AJOSQ) which will be important as you advance in your career.
Once you have a platoon you'll command it for a year, if you're lucky you'll get more time. I had a Platoon for 2.5 years but a lot of people don't get that lucky. When you're a platoon commander you will do all the training with your soldiers, field exercises, ranges, run physical training, etc... You'll also be responsible for the Platoon Administration, leave passes, range instructions, performance reports, counselling soldiers, etc... This is your first introduction to administration.
Once you finish as a Platoon Commander you'll be moved in to a different position within the Battalion. If you did very well they may give you an opportunity to move in to Recce Platoon. Otherwise you'll be moving to a position like Transport Platoon, LAV Captain or upstairs to Battalion Operations. If you did very well you may be given the opportunity to become a Company 2IC. This is very good as you may get this tick in the box yr first go at Battalion, which means you might not have to do it again when/if you return to the Battalion.
After three or four years your time at Battalion will come to an end and you will arrive at the career point where you're ready to go on external regimental employment (ERE). The possibilities of where you will end up are quite broad. You could go to a training centre to train other soldiers/officers, you could be seconded to recruitment or the Reserve Force, you could be posted to one of our many headquarters to work as a staff officer, the possibilities are endless.
This is also the time when you need to start thinking about where you want to go with your career. There will be numerous career courses you should aim to complete during this timeframe and you should start thinking about going back to the Battalion. There is also the option of moving in to another career stream and trying your hand at the numerous specialized units that exist within the Canadian Forces (JTF2, CSOR, CJIRU, HUMINT) and perhaps moving in that direction.
Note that if you are interested in these units and you successfully complete their selections, your infantry officer career essentially goes on pause. If you don't have any aspirations for these units than you'll want to make sure you try and get in the Army Operations Course (AOC) before returning to a Battalion, it's not the end of the world if you don't do so but it saves you the trouble of doing it once you return to a Battalion.
Upon returning to Battalion, you'll start off being employed as either a Company 2IC or find yourself filling other Senior Captain positions (Asst Ops Officer, Adjutant, Operations Officer, 2IC Admin Company). Once you've completed these jobs and have sufficient time in rank, you may be ready for promotion to Major at which point you will become a Company Commander. After this, what happens in your career is anyone's guess.
That should give you a pretty good idea of what your first 8-12 years of your career as an infantry officer looks like.
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