Best jobs if you're leaving the military

What you learned in uniform can carry over to the boardroom, especially where vets like you are plentiful. Here are the top jobs for career changers that prize military skills.

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1. Intelligence Analyst

best jobs, career change military, intelligence analyst
Median pay: $85,600
Top pay: $121,000
10-year job growth: 17%
Total jobs: 40,000
The job: If your job was to sift through information to determine how reliable and significant it was while you were in the military then you can do that out of uniform, too. You'll find your skills are in demand at government agencies -- and in private business as well -- where you can analyze data or gather intelligence on competitors.

How to switch: Your security clearance makes you a hot commodity at government agencies. You can find military-friendly companies at moaa.org/careerfair.

Quality of life ratings:
Personal satisfaction Benefit to society Low stress Flexibility
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Do Intelligence Analysts have great jobs, or what?
From the November 2011 issue
Notes: All pay data from PayScale.com. Median pay is for an experienced worker (at least two to seven years in the field). Top pay represents the 90th percentile. Job growth is estimated for 2008-18. Total current employment level is estimated number of people working in each specific job.

Sources: PayScale.com, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and MONEY research
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Using Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts for 7,000 titles, MONEY and compensation experts PayScale.com identified jobs requiring a bachelor's degree that have strong growth prospects, and eliminated any with fewer than 10,000 positions nationwide, plus those requiring advanced degrees that take more than three years. More

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