Pros
Easy to be hired if you are prior military or law enforcement. You might end up at a favorable paying post with low stress. There is a chance of having luck with how you will be treated at a certain post.
Cons
You also have the same chance of ending up at a terrible post that has had previous employees quit the first week frequently because it's very stressful for different reasons or due to a low paying post. They do not care about your personal safety as much as the contract and money behind it. If you end up at a site/post that has a high crime rate, and previous dangerous criminal activity like break ins, robberies, etc. and you happen to be an unarmed guard there, they make no effort to try and make the post armed for the guard's protection. They force you to stay unarmed if you stay at that post regardless of the danger level. Your supervisor will advise you to break the rules and carry weapons for your personal safety instead of just telling the contract owner they need to allow armed guards. You are tested a lot by site supervisors and it is hard to tell if they are being serious or being unprofessional themselves. The site supervisors will tell you to break the rules they are supposed to enforce instead of fixing a problem properly. Also site supervisors like to accuse or assume you are sleeping on shift based on no evidence other than their personal feelings toward you. If you are young (below age of 30) most of the management and supervisors automatically assume you are in contempt of being a professional and have low expectations of you, like it's easier to assume you are a terrible employee with no ethic instead of trusting you. ALL overtime is asked of you the day of, with no early notice. Little to no communication with the site supervisors or anyone else of that matter. If you end up at a site/post where the business/company have no concept of security, they will not even allow you to access the facility cameras or go as far as to even lock you out of certain facilities that you are supposedly safeguarding (like I said, it's about money and the site companies only care about having you for a discount on insurance, not actual security). You may end up at a post with decent employees who are nice to work with, but also may end up at one with dumb and unprofessional employees who think you are of no value. And just because you are prior military doesn't mean they will hire you as an armed guard unless they need an armed post slot filled. For me, they forced me to work unarmed even though I have previous and sufficient military police and combat arms experience. They do not always trust past military to carry a weapon even if you were special forces before so they will stick you with a $8/hr or $10/hr post and expect you to be happy about it while other security companies will hire some fresh out of high school kids and let them go armed and pay them $13+ an hour. What a slap in the face. Also if you get put on night shift, gain weight, become depressed after years of working night shift, yet they still refuse to get you a day shift, don't think I didn't warn you.