# U.S. Recruiting Tricks



## dross headon (12 May 2005)

Has anyone seen this?

WASHINGTON -- The Army has ordered a one-day halt in recruiting activities nationwide to address complaints about aggressive tactics used by military recruiters as they struggle to meet monthly goals, Army officials said Wednesday. 

Read here... http://www.boston.com/news/nation/a...uitment/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+National+News

Reading about all the problems our young people have in getting into the Canadian Army it's amazing that right across the border this third world recruiting tactics is going on as we speak.


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## Blakey (12 May 2005)

Old news, there has been documentaries on US media outlets (Primetime Live or 60 min i think) about how aggressive the USMC is when looking for new recruits.


> third world recruiting tactics is going on as we speak.


Whats so "third world" about it??, they can always just walk away, noone is holding a "third world" gun to their head...


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## Infanteer (12 May 2005)

It's the opposite here - you have to be aggressive with your recruiter to ensure you make it through the mound of red tape....


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## winchable (12 May 2005)

I watched the documentary "Uncle Same wants you." and you really, really see the pressure those guys are under to recruit and meet the quota.
Quota, quota, quota; Meet the quota by the end of the month or your career is about to come to a grinding halt, more or less.


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## PJ D-Dog (13 May 2005)

US Army recruiters have been having a hard time making mission for the last number of years.  Needless to say, life in the US Army is not always a bed of roses.  As for these alleged tricks, US Army recruiters have far more tools at their disposal to attrack applicants than most of the other branches of service.  They can offer two, three and four year contracts with substantial bonuses.  The army loves to throw money at applicants to get them to join.

This is not necessarily the case for the other branches of service as qualification for bonuses is very stringent.  In addition, only the army offers such short terms of service contracts, all the other branches you have to serve four years.  With all of this, there is no reason for army recruiters to have to resort to using stupid "I'll call the police on you" tactics to get them in.  Badly trained recruiters.

PJ D-Dog


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## Horse_Soldier (13 May 2005)

Why should anyone be surprised?  Using quotas will ensure the use of high-pressure tactics and other objectionable things.  Anyone been at a car dealership lately?  You want to put a stop to it, don't make some poor NCO's career dependent on quotas, which he/she may not be able to meet through no fault of their own.  Me thinks whoever dreamed this asinine scheme up is pretty clueless about basic human psychology.


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## enfield (13 May 2005)

Horse_Soldier said:
			
		

> Using quotas will ensure the use of high-pressure tactics and other objectionable things.   Anyone been at a car dealership lately?   You want to put a stop to it, don't make some poor NCO's career dependent on quotas, which he/she may not be able to meet through no fault of their own.   Me thinks whoever dreamed this asinine scheme up is pretty clueless about basic human psychology.



I disagree. Far better to have the problems the US is having than the problems Canadian recruiting has right now. The US is producing recruits in wartime. We're starving to death to peace. 

Every recruiter should be held accountable for a quota of recruits to pass basic training, every recruiting office CO must be accountable for an overall quota, every area CO accountable for producing X number of recruits in their area, and the General in charge held accountable for having 'X' number of soldiers pass training. And every officer and NCO must serve as a recruiter or basic training instructor to advance.


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## Horse_Soldier (13 May 2005)

Enfield said:
			
		

> I disagree. Far better to have the problems the US is having than the problems Canadian recruiting has right now. The US is producing recruits in wartime. We're starving to death to peace.
> 
> Every recruiter should be held accountable for a quota of recruits to pass basic training, every recruiting office CO must be accountable for an overall quota, every area CO accountable for producing X number of recruits in their area, and the General in charge held accountable for having 'X' number of soldiers pass training. And every officer and NCO must serve as a recruiter or basic training instructor to advance.


The reason we have a hard time getting people through the pipeline, especially in the reserves, is systemic and not a factor of recruiting tactics.  My recruiters have, at any given time, 40 odd recruiting files sitting with the recruiting centre, where things are pretty much at a standstill.  Should I punish my recruiters for the CFRG's problems?  Should we punish the people at the recruiting centre for the bottleneck reviewing medicals in Borden? Accountability is necessary, but for the things under an individual's control.  If you start holding people accountable for things not under their control, they will take actions that you didn't intend to protect their careers.  Setting quotas and having a recruiter's career depend on it is subjecting him to factors not under his control, such as economic conditions in his recruiting area.  It's easy to make sweeping policies and putting a gun to people's heads.  It's a bit harder to take human psychology into consideration and setting up a system that does the job and minimises unintended consequences.


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## Infanteer (13 May 2005)

Horse Soldier makes a point - the systemic problems (bottlenecks) need to be dealt with first and foremost.  I'm still miffed at the fact that profiles are taking 5-6 months to get finished.


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## enfield (13 May 2005)

True, there are bottlenecks. They are well documented and understood. These bottlenecks prevent the timely processing of recruits and have significant adverse effects on recruiting.
So, the Comamnding Officer of CF Recruiting has failed in his job. Fire him. 

Accountability. Responsibility. 

I like the American system because it places personal accountability on people to do the job and fulfill the mission. The CF recruiting system has been broken for decades - has anyone ever been fired, disciplined or demoted for this? I doubt it. The ultimate union and bureaucracy. 

A quota system obviously has to be instituted intelligently, applying quotas based on local circumstances and with reasonable goals. With intelligent and realistic objectives, recruiting is very easy to measure and quantify.


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## Pieman (13 May 2005)

> Accountability is necessary, but for the things under an individual's control.  If you start holding people accountable for things not under their control, they will take actions that you didn't intend to protect their careers.



Makes perfect sense to me. But I always wondered, just who is in control of recruiting? And what is preventing that person/people from fixing these 'bottle necks'? Everyone seems to be aware of the problems, so what is preventing change?


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## Horse_Soldier (13 May 2005)

Pieman said:
			
		

> Everyone seems to be aware of the problems, so what is preventing change?


That, in a nutshell is the heart of the problem.   The chain of command is well informed of the problems.   So what, indeed, is preventing change?   Anyone who can explain that, without using the words "bureaucratic inertia" gets the prize.


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## Pikache (13 May 2005)

Someone lacks the balls to tear apart a creaky structure?

What happened to old fashioned, 'You! There's a problem. You figure out what's wrong with it and fix it.'


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## PJ D-Dog (14 May 2005)

The whole CF recruiting system is broken, as we all know.  I agree with all the statements on holding people's feet to the fire for not making mission when there is such a dire need for recruits to be walking through the door and start getting trained.

The US army example that started this topic is a bad example although it exists in many places.  The army here does not train their recruiters to the same degree as those in other branches of service.  In the Marines, recruiters have to attend a seven week school in San Diego in order to go to recruiting duty.  It is a job that is taken very seriously.  The school is basically a big sales course and they teach you about human psychology etc...The Marines sell the Marine Corps; the Army gives you money to join.

The CF needs a similar approach, once the processing structure is fixed.  One big problem that I see with the CF recruiting is this concept that certain levels of processing needs to be centralized.  If the bottle neck is at Borden, then decentralize the process and regionalize it.  Commanders need to be looking at the effect on the ground from all of this backlog.

Quotas are a good idea.  It gives recruiters a goal to work toward.  Recruiting performance needs to be linked to career progression.  Having said that, the tools to achieve this also need to be at the disposal of the recruiter.  It makes no sense to set career linked recruiting goals and then tie the recruiter's hands behind his back.  The Commanders need to empower the recruiter and set them up for success.  If he fails, then he was not using all the tools at his disposal etc.  There are always exceptions to this depending on region etc...

Now, someone pointed out how some regions you can recruit easily while other regions, one will experience difficulty.  I agree, but recruiting goals should not be set regionally.  Every Marine recruiter is required to produce two contracts a month.  That means, he has to find two people who meet all the elegibility criteria, pass the tests, medical etc...and sign a contract saying they will enter into the Marines for four years etc...every month.  This is regardless of your geographic region.

An example of this is Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas vice Aroostook County, Maine.  In Dallas, the applicants are lined up at the door and all the recruiter does, is select the most qualified applicant who shows up.  In Aroostook County, the recruiter has to continuously comb the region for applicants.  They are far and few between but they are there somewhere.  The minimum quota for both recruiters is still two contracts a month.  At the end of the year, both recruiters will have an annual percentage rating assigned to him based on the number of overall contracts he wrote.  If he fell short in one month but was able to make it up the next, then his APR will not be adversly affected.  There is still a lot more to it than that but this is just the basics of how recruiting at the pointy end is done.

The CF just needs to put a team together and come down to the US and see how processing is done and how recruiting in the Marines is done and then go back and adapt those components of our system that best fits the CF to correct the present problems.

As for the US Army recruiters, the army believes in the concept of more is better regardless of quality.  In the Marines, we are always taught to do more with less, as a result, we end up with better quality over all.

PJ D-Dog


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## pbi (14 May 2005)

PJ D-Dog: with you all the way on your post, except for a key structural difference between the Corps and our Army. The Commandant owns the Marine recruiting system, and the MCRDS and the DIs in them. The Commander of our Army owns none of these things. Our CFRG and our CF recruit training centre at St Jean do not answer to any Force Generator or Operator: they answer to the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff through a "purple" chain. If  the Army owned the system lock, stock and barrel the way the Corps does, I believe we would see a different way of doing things.

Cheers.


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## PJ D-Dog (14 May 2005)

PBI:  Thanks for shedding more light on this as both myself and Matt Fisher have been discussing the ownership issue of CF recruits.  Because the ownership of recruits in the CF is through the purple side of the house, serious consideration should be given toward changing this.

In the Marine Corps, the recruit is owned by eastern or western recruiting region depending on where they go to boot camp.  They are owned by them from the day the sign their contracts to the day they graduate boot camp and later SOI.  After that, their MOS takes possession of them for the remainder of the training cycle through whatever school they attend.  The trick here is to use a similar structure that will have a similar outcome but in Canadianeeze.

PJ D-Dog


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## pbi (15 May 2005)

> Because the ownership of recruits in the CF is through the purple side of the house, serious consideration should be given toward changing this.



You won't get an argument from me! I am a fire-breathing de-constructionist when it comes to Unification, and one of the first things I would do (were someone irresponsible enough to give me the power...) would be to yank the Army out of the "purple" system both for training recruits and for the training and ownership of our CSS types. Despite the endless yammering of its apologists (many of whom laughably try to draw a very specious parallel with the USMC), I do not see that Unification has done anything for the Army. What we really need is not Unification but "Jointness" (another asset falsely claimed by the Unification-mongers). Thank God we have a CDS (like your CJCS) who is now dragging the CF, kicking and screaming, into the jointness arena. If he is willingb to make the broad changes we see happening now, who knows?

Cheers.


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## Slim (15 May 2005)

Maybe the Libs want it left broken so that they can say "Hey, we tried. No one wants to join!" when asked about why the CF has not hired the extra pers as per the Parlimentry resolution.

Slim


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## Pieman (15 May 2005)

> One big problem that I see with the CF recruiting is this concept that certain levels of processing needs to be centralized.  If the bottle neck is at Borden, then decentralize the process and regionalize it.


Exactly. I am pretty sure the Doctor who did my medical exam was fully qualified to give me the thumbs up/down for my health to enter the CF. Why does the file have to be approved by a couple of Doctors in Borden?


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## Rebel_RN (15 May 2005)

There is such a need for pers. in The CF yet there are numerous set backs, hoops at the RC, hoops with medical files, hoops with beaurocratic red tape, with all these hoops how can CF realisticly gain the required pers. There is so much that needs to done and yet there seems to be such a fear of that change from the people who could effectively implement it. I will do whatever it takes to be a part of CF, wait as long as I have to, jump through as many hoops as I need to, but not everyone will, some let the discouraging aspect of "hurry up and wait" get in the way. I can only hope for the benifit of future Cf recruits that the game changes to "hurry up and get the effective people in and let's get them qualified"


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## Infanteer (17 May 2005)

PJ D-Dog said:
			
		

> In the Marine Corps, the recruit is owned by eastern or western recruiting region depending on where they go to boot camp.   They are owned by them from the day the sign their contracts to the day they graduate boot camp and later SOI.   After that, their MOS takes possession of them for the remainder of the training cycle through whatever school they attend.



AH-HA!

I was rambling on about something like this a few months ago....



			
				Infanteer said:
			
		

> Perhaps we need an institutional reorg looking at "Transformation" for citizen to soldier as the mission.
> 
> A new CF Command will be set up that is responsible for Recruiting and Basic Training - Operational Units will get the finished product and give them their trade and OJT training - if the Basic Indoctrination is done right (like the RM Commando Course), then their isn't much that the formations have to worry about "going back to cover".
> 
> ...



As for the comments on structure, I am not going to take such a hard-line approach to Unification as PBI, I believe that it was done for the right reasons and, in some circumstances, has left the CF better off then it would have been as conglomeration of Single-Service Fiefs.  As I said before, I'm a full supporter of Unification and jointness.  However, I believe that Unification is a top-down process, not a bottom-up one.  Hellyer unified the CF because he was frustrated with the inability of the services to give him cohesive advice on National Defence and with the duplication and triplication of certain services.  Hellyer was wrong because he attacked Service things related to specific identity and culture of each Service.  

I believe Unification should be a top-down endeavour and not a bottom-up one.  We need unified regional commands to oversee joint forces to ensure a cohesive employment of National Defence assets.  It is essential to "unify" operational procedures and doctrine to ensure this (and perhaps career patterns), but we don't need "unified" force structures to do so.  It is important for the Lieutenant Colonel and the Commander in the Command/Staff element to be on the same page because they are both doing the same task (administering a unified defence structure).  It isn't so important for the Rifleman and Naval Electronic Technician (Acoustic) to be (and I argue that it is infact inefficient to demand that they both be), because one will fight the Land Battle and the other will fight as part of the Ship. 

Forces will not be unified at the lowest levels - we do not expect Army soldiers to fill in jobs in the ships company or vice versa.  Within the Army however, the demand is there (every soldier a Rifleman first) - hence my argument above.  Sending Recruits to different recruiting programs/centers (thus de-unifying basic training) will not degrade jointness - this is a principle that is reinforced in the Force Generation/Employment process.

Basic Training is one of these institutions I believe would be better off separated.  This means that their is no "Purple" trades - we can have "Purple" Schools to teach Army, Navy, and Air Force trades, but career patterns and service identity are locked into the Army, etc.  Basic Training is an institution that takes civilians and transforms them into soldiers (or sailors, or airmen).  It is different then "Skills Training" as the main effort is not to teach the soldier skills (any idiot can learn to march... well, almost any idiot) but to inculcate them into the institution of the Service they will belong to.

Anyways, most of you have probably heard this from me before, but I thought it was worth restating here,

Cheers,
Infanteer


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