Army Recruiting Woes Redux
Big Army has a big recruiter problem as we reported here:
Some of those annoying details have come to light in the interim. It’s not just the shrinking pool of eligible candidates, the number of recruiters has also dropped forcing Army to Do Something.
Inside the Army’s Mad Dash for Recruiters After Graduating Only Half the Number Needed
Military.com | By Steve Beynon
The Army is rushing to push noncommissioned officers into its recruiting school after graduating only half the number of recruiters this year that the classes are capable of producing, according to service data reviewed by Military.com.
The eight-week Army Recruiter Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, can train a maximum of 2,866 students across a total of 53 classes. However, data shows that it graduated only 1,336 in fiscal 2023, which concluded at the end of September.
A sudden and chaotic string of orders for NCOs to immediately fill 800 seats at the recruiting school has roiled the Army in recent days. On Monday, 200 of them started classes after being given a week’s notice, though some soldiers’ orders to the school were canceled due to media coverage and local chains of command that were irritated by the short notice.
Big Army decided it needed additional recruiters Right Now. In addition to a $5K sign-on bonus and rapid advancement to sweeten the recruiter pot, the previous post mentioned relaxed standards. Now we know what those standards are, or more appropriately were.
“I will tell you we are not lowering the standards at all,” said Command Sergeant Major Shade Munday, the top enlisted leader for U.S. Army Recruiting Command.
Except for eliminating time-in-grade requirements, compliance with body fat standards and the need to pass a physical fitness test. Those standards haven’t been lowered; they have been waived. Munday bizarrely ties these in with recovering injured soldiers who attend the recruiting course.
Next up, Career Recruiter MOS 42T to augment the existing 79R recruiter MOS. Also in the works, the Good Idea Fairy has come up with a Warrant Officer recruiting workforce. Can’t wait to see how that will work, as we all know WO’s don’t actually exist.
Category: Big Army, Disposable Warriors, Points-and-Laughs
“Command Sargeant Major Shade Munday”
I’ll bet he has a crush on Tuesday Weld.
The CSM was throwing Shade on Munday.
Tuesday’s on the phone to me…
I’ll betcha that Dale Carnegie hisself couldn’t sell any of today’s truly qualified recruits on Military Service…nor could he teach the Salesmanship Skills required to sell a perceived inferior product to the potential salesmen (or women). Recruit a hamburger today and I’ll glad pay you on Tuesday. Speaking of Tuesday…an interlude…for your Afternoon…
If Tuesday Weld married Fredric March’s grandson, she’s be Tuesday March the Second.
I am SO glad I’m retired.
“Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Recruiting, I will fear no Evil, for my DD214 doth protect me.”
So why did the school only produce half it’s max capacity? Too many people decline the orders and eat the bar to reenlist? To many volunteers/voluntolds found to be unsat during screening after orders issued? Did the folks at DA responsible for detailing to the school fail in their own jobs?
I just read a article explaining all the lofty goals of what a 42T is supposed to be/do, and I had to laugh. I never did recruiting (thank god) but even I can see that this Wunderwaffe plan will never work.The whole description sounds like a bunch of Gens and CSMs sat in a room and came up with their wish list of what they wanted these new Wunder recruiters to do. smh.
Yes, basically. Army recruiting has always had the stench of career death, and it is worse today. The Marines see recruiting or recruit training duty as an essential career step for both officers and NCOs (and they’ve had recruiting warrants for a while now).
The Army has to take a hard look at what it means by ‘profession’. Professions take the recruitment, training, and career learning of their members very seriously. They send the best out to find new people and send them back to the school to train them on the latest TTPs.
I would say that the Army takes training jobs like DS, RI, Black Hat, and a few others seriously, but are we really making sure the NCO teaching at the 99X AIT is the best we have to offer? What about the CPTs teaching at the Captain’s Career COurses>
E7 in under five years for (extra) good recruiters.
Yeah. A senior NCO that’s on par with that E7 who never accomplished anything in their career beyond boards. You know the type, checked off all the Audie Murphy / SGT Morales boards, Soldier / NCO / of the month / year millennium, has zero technical or tactical knowledge, yet gets propped up as the shining example of be, know, do. We all know them.
Yup
???? had to look that one up!
https://curiousandgeeks.com/fortnite-dances/
Scroll down for animations of favorite moves.
I can’t find it in the depths of the internet, but a while back I saw a video from Syria I think? Some guy op on a dirt berm doing what I guess was a Fortnite dance to taunt the enemy. It ended exactly like you expect it would, him rolling back down the berm like a dropped duffel bag.
Well, take your pick:
Or, from Ukraine:
So this is what my money is buying? I request a HUGE refund.
Pretty much– she should be nekkid at least– just like at the nudie bar– for what we spent. Just sayin’.
If you have to constantly say you’re not lowering standards, you’re lowering standards.
It’s almost like the democrat marxists in power broke the military. No one wants to join or recruit for a military that HATES them.
Kind of like joining the police in all the shit hole cities that defunded their police and are now screeching for them to do something about all the crime with 30% fewer folks.
Speaking of breaking stuff. Just read today that Michigan went into recess for the next year to help pervy Joe get reelected. No state business will be done for about a year apparently. Will try to find and post link.
https://crcmich.org/perhaps-an-early-legislative-sine-die-regular-session-adjournment
Gosh?! /sarc
(Chicoms will be grateful and shoot ’em last when they take over.)
Flexin’ their nuts in the South China Sea right now:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/08/south-china-sea-aircraft-carrier-usn-shandong-nine-dash-pla/
Because I got the world swingin’ from my nuts,
Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta’
https://youtu.be/lak-kYMOBHk?si=jQmk74zG_OVyugWD
My recruiter in 1983, STS2 Cyrus Toogood, was counting down the days until his ‘tour of duty’ was up. He said the worst were people that backed out when it was time to go. This happened when I left for basic. Me and another recruit were supposed to report to the station and he would drive us up to Philly MEPS. I was there on time, but the other guys was a no-show. So we drove to his house, and I could the volcano building towards eruption. Sitting in the car I saw him at the door talking to the other guy who had his arms around some girl. I saw the guy shaking his head for about 5 minutes. “You just fucked yourself buddy!”. Cyrus came back the car alone fuming. “Fuck the mother fucker!!! He’s bailing over a girl he met 2 weeks ago. No doubt he’ll back in the office in a month saying he’s ready to go. Well, fuck that noise!!! He thinks we don’t talk to the Army, Air Force, and Marines? That mother fucker ain’t goin’ nowhere!!! (or something to that effect.) To say he was pissed is an under statement. Its was quite 1 hour ride to Philly. He was gracious to me, wished my luck, and maybe we’ll meet in the fleet but he was still stewing over the other guy. Anybody have that experience as a recruit or recruiter?
I went to army infantry OSUT in 1986 with a guy from Philly who said he’d tried to join the navy but his recruiter wouldn’t wait in the driveway for his one last roll in the hay with his new girlfriend before he shipped. Said the army was better anyway—glad he waited. He retired last year as a command sergeant major on his third divorce. Said he missed the one from Philly and was going back to her, someday. Also said he had a bone to pick with his navy recruiter. Turned out, Toogood went back and shacked up with her.
She Jody’ed him on his way to MEPS? All I can say is Go Navy.
I never took it personal. If someone became a DEP-loss, so be it, sucks for them because they were likely going to be disqualified in the near-future due to drug possession or something else.
One guy was highly qualified: Eagle Scout, three years JROTC, three years college, ASVAB score of 96 and DLAB score of 132. He enlisted as an 18X and his brother (a Reserve MSG) and I both implored him to stay focused on his ship date, since it was a few months out from his enlistment. Sure enough, he found a girl and told me he wanted to give it a year to try to finish college. Almost a year to the day later, he called me back, and no hurt feelings on my part, I put him back in as an interpreter.
Otherwise, I had every female (all two I think) I enlisted get injured in training and ELS, a chomo who got put in jail the weekend before he was due to ship, his buddy who went to training and got booted for fighting (and unfortunately died in a motorcycle accident a few years later), and one or two others who either bailed out or didn’t earn the title of Soldier.
I don’t see a lot of re-up data in the recruiting stories.
Is re-uping a seperate issue?
Got offered E-6 (Spec-6) with less than 3yrs if I did it while in
Viet of the Nam. Plus choice of assignment but where’s a
Signal to go?..Huachuca? Alaska (the DEW line)? how about
back to Germany? Maybe if he threw in a new Porsche…..
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Robbing all of these units of the staff sergeants qualified to go be recruiters (that is, clean records and *probably* won’t boink the recruits) will gut line units of vital NCO leadership. This is not good. Not good at all.
My recruiter was a letter from my “Friends and neighbors” at Draft Board No. xxx.
What kind of promises were made to get a job filled that they were short manpower in.
Da f*ck?
The Army needs to develop and implement its own “Benefit Tags” for recruiting.
The Army’s recruiting problems will be resolved immediately.
(Those who have been former USMC recruiters know what I’m referring to.)
(sarc off)
Angry Cops had a take on this, and if the “meritorious promotions” work as such, you could jump from PVT to SFC in just a few years. Make SGT in 2-3 years, get pinned SSG upon graduation, and go to a walk-in market, and you’re virtually guaranteed to get that second rocker (SFC) in your first year.
US Military preparing for the Middle East…. Again? – YouTube
As he stated in the video, this will be…not so good…for the Army in the long run. I’m all for having fancy looking ranks and stuff on Recruiters, but what happens when they go back to their MOS’? As a [thankfully retired] Infantryman, I can guarantee you that no SFC with under 10 years in is going to have the respect that a SSG with over 10 years in has. There are the “high speed” types, Ranger-qualified, EIB, CIB, etc. who might fast-track a little and who will have respect. There are the grizzled old SSGs like I was, with “been there, done that” badges and medals and over 10 years in grade who would look at SFC Superecruiter like the kid they are.
Rank is nice, but along with rank, you need experience, knowledge, and above all, maturity. If the promotions go the way Angry Cops thinks they will, we’re setting ourselves up for Platoon Sergeants who have little Team Leader and no Squad Leader time. I lived that life with my stupendously high-qualified PSG who was SF/Ranger/former Marine. He’d been an E-7 in 7th Group but had never held a leadership position since he left 75th Ranger as an E-4. It showed when he tried to charm his way through PSG time in 3ID before finally getting sent off to staff.
I’m sure the lack of squad leader time didn’t help, but the guy has a bsckstory if he went from an 18 series guy with prior battalion time to a PSG in 3ID.
He took the “grass is greener” route. He’d been an 18B on a team but decided that contracting was more lucrative and became a sniper for a PMC. When he found out otherwise, he couldn’t come back in as an 18-series, so he took 11B and somehow kept his SFC rank (I’d recently come off of recruiting, and it was nearly impossible to come back in without losing rank).
“He’s been a 18B”
Well there’s the problem.
“I will tell you we are not lowering the standards at all,” said Command Sergeant Major Shade Munday…”
This is the first clue that standards WILL change.
Maybe it’s just that I’m old, or maybe it’s that I came up in the all-male fighting force era, I don’t know, but, if I had walked into the recruiter’s office and saw a female SGT with only an NDSM and ASR, I’d have turned around and headed to the Marine recruiter.
Bring the Corporals back.
Yeah. No.
“Shade Munday” ?
Sounds like a name out of a Clint Eastwood movie.
Or James Bond esque.
The Army just released a new ad on the 6th, and……they are getting slaughtered in the comments sections on both youtube and twitter. Most of it is some variation on “where’s Emmas two mothers” and “OH Shit! Noting but straight white males in a Army ad? We are going to war”
This is still better:
One of my 1SG (he was one of those 1SG who did not allow troops to call him “Top”) would go off if anyone said good morning to him in anything close to the voice inflection depicted in this video.
Well, you, know it’s ad… 😉
My bad… no write good English.
Yes, the military doesn’t need those evil, racist white hetero males. It needs a majority of homosexuals, trannies, women, and all the other flavors in the rainbow of the “alphabet people.” Cuz this country has never won all those wars, battles, and police actions with predominantly straight white males. Who needs a 200-pound, fit white male to hump the machine gun or the mortar tube, when you have effeminate weak-ass homo’s and 110-pound women to do the job.
I’m going to stop reading the YT comments (YouTube, not “YT” as not-so-closeted racists like to call White people) while I’m ahead. The first few were funny as hell…
That’s most likely an Infantry company or platoon. Considering they’re not only 11Bs, but also Airborne, it makes sense that they’re White, though the Jumpmaster might be White Hispanic. 😎 I never served in the 82nd, but with PEO Soldier I did a few TDY trips there. Like the 101st, TOG, 3ID, and even the Drills and Trainees on Sand Hill, there’s a lack of melanin in the world of the Blue Cord.
The Army ruined its image for this generation of would-be Soldiers, with short-sighted ad campaigns trying to pander to a very small segment of the population which is not exactly a target demographic in a normal sense. Emma is an outlier; most people raised like her tend to be anti-military, if not anti-American in general. Got it, I’m showing my bigotry, but I’ve met few same-sex couples with kids that are pushing those children to join the Army. Most have distinct Leftist views of this country, wish to see “their” kids go to some fancy college, and look down at anyone wearing a uniform.
Lots of comments from ones that never recruited…. its a different animal. For the young buck SFC that ran a small station and was on the numbers as a 00R or 79 series it was a 20 hour day 7 days a week from the time of assignment until you retired. There are no days off no leave no weekends and ….LMAO no 3 day weekends that the rest of the big army got. Christmas day and thanksgiving day were the only 2 days I remember not going to the CLT. I do remember many years ago when lots of tabbed pinned combat types couldn’t hack the desk work. I was fortunate enough to have an ex (injured) delta guy as my first shirt. We… as a team took a company that was number 48 in first brigade of 53 companies to number one and stayed there for my duration. Was the beginning of my second divorce. I slept more in Iraq during OIF 1 than in recruiting.
I heard of those days from one of our Reserve Recruiters. He told me that in the early 2000s he’d be in the station until after midnight most nights, only to report back at 0500. I had it easy, rolling a donut my first day (I reported at the end of Mission month), I had to do zero-roller training and then report about an hour earlier than my peers. Initially, my days were about 0700-2000, but in April 2009 a Time-Off Policy was issued dictating 0900-1700 work hours with a 1500 release one day a week and no weekends unless approved by command.
I was open-minded initially, but never planned to convert and made up my mind (given my lack of production, they probably wouldn’t have let me regardless) a month or two in to keep my rank and integrity and get back to the Infantry. I completed a 38-month tour, so there’s that.
Like everything about the Army, recruiting is multi-faceted. I don’t think too many people are blaming the Recruiters themselves, though a stereotype of the fat, lying SFC exists for a reason. The marketing is off, management of prospective Recruiters and assignments are off, and there is just a lack of effective command and control, in my opinion. The marketing is what’s under attack here, but let’s look at assignments.
When I went through the school in 2008, DA Select Recruiters were able to pick their top three battalions in each of their top three brigades. Volunteers tend to get one of their top choices, while the rest of us get what we get. Being a native Virginian, I wanted to pick the BDE that covers the state, but while WV and VA wouldn’t have been bad, I might have ended up in NJ or PA instead. So, I chose 2nd BDE, with Mongomery, Baton Rouge, and Columbia as my top three battalions. I got the second and, instead of being assigned to Nowhere, MS like I’d hoped, got put in the city itself.
A fellow Recruiter was from MS and stationed at Fort Stewart. He got orders to So Cal despite not speaking any Spanish and having a heavy Southern accent that some couldn’t understand. I would argue that a good assignment manager, hell, maybe even a five-minute interview while in the school to determine assignment locations, would look at places where a Recruiter will be able to communicate effectively. If possible, put them in or near their home area (especially younger NCOs who might still have connections at the high schools) or keep them near their current duty station, especially Combat Arms types that may struggle a little. Placing a 75th Ranger guy in Atlanta, a 3ID Cav Scout in Savannah, or a 101st 11B in Nashville at least lets them keep some familiarity and have peer support from their buddies an hour or so away.
How long, outside of the school itself, does the recruiter duty last? More than a year?
according to the official website, 3 years. I’d rather go back to Iraq and live on the shitty FOB from my first tour with no electricity, no running water and eating almost nothing but MREs three times a day with an occasional T-rat thrown in.
It’s three years. I spent 38 months due to PCS’ing just before Christmas and getting my follow-on report date in February.
I started drinking a bit more while on recruiting, getting to a point where I’d drink 4-5 beers on the way to the station in the morning, just to make it through P1 (telephone prospecting) and the 200-300 calls I’d make before leaving for the schools.
Being adaptive, though, I learned to fake the funk and used the online USAREC Portal to my advantage. I joined the Chamber of Commerce, met with local influencers like mayors and first responders, and ensured that everyone in the community knew me, so when I’d have a trainer from battalion or brigade ride out with me, they’d see that I was fully engaged. I just couldn’t write a contract. Of the 25 on my Recruiter History Report, only 16 were actually my Soldiers (nine were transferred when others left the station), all of whom came to me to enlist. Granted, I became Future Soldier Leader, with much less emphasis on production, within six months of arriving, but 16 contracts in 38 months is bragging rights for me and a sign that someone should have ended my career to a 79R or USAREC leadership.
The USAREC Portal, though, was where I meticulously planned out my days with the online calendar that can be checked by anyone up to the USAREC CG and CSM. I covered my ass with that, and even on those days where I didn’t get any traction, I ensured that Contacts were put in, Appointments were entered (and often cancelled or rescheduled), and every other interaction–or lack of interaction–was recorded. Another 11B was being threatened with a Relief for Cause and asked me my secret, since the battalion CSM had commented on my high work ethic. I told him: they track our efforts using the Portal. Good Recruiters write contracts and their calendar and other Portal inputs suck. Piss-poor Recruiters like me couldn’t write a contract to save my life, but had every box checked elsewhere.