Friday, September 09, 2005

Question?

The awesome Dreadcow asked me in my comments "(H)ow do you feel about the idea of contracting military recruiting to a civilian company?"

On a personal level, a SSG B level, I'd be all for it. Whatever gets me out of this horrifying spiral of failure and pain is a positive to me. However, I'm not all about me.

I just can't see how an all civilian recruiting force would work as well as what we have now. And what we have now is s.u.c.k.i.n.g.

I guess my primary complaint against going to civilian recruiters is you lose something that you have with military recruiters. Namely the ability to make them suffer.

Being in the Army means I will always be at work. I cannot quit (well, I can but the Army calls that desertion, and desertion is punishable by death). If I have a really, really, really bad day, week, month, year, tour, I will be there every day of it getting my counseling statements, being told I suck, etc etc. The stuff we put up with as recruiters in the Army would not be tolerated by a civilian. They'd quit.

Sure, steps can be taken to lessen the possibility of civilian recruiters quitting, but those steps pale when compared to what the military is able to do to keep military recruiters from quitting. Unless massive gobs of money are thrown at a company to keep recruiting they will lose their people.

And I'm going to have to cut my response short. Mrs. SSG B just turned the TV to a channel showing this movie. Gotta go.

4 comments:

Mauser*Girl said...

They already have civilian recruiters. The difference is, they get paid by the people they put in. No contract, no pay. If it were me, I wouldn't want to do it.

SFC B said...

I've gone to job fairs and the like and have interacted with quite a few people who recruit for civilian companies. The problem that contracting out recruiting to a civilian company would create is the company would have NO CLUE what it's about to get into.

When talking with these civilian recruiters I've noticed a couple things.

1. They either recruit to fill a specific need. For example a head hunter goes out looking for someone who meets a specific set of skills for a specific job.

Or.

2. They recruit people regardless of the qualifications. For example Discover Card is always at the job fairs I'm attending, all they want is someone who can read and talk on a phone since they're staffing their call center.

The military is strange when it comes to our recruiting though. We have pretty strict guidelines about who we will allow to join. We have those because we are in a dangerous and important business. Just because someone wants to join doesn't mean they can.

I'd be very impressed if there was a civilian company who could meet mission w/i the rules we have right now. If the Army can find one who can they should contract them on the spot and get the rest of USAREC back out there into the war.

LL said...

I think a problem with civilian recruiters is that you would lose that military thing. You can look a person in the eye and tell them that doing this is a good and noble thing. A civilian can't. They've never known the comraderie of the military life. You can tell them that yes, Basic sucks (because you've been there, done that), there is BS in all quarters of the military, but the friends you make and the love you share for your brothers and sisters is a great thing. A civilian would NEVER be able to understand that unless they were ex-military, ex-cop, or ex-fireman. It really IS a brotherhood and it can't be conveyed with pamphlets and a slick presentation. Just my opinion.

JACK ARMY said...

Most of the civilian Army recruiters that I've met or heard about were/are prior service so the "been there, done that" factor is covered.

I've also heard that the civvie cooters don't have to do all the same admin that the green suiters do. For example, the planning guide is encouraged but not mandatory for civvie recruiters.

Personally, I'd love to see all of USAREC civilian-ized and put Soldiers back in units fighting or training to fight... or performing missions like hurricane recovery.

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