Monday, January 16, 2006

First Day

Tomorrow marks the start of the new Recruiting Month and so all my sins are washed away. Each month brings new hope. I've got four people who I think will do something useful. As of tomorrow all of them stand a chance of doing so. That is, to me at least, the essense of recruiting; the hope that everything will go right and the reality that very little will.

The difficulties in joining the Army are plentiful. Unless you are one of the very small slice of people in America who have never been pulled over, been to the doctor for anything, at your target weight, have a GED or better, and either have no dependents, or married with two or fewer children you are in some way, shape, or form ineligible for enlistment and will require, at best, additional processing for enlistment.

From that tiny sliver of the population all the people who are to support and defend the constitution of the US are drawn. It's not easy, and it's not meant to be. I guess it's why I'm here in recruiting.

Sometimes I think that "recruiting" is a bit of a misnomer. We do go out and find people, don't get me wrong. Prospecting is a huge part of my day, but I'm pretty firm in my belief that every contract is a walk-in or call-in waiting to happen. What I mean by that is, no matter how I initially meet someone who eventually joins, the person wanted to join before I met them. I just happened to meet them in line at Barnes and Noble, or call them from the college list, or get their name from a friend before they went online to find their closest recruiter. With someone like that knowledge of the Army and processing is far more important.

Maybe I'm just the worst recruiter ever and everyone else in recruiting takes people who are not interested at all and convinces them that the Army is their best choice. Maybe I'm alone in thinking that I just happen to find people at the right moment in their lives when they're ready for a change. Maybe I'll have a whole different outlook when some miracle happens and 800 people join for me next month. Maybe I'll find that my truck has been replaced with a Viper GTS.

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