Sunday, July 25, 2010

Absolutly not

No, SSG Pong, that has nothing to do with any success you may be having. If you are successful it is because you've been well-trained in the art and science of recruiting, and you are being supported 100% by your station commander and CLT. You are clearly developing, and executing your prospecting plan in a way which best focuses your efforts into your most efficient, and effective, lead sources. And if you're not succeeding it is because you're failing to plan properly and are refusing to listen to the training available to you.

And as I was writing this I realized that I've been maintaining this blog for a little over 5 years.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Don't answer that.

Since starting this blog the Army has recruited about 400,000 people. I was responsible for a percentage which would require scientific notation to express. There are now Staff Sergeants who weren't in the military when I entered recruiting.

I leave for NTC next week, so going to be busy packing. I'm also going through a USARC inspection on Thursday. So much fun.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

So Dull

I had to get about 8 pages deep in Google to get anything to write about. And it's not much.

Writing about Army Recruiting when you're no longer a recruiter, and there is no media attention being paid to it isn't very easy.

Shocking as it may be, when your organization is the only one hiring high school seniors and recent grads (teenage employment is down 100,000 from this time last year, and 19-26 males are the most unemployed segment of the population) you're going to have an easy time of "recruiting". The recruiters I have to deal with at the battalion-level have demonstrated little concern for FS retention. They can replace almost any loss. If you don't want to ship, fine, there are three more waiting to go to MEPS (I exaggerate, but not by a whole lot).

I think the reckoning from the 2003-2006 period is coming. This made me think about it. During that four year period there were a few thousand Soldiers who enlisted w/ a felony waiver that would not be considered for a waiver today. How many of those Soldiers have reenlisted? How many will not be allowed to reenlist? What sort of issues did the Army have with these Soldiers? Has anyone studied that? You'd think that it would be something the Army would be interested in knowing for the future. Hopefully unemployment will not flirt with 10% forever. When employment improves, and the media begins reporting daily combat losses on the front page (probably happen the 21st of JAN the year a Republican is elected to the White House again) and recruiting suffers another downturn, it would probably be nice to know how well the Army's moral waiver screening process worked. If the felons allowed to enlist had post-enlistment legal problems greater than, less than, or equal to ones who did not require a waiver?

Speaking of people disadvantaged when it comes to enlisting... DADT is slowly going to go away. As someone raised through the 80s and 90s, just not a big deal to me. As a leader I do have some concerns about how it will be implemented. I do not look forward to the inevitable mandatory training sessions we will undoubtedly be required to attend. The training will also probably include some web-based class which everyone will need to take. I have no doubt I will be needing to put out a weekly email to the HR staff members telling them to make sure their Soldiers are conducting their GAY surveys and that we need to be at 100% compliance by the end of the quarter. And this will probably happen in the first quarter so we're flooded with other requirements AND everyone being on vacation for November and December.

Now that I think about the third order effects of the training I'll be required to take I am completely against allowing gays to openly serve. I kid.

It wouldn't be a change made without some serious issues. As much as it pisses folks of a certain political persuasion off, the military is made of people with human frailties, and "unit cohesion" and "morale" and "good order and discipline" might be unquantifiable, but they do matter. I don't know what the right answers will be, but when it comes to enforcing things like "fraternization" and preventing sexual assault, it really helps when you, as a leader, are able to go "males are not to be in the female living areas after XX00h".

To the positive though, repealing DADT will basically make the UCMJ prohibition against sodomy unenforceable. So, hey, there's that. Well, that and the whole "recognizing civil rights of homosexuals" thing too.