Losses

I've never taken a DEP loss. The recruiting gods will punish me for that arrogant statement soon I'm sure. But I haven't. When you don't put a lot of people into the Army it's hard for them to not ship. Being a zero roller does have its benefits.

Our station is preparing to take a DEP loss. It is my ignorant opinion that USAREC as an entity hates recruiters. I reached that opinion based on a couple of different things, one of those being the DEP loss policy.

When a recruiter enlists an individual they can receive recruiter incentive points for the enlistment. I need to emphasize the fact that points for a contract are a possibility, not a guarantee. Unless there is a special incentive in effect a recruiter needs to enlist 2 quality contracts in a month to receive points for the enlisting. Two. First one is a freebie, all after that are 30 points. Reserve recruiters, like me, can get 15 points for a prior service enlistee, and there are incentives for special programs like OCS, WOFT, college level, etc. But the basic incentive qualification is two quality contracts.

The points nowadays are based on someone shipping. When a DEP, regardless of category, ships out BAM 30 points.

Now, this is where the "hate" comes in.

If someone fails to ship the recruiter's station loses 10 to 35 incentive points. Every recruiter loses those points. The recruiter is even worse off since they lose the 10-35 points, AND they won't get the 30 points for a shipper. So, they're out 40-65 points. The reason for the point spread is part of the hate as well. You see, if a station successfully ships all DEPs scheduled during a month the recruiters receive a 25 point bonus. So that first DEP loss costs every recruiter 35 points, then 10 for each additional one that month.

Of course we're given alllllll sorts of explainations for these policies. "DEP management is a station function," seems to be a popular theory. My problem with that theory is that successful DEP management doesn't receive a similar reward. I get pounded for every loss from the station, yet I get nothing for every success. And it is every DEP loss too. If a recruiter jacks up by not maintaining their DEP and the kid gets fat. Or is a fail-to-grad that they didn't see coming. Or even DEP losses for a DUI or something like that I can uderstand punishing the recruiter and the station. But my station has two cases which, in a sane, caring command, reason would have prevailed.

One of our recruiters had a prior service Soldier enlist into the RA. He had been a 31B in the USAR and MEPS got him a job as a 31B. It worked out well. It was what he wanted to do. Problem was the guy wasn't qualified for the job! Since he didn't want to do anything else the guy was put out of the RA and back into the USAR, becoming a DEP loss for the recruiter and the station. He was a loss because the guidance shop put him into a job for which he wasn't qualified. Not the recruiter's fault. The recruiter and his fellow NCO's took the blame.

Case two. Another recruiter has a DEP who started to feel ill. It wasn't serious at first, but the DEP got worse. Had to go see a doctor and the results weren't good. This DEP had some sort of heart condition. I never really found out what because I didn't feel like prying. The girl as physically qualified by the doc's at MEPS, yet she had some sort of heart condition which caused rapidly deteriorating health. Not the recruiter's fault the DEP was really ill. cost us 35 points each since it was the only DEP loss that month.

About the only way a recruiter isn't punished for a DEP loss is if the kid dies. I would never kill a person just to avoid losing some incentive points, but I'd have a hard time convicting a recruiter who did.

Anyway, my guy from yesterday got in (yay!). Now I just need to find 5 more (boo).