With 2 months of missed goals, nervous parents and skeptical youth, the Corps is navi

[thedrifter]

March 21, 2005

With 2 months of missed goals, nervous parents and skeptical youth, the Corps is navigating a rough recruiting road

By Gordon Lubold
Times staff writer


It had become so automatic.
Every month for almost 10 years, Marine recruiters trawled the nation’s high schools and shopping centers, quietly and without complaint, signing up enough applicants to claim recruiting victory. And each month, as the Corps put another feather in its cap, the win reaffirmed the belief that hard work, dogged determination and Marine know-how would always carry the day for recruiting.

But now it’s a new day.

After making its recruiting goals since 1996 — and watching other services’ recruiting efforts falter over the years — it’s the Corps’ turn to sweat.

Recruiters met 94 percent of their February contracting goal, missing by 192 applicants. In January, recruiters fell 84 applicants short, signing up 3,270 enlistees by the end of the month.

Though recruiters have fallen short of their contracting goal, they are exceeding their goals for the number of enlistees who actually ship to boot camp, Marine officials said.

The Army, too, is tripping up. The Army Reserve missed its recruiting goal the past two months, and the active Army missed its February goal, achieving 73 percent of its target of 7,050 enlistees.

Corps officials are quick to point out that recruiting has been a success story for years as they note that the “bumps in the road” the last two months don’t — by themselves — spell doom.

“Let’s keep it in context when we’re talking about just how big this alleged iceberg is out there,” Lt. Gen. Jan Huly, deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations, told reporters March 10.

The Corps is having a tough time recruiting for a number of reasons, said Huly, a former commanding general of the Western Recruiting Region in San Diego.

It’s not necessarily concern over dying in Iraq that is causing the drop in recruiting, he said. Much of the problem comes from Marines opting for a combat tour in Iraq over recruiting duty, decreasing the number of recruiters on the street. Indeed, manpower officials reportedly had trouble staffing most of their special duty assignments, including embassy guards, drill instructors, combat instructors and recruiters.

Huly said the recruiting program has since been “tightened” and more recruiters have been assigned around the country. Officials hope to have a total of 2,650 recruiters on the street at any one time beginning in 2006. The Corps recruits about 39,000 active and Reserve enlistees each year.

Bad weather during January and February also likely contributed to the recruiting shortages, Huly said, adding that recruiting in the winter and spring months is traditionally the most challenging.

Add to that a chill in the attitudes of parents, who are generally more protective of their children than they used to be. Media coverage of the war in Iraq only exacerbates the trend. Now, before applicants agree to enlist, they tell recruiters they’ll have to also convince their parents.

“It’s taking longer,” said Col. John Dunn, commander of the 9th Marine Corps District in Kansas City, Mo., whose district has made mission the last several months despite the overall drop. Recruiters are having to cast a wider net as a result, he said.

“You have to talk to more people than you did a year ago,” he said.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill say they see the problem getting worse before it gets better. The downturn in recruiting could have been easily predicted, said Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y.

“There were a lot of signs that people felt they were being overworked, but they weren’t heeded,” said McHugh, speaking of the recruiting woes in both the Army and Marine Corps. “Now, the word is out on the street that if you join the military, you are going to be overworked and overstressed.”

Recruiters themselves could have a lot to say about being overworked. Marines on recruiting duty work an average of 70 hours a week, including weekends, and can really only count on Christmas off, said one senior enlisted Marine who has worked in and out of recruiting for years.

“This is without a doubt one of the hardest duties in the world because there is no daily routine,” he said. “Every day is different and proposes new obstacles. With that said, the recruiters get burned out.”

Many former and current recruiters say it’s time for the Corps to better embrace a “work-smarter-rather-than-harder” approach to recruiting. That includes harnessing such technology as broadband Internet access to conduct background checks of potential applicants and to mine other data, a convenience most recruiters from other services take for granted. Others say more time off would help keep recruiters motivated.

Not everyone is hurting. Marine Corps officials pointed to one substation in Pensacola, Fla., that made its mission in January — and then some.

Five recruiters and a staff noncommissioned officer-in-charge at the substation made their mission of signing up 12 enlistees in January in only 20 days. That left them enough time to sign up six more by the end of the month. In all, they met 150 percent of their goal.

Gunnery Sgt. Jeffery McKenney, Pensacola’s staff NCOIC, took his recruiters out for a late breakfast at a Waffle House restaurant before hitting a local golf course to celebrate their win.

To keep the Corps’ recruiting engine going, McKenney says the Corps must continue to fill the ranks of recruiting duty with motivated Marines who know the challenges and also understand they’ll have to give 110 percent to get the job done.

But that hard work will pay off, said McKenney, 32, from Arab, Ala., who credits recruiting duty to the fact that he pinned gunnery sergeant on in nine years.

“There are factors that affect us, and we as Marines have to deal with it,” he said. “It’s part of our job.”

The Drifter's Wife

Ellie

[thedrifter]

March 21, 2005

Recruiter finds that parents often are the biggest obstacle

By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writer


Relaxed for the moment, the recruiter pulls his government vehicle into a parking lot to pick up a 20-year-old potential recruit.
The stocky young man stands on the curb wearing a half-unbuttoned white dress shirt with yellow stains. He still has an apron from work tied around his waist. He pulls the car door open with force, flops onto the velour-covered front seat and flicks the green pine air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror.

“Ready to meet my mom?” the young man asks with a grin. “She said she’s ready to meet you.”

“Of course,” the recruiter replies, stepping on the accelerator even before the passenger door slams shut. “I’m always ready to meet mothers.”

The recruiter, the young man and his mother agreed to be observed on the condition that they would not be identified.

A recruiter’s work environment is so “intense” that the U.S. Army Recruiting Command has barred recruiting stations from allowing journalists to shadow their soldiers in action now and for the foreseeable future, according to Doug Smith, a command spokesman at Fort Knox, Ky.

Longer hours, more days of the week. Dealing with parents who believe the Army wants to send their children to a certain death. That is what at least some recruiters regularly endure.

“I’ve been recruiting for six years, and it is tougher right now than at any other point I can remember,” said the staff sergeant, a recruiter in central Virginia. “We’re adapting to the new environment, but that means starting earlier and ending later. Not to mention working Sundays now.”

Statistics he keeps show he now has to make face-to-face contact with potential recruits three times more often than just two years ago to get them to enlist.

“The biggest obstacle to getting a young guy to enlist is usually his parents,” the recruiter said. “If I can get a parent to agree that joining is a good idea, then I almost always have the kid.”

Two weeks earlier, at work at a local grocery store, the young man was caught eyeing the recruiter’s uniform. “I just asked him if he wanted one of his own,” the staff sergeant recalled.

“He said he did but didn’t want to go to Iraq. Like a lot of the guys we put in, he comes from a single-parent household. His paycheck helps support his mother and little sister, so he’s worried about who would take care of them if he is hurt or killed in Iraq.”

The young man’s mother, who baby-sits for cash in her home during the day and works at the same grocery store as her son in the evenings, doesn’t come to the door when the recruiter and potential recruit enter. They wade past several toys for toddlers, a baby swing and other evidence of the mother’s day job. She sits at a wooden dining table in the living room. Her jet black hair is in a single ponytail, falling past her shoulders. Her relatively young face bears no makeup or emotion.

Pushing aside papers, she avoids eye contact while offering a seat to the uniformed soldier. She looks at her son, smiles and says, “It is a sharp outfit.”

The three settle around the table and the young man speaks first.

“My mom has to be OK with this before I go anywhere,” the young man tells his recruiter, catching the staff sergeant off guard. “We’re tight, and I don’t want to do something this serious unless she is good with it.”

The staff sergeant audibly sucks in his breath, but gets right to work. Reaching down to a bag by his feet, he pulls out a thick binder he hadn’t planned to use that afternoon. “Absolutely,” says the staff sergeant, looking directly at the mother, “it is very important for everyone involved to understand why this is in [the young man]’s best interest.”

The recruiter talks about the son learning job skills and getting practical experience, about a steady paycheck and about learning to live on his own. The mother listens, arms folded, nodding from time to time, for nearly an hour. Her eyes well up and redden at times, but she is mostly silent. When the recruiter is finished, he asks if she has any questions.

“How long until he is in Iraq?” the mother asks first. “How long will he be there? Why should he go? He can make something of himself here, too, you know.”

Without a pause, the staff sergeant tells her about the training the young man might undergo depending on his military occupational specialty. He says her son won’t be sent anywhere until he is ready. He says the son would likely be ineligible to deploy “for at least a year, maybe longer, because he will be learning his new job. With only four years on active duty he might not even go over. But there is, of course, the possibility.”

The mother peppers the recruiter with more questions, including one about news reports of soldiers in Iraq without armor. The recruiter had heard that one before and has a response ready: “CNN stretched the truth on that. Everyone who needed armor had it. The guys who didn’t really need it, didn’t have it at first, but they have it now. No soldier died because they were missing armor.”

The mother stands, signaling the end to the meeting that lasted nearly two tense hours. The recruiter extends his hand to shake hers. She looks at the hand for a full second before shaking it.

“I haven’t decided what I think is best yet,” she says. “I know what he said today, but the decision is really up to him.”

The recruiter nods, thanks them for their time and, unescorted, lets himself out.

Outside the home, the recruiter wipes sweat from inside his collar. He hears questions like those dozens of times per month. He admits such meetings are draining, and he has another one later that night. But he knows the importance of his job.

“I’ve got a mission to meet,” he says.

The Drifter's Wife

Ellie

[thedrifter]

March 21, 2005

Recruiters have rivals for hearts and minds

By Rick Hampson
USA Today


NEW YORK — The Marines didn’t have to recruit Greg McCullough;: He signed a promise to enlist last year, while still in high school.
But now McCullough has had second thoughts, and he’s talking to a different kind of recruiter.

Jim Murphy is a “counter-recruiter,” one of a small but growing number of opponents of the Iraq war who aim to compete with the military for the hearts and minds of young people.

“I don’t tell kids not to join the military,” said Murphy, 59, a member of Veterans for Peace. “I tell them, ‘Have a plan for your future. Because if you don’t, the military has a plan for you.’”

Since the advent of the all-volunteer force three decades ago, the armed services have used an array of tools, from recruiting in schools to TV advertising, to successfully sell careers in the military. But with ground troops in Iraq still under fire, the Army and Marines are struggling to get enough enlistments.

Anti-war activists such as Murphy charge that to fill their quotas, some military recruiters make promises they can’t keep, such as training in a certain skill, and give misleading descriptions of military life. Murphy said young people don’t need to enlist to learn a skill, pay for college, see the world or learn discipline.

Counter-recruiters formed a national network at meetings in Philadelphia in the summers of 2003 and 2004. They range from Vietnam War veterans such as Murphy, to high school students trained to talk to their peers about enlistment.

The American Friends Service Committee, one of several peace groups opposed to what it calls “militarization of youth,” offers a brochure titled, “Do You Know Enough to Enlist?” In a tip of the hat to the opposition, it’s purposely designed to look like a military recruiting brochure.

The Los Angeles Unified School District teachers union has helped get counter-recruiters into some schools regularly visited by military recruiters in the nation’s second largest public district.

In the San Francisco area, members of a group called the Raging Grannies dress up in flamboyant old-lady attire (big hats, flowered dresses) and visit high schools to do counter-recruiting. Sometimes they sing peace songs and dance.

Although they’ve had success in some areas, the contest between military recruiters and counter-recruiters remains a mismatch in most places. The former are full-time, uniformed service members; the latter are volunteers working on a small budget, if any.

Marine Corps Recruiting Command spokesman Maj. Dave Griesmer said counter-recruiters aren’t much of a factor. “We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about these people,” he said.

While military recruiters often enjoy free rein in high schools, anti-war activists admit it can be difficult to get in the door.

Eric Peters, an anti-war organizer in Chicago, said some administrators think counter-recruiters are unpatriotic, and others fear parental or public criticism. His group must hand out fliers away from school grounds.

A change of mind

Jim Murphy does not look like a recruiter of any kind. His untucked shirt covers a potbelly, his gray hair reaches his shoulders, and he favors blue jeans. But Murphy has two credentials for counter-recruiting: He’s a high school administrator who knows how to talk to kids, and he’s an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam.

When Greg McCullough met Murphy, he had already joined the Marines’ Delayed Entry Program, which allows high school students to sign up for the Corps before graduation.

McCullough seemed a perfect candidate. He was a member of the Junior ROTC honor guard at his Brooklyn high school and loves everything about the Corps.

But after talking with Murphy and other veterans, McCullough has concluded military life is not for him. Murphy helped convince him that he could go to college to pursue his interest in criminal justice, and that there was no guarantee he’d get his request to become a military policeman. McCullough also is worried about the war in Iraq.

Murphy told him combat would “change you forever, and not necessarily positively. Think of all the civilians killed in Fallujah. You’re gonna see something like that for the rest of your life.”

The Marines told McCullough that signing up for the Delayed Entry Program was a binding commitment, which Murphy told him was not true.

Murphy gave him a form letter to send to the commander of the Marine recruiting station, saying he’d changed his mind. Murphy told McCullough that the armed services don’t consider recruits to have joined until they go to basic training — “until they shave your head,” as he put it.

Maj. J.J. Dill, commander of Marine recruiters in metro New York, said counter-recruiters such as Murphy “don’t know what they’re talking about. But saying that we’re tricking and lying, that certainly has an impact on a young person. A lot of them are influenced by these counter-recruiters or by negative media coverage [of Iraq].”

When Dill gets a form letter like the one Murphy suggests, “We call the recruit in and talk about it: ‘What’s your concern? What’s changed?’ We generally have a good success rate at turning them around.”

But, he added, “We’re not going to force anybody” to enlist.

McCullough, 19, knows he’ll get a call, but he said it won’t matter. He plans to go to college and major in international criminal justice and Arabic.

And he appreciates Murphy’s help. “Jim showed me the options,” he said.

This school year, Murphy said, he’ll counsel about 20 students. Four years ago, he said he got six students to change their minds about joining the Marines, but he admits he doesn’t always win.

“I lose a kid for every one I get into college or a union [training] program. I’ve got one in Iraq right now.”


The Drifter's Wife

Ellie

[eddief]

What's more worrisome is the Army missing it's mark. It has been for quite a while now. The Corps missing it's mark for two months is just a blip I believe.