Do You Have The Right Stuff?  

Smooth Your Enlistment By Learning Facts First Enlistment is a numbers game, pure and simple.  Recruiters are pressured to meet quotas, and in different ways their hands are bound by rules controlling access to High school and college campuses, and other rules that make their job difficult. Most Recruiters are honest and hardworking.  But some bend rules, to get around and make their quotas. Why do some (and we caution here, just a very select few do these things) recruiters do this type of thing? Simple. Recruiters are evaluated and judged by their superiors based on the number of people they can sight up for as recruits.  If you sign up a large number of recruits, then you are respected and thought of as productive and “good” recruiters.  If you do not sign up the minimum, or if you fail to sign up your minimum quota of recruits (also known as “making or completing mission”) you can possibly find your career at a dead end. Promotion, or advancement can be over in such cases.  The pressure on some recruiters, especially older, more senior Service members who are toward the end of their career can be intense.  This alone can cause some recruiters to be unethical. Avoid Common Sense Fallacies Some people have said they were promised the world by their recruiters, such gems as: -You will not have to share a room in Basic Training. -We have new policies you wont have to run or exercise in Basic Training. If is seems too good to be true then it is. Each of the Armed Services has strict rules making it illegal to break the law, to cheat, to knowingly falsify, to lie, or to otherwise misrepresent.  And, yes recruiters are routinely punished and severely for such violations. The key phrase is “when they are caught”.  It is suspected there is a certain degree of this activity, which goes uncaught, for whatever reason. It’s not for everyone.  Enough with bashing the recruiters.  Many, many times what is reported as “outlandish promises” by recruiters can be traced back to “selective listening” by the recruit.  Many young people visit recruiters with stars in their eyes, they don’t take a friend to help figure it all out, and they wind up only hearing half of what is said. Nearly forty percent of recruits fail to make it through Recruit Basic training.  So, it’s not for everyone.