Assuming that there is an equal need for all types of jobs, how does the military decide who goes where? Do they look at how you scored on the various physical and intellectual tests? Does anyone know the criteria on which they are evaluated?
You can’t make that assumption. There is not an equal need for each kind of job and that is what pushes everything else. They are constantly changing their estimates and sending out information to recruiters. Signing bonuses and other incentives go up and down depending on what is needed more. After they are recruited and trained they are sent to whatever unit needs them most. Certain units are given higher priority for equipment parts and people due to their mission.
So if the army needs a cook and a sniper, there is an equal chance that a crack shot will get the cook job as someone who barely passed the test?
Rereading your OP I think maybe you are asking which jobs they put recruits into. If thats not what you are asking disregard the following. In the Army its up to the recruit to pick his own job. The recruiter will of course try to steer them towards the jobs that the Army is pushing but its still up to the recruit. The Army tries to get more recruits into the jobs they need to fill by offering bigger bonuses. The bonus programs change from month to month do to changing needs. Once the contract is signed the job is guaranteed.
Sniper is a specialized skill. You don’t go to sniper school straight out of basic. An Infantry unit will take some of its high-speed soldiers who score expert on their weapon and send them to sniper school.
All I’m asking is "Does the military take ANY aspect of a recruit’s performance at boot camp when making placement decisions (infantry or cook, say) if multiple positions are open? You have two men, one a perfect score on the shooting exam, the other barely passed. They need one infantryman and one support person. Do they take the shooting exam into account at all or is it completely random?
I have a slightly skewed view on the subject. I volunteered for the Aviation Cadet program and went all the way through that. However, along the way there was a Pre-Flight and Classification procedure that included a bunch of physical, psychological, and paper-and-pencil tests that had to be passed. In addition at each stage of training, Primar, Basic, Advanced, your skills were constantly evaluated and if you washed out you were reassigned.
Generally the Army tried to reassign you where you wanted to go and where your aptitude was, but in a crunch you were sent wherever you were needed.
For example, late in WWII there were enough aircrews and Aviation Cadet voluteers were reassigned to units ranging from infantry to cook and bakers school.
Once you raise your hand at the swearing in there are no further guarantees. I suspect that is still true.
The job is picked long before anyone shows up at basic training.
Joe Snuffy walks into the recruiting office and says,“I want to be a cook”. The recruiter says “thats great why don’t you take this apptitude test first”. The ASVAB is administered and Snuffy passed with flying colors. In fact he qualifies to be an Apache mechanic which the Army just told the recruiter it needs. The recruiter says “You did great, but why do you want to be a cook? Lousy hours, greasy clothes and the troops hate you.” He then shows him a nifty tape of the Apache, tells him about the $10,000 bonus, $25,000 Army College Fund and gives him a guarantee of assignments. There are plenty of cooks so there are no bonuses for the job. Snuffy says, “I still want to be a cook”. PVT Snuffy signs on the dotted line and is off to be a cook. The contract guarantees him the job and the Army will not turn him away just because they need something more.
When I was in basic I was given the opportunity to take a couple of additional apptitude tests. One was for language and one for intel/signal. I scored very high on the second and was offered a chance to become a signal interceptor. I turned it and the $10,000 bonus down because I thought the job would turn me bat-shit crazy (you try listening to morse code for hours on end). They could not force me to change and I went on to do the job I was contracted to do.
To answer you last question directly, basic training is just that basic training. It is the training all soldiers should have regardless of their job. Their performance there does not effect anything in their following career as long as they pass with the minimum standards.
My knowledge of the other services is limited.
That is far from true. The MOS is on the contract before the hand is raised. In dire national emergency that can be circumvented but I have not heard of any cases. I have heard of recruiters getting in trouble for screwing recruits on the contract. The contract is a legally binding document.
Pretty much true. The only additional comment I would make is that if you score highly enough on the tests, you will probably get some sort of schooling in your chosen field (at least in the Navy). If not, you will probably be assigned directly to a command for on-the-job training (OJT). In the Navy, if you’re not designated in a field you can ‘strike’ for a particular rating once you get to your new command. Until that happens, you’re just a snuffy.
David, sorry not trying to imply that you were wrong. I am sure thats how things were. If your knowledge comes from the WWII era I will take that as a fact. My experience is from 1989 to the present.
Is there a basic aptitude test for infantry or tank duty? I just can’t imagine that someone who performs great in all the combat oriented tests might become a cook while someone who performed poorly might go to combat. I mean this in the case that both are needed.
The basic test for the whole military is the ASVAB. I believe it stands for Armed Services Vocational Apptitude Board. If I’m wrong I’m sure it will be corrected shortly. There is one test for everyone but each service takes the raw data and scores it differently. The most important catagory in the scoring of the Army test is the GT or general technical score. There is a base qualifying score (which I don’t remember, somewhere around 50) that anyone with I room temperature IQ can achieve. More technical jobs require higher scores. When I came in I only heard people talking about GT scores. I don’t know if it changed. Here is a brief description of the ASVAB.
Its still a volunteer Army. People go into the jobs they choose. When there was a draft it was picked for you. BTW all bets are off if you are an officer. You get to fill out a wish-list of braches you want and then the Army tells you where to go.
Tom Lerher put it best: “The Army takes the democratic ideal to its ultimate: Not only do they not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, etc., but also on the basis of ability”.
My grandfather started the war as an aircraft mechanic and was eventually reassigned as a cook. I never asked him what he thought of it. In fact, I’m not sure he ever made it overseas, though I think there was a good chance he would have wound up in the Pacific if an invasion of Japan was necessary.
Much the same thing happened to my father; he and thousands of other students in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) were yanked from their college courses and reassigned to infantry divisions. A lot of our brightest young men died on the Siegfried Line.
They promise that at some point during your enlistment, you will be sent to the school that you signed up for, assuming you are qualified. That doesn’t mean that you will work in that MOS. When I graduated from the school for my MOS, the entire graduating class received orders to attend school at another base for a completely different MOS. The “powers that be” had screwed up their staffing projections. During the time that we were in school, our first MOS went from “desperately need more people” to “way too many people”. So they shipped all of us to a school for an MOS that did have an actual shortage of trained people. They both involved electronics so it wasn’t a total waste. The whole class breezed through the second school due to our prior training.
The “contract” is null and void if you flunk any of your training. Then you get reassigned to something that they think is more in line with your aptitudes and skills. That also helps motivate students. Some MOSs have a high washout rate. My first school had lost about 50% of the class by the time we graduated.
This might be unique to folks in the nuclear pipeline.
There are only a handful of homeports for nuclear powered ships, so they give you a sheet of paper, and tell you to rank them in order of preference. There’s a seperate remarks section if you have any special circumstances you want the detailer to know about. They’re called “Dream Sheets”.
Then, hypothetically, they mix preferences, performance data, and personnel requirements into a big mathematical vat, let it ferment for a week, and orders come out the other end.
Anecdotally, they throw the Dream Sheets away, look at personnel requirements, and assign everyone randomly.
The probability of getting orders for a specific location is inversely proportional to its ranking on your dream sheet :).
Different armies, sort of. The WWII army was not a volunteer army in most respects. However all Aviation Cadets were volunteers.
I don’t think a crunch has yet come for our current volunteer army. However, when things get really tough all promises by the military are null and void. There is just a small sample of it in the extension of promised duty tours by units in Iraq both regular, reserve and national guard.