Crazy: Required to take the ASVAB? Was this a private military school?
I have no problem with Military recruiting on college campuses.
However, military recruiting on HS campuses strikes me as different. The role of most high schools is not to get someone into a good job (if this were the case, they would have all sorts of job fairs) but to place them in higher education. If a school is more vocationally oriented, then I would hope the military has the same access as Jiffy Lube or United Airlines and Target. However, for schools that choose to focus on higher education, I just don’t like the distraction.
My wife was required to take the ASVAB, but she went to a private Catholic school. It was optional in my public high school, and I chose not to take it.
The fact that I chose not to take this test (that quite a few people took, considering it was voluntary) should have been enough to let the armed forces know that I was not considering a career with them.
Of course, it didn’t. All four branches called me about once a month each, making for an average of a call a week. Forgive me, but I didn’t want to be interrupted from my homework to hear motor-mouthed Sergeant Jackson prattle on about the 50 million wonderful choices in Today’s Army (five of which will be available to you, personally, when you sign up).
These guys were persistent, too! They would NOT take no for an answer! They would try their damnedest to stay on the line and were completely undeterred by polite efforts to get rid of them. Protestations of disinterest, moral qualms, and everything else I could think of resulted only in another call a month later, right on schedule.
What’s going on here? Are people not aware that the military exists and is an option for them? Who are these people? The ones that haven’t turned on the TV for the average seven-second wait it takes for an “Army of One” commercial to pop up? Hell, the Army even has a slick PC game available for free to the public now. I think the word is out. Why harrass people who are trying to study and get into college with information that they are already aware of?
When did recruiters start calling? When I graduated high school I don’t remember getting any calls at all from the military. This was about 15 years ago.
My school did the ASVAB as well. The school had cut all funding for standardized testing, but the army would test us for free!
I refused to sign it. Which made the principal of the school really mad. Because they then couldn’t score it. Somehow, they scored it anyway. I did really well, so got lots calls from recruiters.
Until the day I told the guy from the Airforce that I was really interested in them, but they might have a problem with me. I was a Lesbian and a card carrying commie.
Never got another recruiting call.
(For reference, I graduated from high school in 1984).
ALL YOUR KID INFOS ARE BELONG TO US
Actually, when I was “on the bag”, the Marines were only taking ‘uppers’ (top 40% of ASVAB scores). Smarter Marines do less dying, more killing. It’s cost-effective, and the Marines are the smallest compent of the DoD, so have to fight smart and hard.
Target Market, as noted above, is 17 to 21 year olds. Recruiting is a bitch, a hard sell due some very widely held misconceptions, myths, and societal attitudes. Early awareness is a key tool, both the service being aware of who the qualified prospects are, and the prospects being aware of what the military has to offer. Highschool seniors are fair game, juniors and below are not. It’s unfortunate that recruiting on highschool campus is necessary, but it’s been factually demonstarted that it’s one of the most effective ways to identify and sign recruits. Obviously, the recruit must be allowed to complete highschool and graduate. If they fail to graduate, they attrite. This is bad.
This all goes back to the issue of maning the ships, getting the troops on the line, the aircraft in the air, and so on. It’s so hard to recruit, that all possible leverage is necessary to fill the ranks, lest the Armed services become ineffectual and all those wonderful, not so wonderful, and flat out needful actions determined by our government will just simply not happen. Anyone remember Desert One…? That’s what happens when maning & readiness levels fall too low, among other things. The government isn’t going to let that happen again, if it can avoid it, and highschool campus recruiting is one of the ways to keep the maning levels somewhat close to requirements.
Different schools take different tacks on the subject of the ASVAB and Recruiter access, even within the same school district. Each Recruiting District for each service has a Education Speciallist, whom has the responsibility to ‘sell’ the ASVAB to the schools (among other duties).
As for not taking the test ‘telling’ the services anything… unh-uh. Too many people don’t take the test for far too many reasons to draw any conclusions about the prosepect’s intentions from the simple absence of a score. In fact, once a test score gets too old, it’s purged anyway, so there’s no way to tell if they’ve just tested too long ago, were out sick the day the test happened, couldn’t be bothered to take the test, had an objection, or whatever.
That’s their job. Good on them! They were doing their job right. Objections are nothing more than an invitation for the recruiter to try and handle the objection. The easiest way to get a recruiter off the line is for the prospect (not their parent, sibling, or anyone else) to get on the phone and say “No, thank you. Not interested,” and hang up. Nothing more. Stay on the line and feed the Recruiter objections, they’re going to tackle them, trying to get a handle on where you’re really coming from, and sell you on a face-to-face interview.
Objection handling is what recruiters do. And you’d be surprised how many kids do change their minds. The Recruiters use these tactics because they work. Provably. Reliably. Scientifically. I can tell you exactly how many phone calls it will take to get an interview, how many interviews it will take to floor a candidate, and how many bodies I have to floor to get a contract. I can plan my efforts around those numbers. They work.
Same story with highschool tests, personally developed contacts (walking down the street, shaking hands), and all the other avenues for contacting prospects. They call it the Arts and Sciences of Recruiting, and it’s no joke.
gazpacho, sometimes names slip through the cracks. With that many names out there, it happens all the time.
Dangerosa, sometimes even that won’t work. Recruiters tend to be skeptical folk. It’s axiomatic: Prospects will lie. They all do. If you show me one that hasn’t, I’ll show you a statistical anomoly
Y’know, I almost could see using this in an actual recruiting advertisement…
It’s a bit irrelevent now with technological warfare or ‘remote control’ warfare much more refined these days. I just wonder how readily the country would go to war if the front of the front line consisted of all the 200+ IQ’s only to have the 180+'s slaughtered 14 seconds later. Clearly it is a lack of processing speed which the recruiters are trained to take advantage of. A bit sickening IMO.
-Justhink
Taking advantage of of slower processing speeds…? Unh-uh. Prospects become applicants based upon emotions, not raw intelligence. The sale, the decision to raise one’s right hand and swear the Oath, is an emotional one no matter how logically it’s examined. It always is.
As for ‘remote controlled warfare’, it’s still a hard, muddy, nasty job. Sure, it requires fewer modern-equipped troops to take more terrain, but in the end, if you want a piece of ground, it requires a guy with a gun to sit on it, before you can call it your own. Smarter troops do that better, with fewer casualties, and fewer mistakes.
The ability to wage war is a requirement in this world, as nice as it would be if that were not the case. Since it is the case, and much depends on that ability, I submit that it’s too important a task to go under-manned (or womanned), and it’s too important a task to leave to the dregs of society. When they talk about "our best and brightest, " I stand tall and thank God that’s who we send.
I thought the only reason we had wars is because there are no necessities in life. You don’t have to do anything. I do agree that war is emotional =)
I should stop for now.
-Justhink
For what it’s worth, most of the guys I served with seemed a lot smarter than you, Justthink.
In other words, the recruiter is unfairly putting you in the position of having to be rude to him just to get off the phone. Not a problem when you’re talking to a regular telemarketer, but some folks may think twice (I did) before being rude to an agent of the federal government. I’m guessing that the recruiters understand this and use it to their advantage.
There are also a lot of people out there who are weak-willed, easily convinced and who lack self-esteem. People that can be talked into pretty much anything. Using the hard sell approach on them is dishonest enough when you’re selling a blender or life insurance, but pushing someone like this into a career that could get them killed is just not the right thing to do.
Another big problem I have with recruiters is their tendancy to take in anyone, rules be damned. Why have the rules in the first place if the person on the front lines of the recruitment process is just going to render them all pointless?
An example- My wife wanted to join the Army about four years ago. I’m not sure how, but in some way it made sense at the time. She explained to the recruiter that not only was she a frequent pot smoker, but that she had a rare autoimmune disease. The recruiter’s advice was to quit toking immediately, then try to beat the piss test by drinking lots of water on the day of the test! Not only that, but he told her not to disclose her medical ailment and to claim she’d never used illegal drugs in her life.
As it turned out, she passed the urinalysis, but her illness made her unable to complete basic training. Luckily, this happened before the 181-day mark, so she got out with a General Discharge.
Firstly, I don’t see my proposed response as rude at all. I advise politely declining interest (“No, thank you. Not interested.”), then terminating the call (Then hang up.). At no point did I suggest swearing at the Recruiter, calling them names, insulting their parentage, threatening lawsuits, blowing airhorns, or any of the other myriad shitty things that I’ve had said or done in my ear when I was on the bag. Just a simple, straigthforward decline. How is that rude, I ask…?
If such a short and sweet method is unpalatable, feel free to add any pleasantries you desire before hanging up, such as “Have a nice day,” “God Loves you,” or whatever. It still amounts to the same thing.
Second there’s nothing ‘unfair’ about it. The Recruiter is trained to get shit upon by prospects, their families, and whomever wants to vent that day. It’s called “Dealing With Rejection,” and it’s part of the job.
Recruiting is a fact of life. It’s a choice of 1) deal with Recruiters, or 2) Deal with a toothles national Government in the international arena, or 3) raise military salaries and benefits to back-breaking, budget-busting, grossly inflated levels so that sufficient numbers of people will take up the call without being recruited, or 4) Deal with a draft.
Choice 1) isn’t particularly fun, but it at least allows a large degree of freedom of choice on the parts of individuals.
Choice 2) leaves us without the ability to meet treaty obligations, protect our citizens and interests overseas, defend ourselves, and a host of more subtle deficits that don’t become apparant until you study history fairly closely.
Choice 3) is bloody unlikely, and a bad, bad idea to boot. Even if it were fiscally possible, it would create a military loaded with people who would fight tooth and nail to never lose their well-paid positions. In short, it would create a bloated, unready organization full of mutual back-scratchers who’s only purpose in the service is to protect each other’s jobs. We already have enough deadwood as it stands, we sure as hell don’t need any more! As it is now, for all the deadwood we do have, our armed forces are ready and able to fight. And they don’t break the budget, either, even as expensive as they are.
And of course, Choice 4) would suck large, smelly, ass. It would remove individual choice and replace it the tyrany of random chance. With a volunteer service, at least the individual still has the choice to say ‘No’.
So… What will it be? Become a second or third rate player in the international arena, with all that entails? Bring back the Draft? Break the budget? Or accept that Recruiters have a very valid role, and deal with that fact?
Those are political choices, and you get to tell the Gov’t how you want it. Whatever the decision, the Services will salute and try to do the best they can, even if it it’s a lost cause.
Don’t forget the next part. Repeat as neccessary every week for five years.
The act of hanging up on a person without waiting for a response is the part I would consider rude. And if you do wait for a response, it sure as hell isn’t going to be “I understand. Sorry to bother you. Goodbye,” like a reasonable person would say. More likely, it will just invite more high-pressure tactics. Even more infuriating, my tax dollars are being used to telemarket to me! Wow.
But that’s the least of my objections. You fail to address the morality of using high-pressure, one-on-one sales tactics with people who haven’t even reached maturity. If the law considers them so incapable of resisting peer pressure that they cannot even legally smoke cigarettes, why should it allow you to badger them mercilessly to march off and die. Or get money for college. Whichever way the dice land…
Some people simply cannot resist these tactics, especially when applied repeatedly, over time. What you might call “convincing and winning over a recruit,” I might call “wearing down one’s defenses until he gives in.” This could put people in combat situations who would probably be better off in a therapist’s office.
Words are very powerful tools, especially in a one-on-one setting. The fact that it’s a military officer (“He might die for my country! I can’t just hang up on him!”) trying every trick he knows to get you to stay on the line adds even more psychological leverage to the recruiter’s side. I just don’t think it’s right.
Alternatives I wouldn’t have objections to:
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A public school day set aside for exploring career options in the military. Attendance would be optional, but those attending would get out of their schoolwork for the today, so it would provide ample incentive to attend. This would not only allow recruiters to go into more detail than they could on the phone, but they could reach thousands of stundents at one time, rather than having to pester them individually.
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Constant TV advertisements. (Oh, wait…)
neutron star, you are aware that your proposed tactics are already being used, have been used, to the maximum extents practical…? Well, obviously you’re aware of the commercials.
The simple fact is that your proposed approach is grossly inadequate, by itself. In fact, until 9-11, all the tactics being used were inadequate, and serious attention was being paid to the possibility of reinstituting the draft. For the entire decade preceeding 9-11, the only service that consistently met recruiting goals was the Marines. Some years, the Airforce met goals. The Navy and Army almost never did, and in no year did all services meet goals.
“So what?” you ask. The meaning of that is this: Ships not able to get underway. Army units undermanned and unable to meet their mission demands. Aircraft squadrons needing to steal bodies from other units to deploy to their operational areas. In short, the begining of the return to the hollow, inadequate, unready forces of the late 70s. Without those young men and women, your government, my government, our government can’t do many of the things we pay them to do.
Alternate methods are constantly being pursued and investigated, but in the end, it always comes back to the practices that really work in the real world. The high-pressure sales tactics and the tax-payer funded telemarketing are the cost of an all-volunteer service. Accept them, or accept the draft.
It’s that simple.
Oh, good grief, neutron. You’re essentially crying that your tax dollars are being spent to defend you. Out of idle curiosity…exactly how much of your taxes, the actual monetary value, goes to that?
I went to the National Scout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill Va.
The amount of recrutment efforts was actually sickening. I got no less than 20 applications given to me each day.
Yeah, clayton, sometimes Recruiters try so hard they wind up stepping on their own dicks.
I tried using the same arguments to justify telemarketing. Somehow, I don’t think they’ll be received any better when you use them to justify selling military indentures to people who aren’t even legally able to buy concert tickets over the phone.