There is a very personable guy I made the acquaintance of a few weeks ago, and it turns out that (among other things) he’s a recruiter for the US Navy. In chatting about his work he indicates the average rate of new recruitment’s for Naval recruiters is less than one recruit per month per recruiter (something like .096). He’s apparently a top rated recruiter, and does substantially better than this personally, but I was still stunned at the “one a month” average.
Being surprised at how low this number was I asked him if I was misunderstanding him, and he said “No, it’s one signed up and viable recruit per month, per recruiter. If you’re pushing 3-5 month through the system you’re a superstar”.
I’m in sales, and I know how tough it is to market stuff, but I have to admit even from the perspective of an outsider who doesn’t know anything about recruiting this seems awfully low with respect to the average level of production per recruiter.
Is the average military recruiter’s production really this low?
Yes, well, trying to sell a job that makes less pay than the private sector, may require extensive travel periods abroad, and has “getting shot” as a real occupational risk IS a bit difficult…
FWIW, the Army’s quota is 2 per recruiter per month. That’s their goal anyway. Most come shy of that. If you can put in two per month, every month, then you are a solid performer who will be well rewarded. Fall short of that and they will be all over your ass constantly and you’ll be working 20 hour shifts cold calling high school kids. . .
It’s a pretty stressful job, I’m glad I avoided it and got to come here to be shot at. Who needs the stress of cold calling and sales quotas!!?
Incidentally, since you mentioned pay, I think that the pay is one of their best incentives, yet recruiters never stress it enough. My buddy just got a 31,000 dollar reenlistment bonus. Tax Free. Lump Sum.
Initial enlistment bonuses of 15-20 thousand are common. Plus a soldier will make around 30K a year his first year. With huge step increases and promotions along the way. PLUS free medical and dental. This is a pretty good offer to an 18 year old with just a high school diploma or GED.
Do private sector jobs get a cost of living raise every year too? I got a 3% raise last month, plus a couple hundred dollar step increase for years in service. I’m pulling in roughly 4800-4900 a month. That’s NOT counting medical and dental benefits. That’s cash in the bank. As pretty much an unskilled laborer, just under 60K is pretty good. Well, sure I got skills, but it was all paid training and no college was necessary.
Oh… and I actually consider this part a perk. Back in August I was in Germany. I drove–yes drove–to Munich, Prague, Paris, Nurnberg, Neuschwanstein, Flossenburg… did I mention PARIS?! Prague! I got to take weekend getaways to destinations people wait their whole lives to visit. Can’t wait to get back there. I’ll be hitting up Italy, London, Netherlands, Berlin…
Course I love to travel. That might be a burden to other people.
Unless I’m misunderstanding it, even if someone decides without a recruiter’s help that they’d like to enlist, they still have to contact a recruiter to do the paperwork.
We call them walk-ins, and yes, you do need to contact a recruiter if you are a walk in. The recruiter, usually the station commander, will be the one to schedule the applicant for the testing and screening to determine if the person is qualified for service in the branch he or she chose.
And Bear is right that if you can do two contracts a month in the Army, generally you will be left alone. I just finished my first week as a recruiter only 155 weeks to go.
Also, the goal is two a month per person, but the station may have different goals. For example in a station with two recruiters the station mission for the month may be 5 contracts. Someone has to get that third contract or the station will be doing longer days and Saturdays.
To put this in perspective, I have worked with many recruiters and headhunters in the private sector dealing with professional jobs. Two of them admitted to me that placing two people a month was great and anything consistently above that was the mark of a superstar. I can believe a military recruiter would have about the same rate of success.
I think you misunderstood Broomstick. Astro’s question seems to be why are performance standards (apparently) so low for military recruiters. The fact that the vast majority of the population is going to find the conditions unsuitable means that recruiters are working from a very limited pool.
I’ll grant you everything except the part about pay.
I got out of the Navy six years ago as a Lieutenant (O-3), because I’d gotten married and had a child, and the six month deployments were no longer looking very attractive.
Anyway, I’d completed a Master’s degree right before I left the Navy, and got a job as an engineer with a civil/environmental engineering consulting firm.
That being said, I still took a huge (~30%) pay cut when I got out, not counting the tax benefits I got while I was in the Navy.
Six years later, I’m still not up to what I was making when I left the Navy, if you adjust for inflation.
People often don’t realize just how much people make in the military. When I got out six years ago, a Navy Lieutenant made about $70K/year (including housing and subsistence allowances).
(Add on submarine pay, sea pay, and the nuclear officer incentive bonus, and a typical nuclear sub officer easily tops six figures today.)
Precisely. For someone with a college degree who does NOT like to travel the military is not nearly as appealing as to a high school grad with wanderlust. Plus, many people are very risk-averse and would not take a job that has a possibility of being shot at regardless of price. The pool of people who would be interested in such a job is limited, and even then requires further screening to eliminate the unsuitable.
SSG Schwartz might be able to give more info but I have dealt with a lot of recruiters in my 19 years in the military. One of their biggest frustrations is not finding people who want to go in, it’s finding qualified people. The majority of those that want to go in are disqualified due to medical reasons, problems with their backgrounds or because they are dumb as a box of rocks and can’t pass the ASVAB. I was a walk in recruit and when I took my practice ASVAB the recruiter almost hugged me.
On a side note, I’ve heard that scoring very high on tests that attempt to measure general intelligence will sometimes exclude you from various types of routine jobs like small town police work, truck driver etc., as they feel you would probably get bored and would not be a good long term employment prospect, and investing training etc, in you would not be a good bet.
Can you score so high on the ASVAB that you would be considered unsuited for the military, or is this not an issue?
