Hi
Can anyone help me with reasons why a new recruit would be turned down from joining the army.
I have always assumed if physically fit and with basic intelligence you are in.
Do they have interviews and turn people down?
Thanks
The British Army certainly does. A criminal record, especially drug related would be a no no. They also look for people with the right attitudes and enthusiasms.
From talking to recruiters and former recruiters over the years I’ve been told only about 20-30% of those walking through the door are qualified to join. Most common reasons are not passing the entrance exam (ASVAB), pre-existing medical conditions and the criminal background check. The actual standards change frequently depending on needs of the army.
Wow, my original belief was that they literally took anyone.
Train the ‘right attitude’ into them
Drugs criminal record I understand, but are you turned down with any criminal record? Petty theft etc
Just goes to show how little I know, I blame TV
I thought you were turned down because of ‘flat feet’ else you were in
You also need a high school diploma. There are minimums and maximums for height and weight. You will need a waiver if you have two or more dependents. You cannot have a felony record, or two or more misdemeanors.
Heck,read for yourself.
Regards,
Shodan
Many thanks, I will have a read through
That belief may persist because of the Vietnam era, when the Army dropped its standards significantly late in the war. If you could fog a mirror, you were draft eligible.
I helped the recruiter in the office for a couple of months when I was in the National Guard.
“Healthy” is relative. There are some specific things which you may not know you have that pop up at the physical. One is a hernia. You would not believe how many people enlist at the office, then when they get to the Military Entrance Processing Center (MEPs), a hernia gets discovered. There are rules about how many teeth you can be missing, as well. You needed only a 30% on the ASVAB at the time, which was slightly higher than chance, and people still failed. People came in who didn’t have a high school diploma, and the recruiter would still get their signature, so as not to lose the commitment, but it was pending their passing the GED, and some people wouldn’t pass. Having a psychiatric past gets you dismissed sometimes, as well. You can get some things waivered, but you can have only one waiver. There was a woman who had been to grief counseling after her mother died (and this was when the woman was a teenager), and she got turned down for that. Some people get turned away for poor vision, even if their vision is correctable to 20/20. Other people with poor, but correctable vision, are limited in the jobs they can do.
Also, the height/weight ratio for enlistment is slightly more lenient for enlistment than for shipping to basic training. If you don’t ship right away, you may enlist, but need to lose four or five pounds to ship. If you aren’t shipping for six months, not a big deal, but you need to keep on top of it. I don’t know how many chances you get, but when I shipped, there was someone who didn’t make weight (they have a tape test, in case you are just very muscular, and she failed that as well).
There’s also a physical fitness requirement when you get to basic-- it used to be very lenient-- a woman just had to do one push-up. But now you have to do several, and also run a distance in a certain time (how much time is based on gender and age). If you can’t do it, you go to an intensive fitness program for a couple of weeks before you can go to your actual basic training unit. You are allowed only so many weeks in fitness before they tear up your contract and send you home, although you do get paid for the time you are there.
Single parents, even ones joining the Guard and reserves, have to have a springing power of attorney for guardianship of their children, so they can be called up, and their is a plan in place for their children. It’s not enough to say you have it. The Army needs to see it, and I think talk the primary person named as guardian (even if it’s the children’s other parent), to make sure it’s OK. The only exception is when you are non-custodial, and even then, the Army wants to see proof that you are non-custodial, both physical and legal.
My daughter looked into Air Force ROTC. She was a top candidate, everything was moving along fine, then her migraine medication came up and disqualified her. After years of debilitating migraines her doctors found a medication that worked, but it was one the Air Force did not allow. She began weaning off the medication (under MD supervision), suffered several migraines after being free of them, and dropped the idea.
(Happy ending, though. She graduated and is working as a nurse now.)
I lost my Army ROTC scholarship due to a hearing impairment.
Yep, this isn’t Starship Troopers. The days of taking any inebriate, vagrant, or criminal and beating drill into them with stock and lash are long gone… and with good reason.
Anyway, when I was in MEPS I saw a guy get turned down because his ASVAB score was not high enough to qualify for the regular army. The only slot he qualified for was as a mechanic in the reserves.
Keep in mind there are only ever so many slots available. You don’t just walk in and get handed a rifle and sent to the front. You have to take a look at what jobs have openings and get slotted in. If the job you want has met their quota for that year, you have to pick another job or wait.
The other important thing is that the requirements are inevitably relaxed when more recruits are needed. At the height of the Iraq War they became more lenient with regard to waivers for criminal records; they also revised the tattoo policy to be more lenient. Of course, in times of a draw-down (as we are in now) waivers are rare and policies (such as tattoos) are more restrictive. And I say “waivers are rare” because the Army actually caps the number of waivers it will grant each year. Just proving that you have overcome whatever problem you had does not mean you automatically get one.
Same thing goes for re-enlistment. During the war you could get a big cash bonus for re-enlisting in a shortage MOS (Star MOS). Nowadays those same MOS’s are forbidding Soldiers to re-enlist and forcing them to change jobs because they are overstrength.
And ironically, I know a guy with hearing loss acquired in the Army.
A friend of mine says this brother joined the Army after graduating form high school. He was pushed into it by his parents because they felt he needed to grow up. The Army sent him back before he completed his basic training and said he wasn’t motivated enough for them.
Eh? Working construction all those years in the military, especially the jobs around air fields (fucking EA-6B) is probably why I now have tinnitus.
Wearing a lapel pin saying ‘I Heart Edward Snowden’ helps.
Yes, you can stay in the Army with a hearing impairment, you just can’t join the Army with a hearing impairment. There’s a fully deaf ROTC graduate trying to change the automatic disqualification rule for new recruits. Last I heard the Army was considering a pilot program. There’s also at least one Citadel graduate who was automatically disqualified for being deaf (he uses a cochlear implant).
I thought that, regardless of what the recruiter said, the military would slot you into any position it needed a warm body to fill and that was that. Can people really pick their MOS and have that choice respected?
Also, service does not guarantee citizenship. It makes it easier, yes, but you could still get turned down.
They can be strict. Arlo Guthrie was turned down due to his criminal litterbug record.
Depends how badly the service wants you. If you have a high ASVAB score and you’re an trilingual Eagle scout with glowing letters of recommendation and so on, they’ll work with you.
The military isn’t that different from any other employer in some ways.