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TRUTH IN RECRUITING

Bad Recruiting (The 10 Most Common Lies by Recruiters)
By Rod Powers

Those who know me or who have read my articles over
the past eight years won't be surprised to hear that
my top three pet peeves are (1) applicants who lie
about their qualifications to get into the military,
(2) recruiters who encourage them to lie and (3)
recruiters who lie to applicants.

A few years ago, I extensively addressed the first two
issues in my article, I Cannot Tell a Lie, in which I
bespeak the consequences of false statements on
enlistment documents. It's past time I addressed my
final top irritant.

Let me preface this article by saying I personally
know dozens of military recruiters. The vast majority
of recruiters are hard-working, honest, and
trustworthy; tasked to do one of the most difficult
jobs in the military.

However, military recruiting is a numbers game, pure
and simple. Recruiter careers are made and broken
based on whether or not they can meet their monthly
quotas (called "goals" in the recruiting world). Keep
in mind (depending on the service branch), most
recruiters are non-volunteers. They never wanted the
job in the first place, but -- once selected -- are
told that the prospect of returning to their previous
jobs after three or four years of recruiting duty with
an unblemished service record depends primarily upon
making their goals.

The 10 most common lies by recruiters....

Army’s New Battle Cry Aims at Potential Recruits .....

A PRIZED goal of Madison Avenue is to link a brand to a desirable quality or attribute: Ford trucks with toughness, Coca-Cola with refreshment, FedEx with reliability. Now comes a major effort from one of the oldest brands of all, the Army, to lay claim to the concept of strength.

..... "Army strong” is the theme of a campaign that the Army plans to announce formally today. The effort, with a budget estimated at $1.35 billion in the next five years, will appear in traditional media like television as well as nontraditional outlets like blogs, social networking Web sites and chat rooms. ................ the rest of the NYTimes article