PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Not long ago, Marine Col. Jennifer Nash, a combat engineer with war deployments under her belt, made a vow to fellow officers as they headed to a dinner in Atlanta: She would get two new recruiting contacts by the end of the evening.

She admits recruiting is not the job that she or other Marines had in mind when they enlisted. But after stints as a recruiter and senior officer at the Eastern recruiting command, she has become emblematic of the Corps’ tradition of putting its best, battle-tested Marines on enlistment duty. They get results.

Marine leaders say they will make their recruiting goal this year, while the active-duty Army, Navy and Air Force all expect to fall short. The services have struggled in the tight job market to compete with higher-paying businesses for the dwindling number of young people who can meet the military’s physical, mental and moral standards.

On that night, Nash achieved her own goal. She had gotten the valet at the hotel and the hostess at the restaurant to provide their phone numbers and to consider a Marine career.





Nash’s boss, Brig. Gen. Walker Field, who head the Eastern recruiting region, says the Corps has historically put an emphasis on selecting top-performing Marines to fill recruiting jobs. He says that has been a key to the Marines’ recruiting success, along with efforts to increase the number of recruiters, extend those who do well and speed their return to high schools, where in-person recruiting stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said his recruiters — who cover the territory between Canada and Puerto Rico and as far west as Mississippi — will meet their mission and expect to have 30% of their 2024 goal when they start the next fiscal year, Oct. 1. More broadly, Marine officials say they expect the Corps to achieve its recruiting target of more than 33,000.

Last year, the Navy, Air Force and Marines had to eat into their pools of delayed entry applicants in order to make their goals. The Marines will avoid that this year.

“That would be a great ending,” said Field, speaking to The Associated Press on a recent steamy day at South Carolina’s Parris Island, along the Atlantic Coast. “I’m bearish for not only concluding FY23 on a strong footing, but also how we set the conditions for FY24.”

The Marine Corps may get some help from its small size. The Army, for example, has a recruiting goal of 65,000 this year, which is nearly double the Corps’, and expects to fall substantially short of that. Air Force and Navy officials say they will also miss their goals, although the Space Force, which is the smallest service and does its recruiting within Air Force stations, is expected to meet its goal of about 500 recruits.

Sitting in the shadow of Parris Island’s replica of the Iwo Jima monument, Field said his biggest challenge is that a number of Marine hopefuls cannot pass the military’s academic test, known as the Armed Services Voluntary Aptitude Battery.

That is a widespread problem, but the Army recently set up a program that targets recruits who score below 30 on the test and provides schooling for several weeks to help them pass. Already more than 8,800 recruits have successfully gone through the classes, raised their scores and moved on to basic training.

The Navy is taking another route with a pilot program that allows up to 20% of their recruits to score below 30 on the test, as long as they meet specific standards for their chosen naval job. Marine leaders, however, do not take those lowest scoring recruits, and so far have no plans for any type of formal improvement program such as the Army’s.

Field said the Marines are repositioning recruiting stations, moving them around based on where population totals have increased in the latest census. More important, he said, the Corps maintains its focus on choosing the right recruiters, encouraging successful ones to stay in the job and increasing the number of Marine reservists tapped for recruit duties from the current 31 to 96 by the end of next year.

Nash, who until last month was assistant chief of staff for the Eastern region, said Marines are hand-selected for recruiting command jobs. Many three- and four-star Marines, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis, will cite their years doing enlistment duty.

“We put our best and brightest in those positions,” said Nash, adding that those chosen for recruiting posts have a proven track record of success in previous assignments and have demonstrated critical leadership skills. “That’s why they got selected, because they were above their peers.”

She acknowledged that the first time she was picked for a recruiting job she was “voluntold.” But now, recounting her sales pitch in Atlanta, her rapid fire pitch comes without taking a breath.

“I say, ‘Hey, ever thought about being Marine? We’re a bunch of Marines. And, you know, I think you potentially could be a good Marine. You ever thought about it?’ And usually you get, ‘Yeah, I thought about it.’ And I’m, like, ‘What’s holding you back? Would you like to learn more about your opportunities?’ ‘Absolutely.’ `OK. Mind giving me your name and phone number? I’ll have one of my recruiters give you a phone call.’”

The Marines have resisted increasing bonuses to attract recruits — something the other services have found helpful.

Gen. Eric Smith, the acting Marine Corps commandant, got some ribbing for his response when he was asked about bonuses during a naval conference in February.

“Your bonus is you get to call yourself a Marine,” he said. “That’s your bonus, right? There’s no dollar amount that goes with that.”

Field, Nash and others also say the Corps prefers to give a lot of recruits a few thousand dollars, rather than increasing the amount and giving money to far fewer people.

Field said that getting Marine recruiters in uniform back into high schools this year, after several years of COVID-19 restrictions, has been a key driver. There, young people line up to compete in pull-up contests, vying for a free T-shirt if they can do 20. And recruiters say many are drawn to the cache of being a Marine.

“If you told me you’ll give me $10 million worth of advertising and I can do something with it, or you’ll give me 10 great-looking Marines in a Marine uniform — what’s going to get the most value? Give me those 10 Marines and give me a day,” Nash said. “We’ll go out and we’ll get more out of that, I think, than $10 million in advertising.”
link; https://apnews.com/article/mar...fad521fa32379a29be74

If you can’t get a passing grade on the ASVAB you are going to have problems in life. It is not a difficult test. At all. My nephew who wanted to be a Marine twice failed to get an acceptable score. Now he is awash in weed and anxiety. I sure wish he had made it in.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
If you can’t get a passing grade on the ASVAB you are going to have problems in life. It is not a difficult test. At all. My nephew who wanted to be a Marine twice failed to get an acceptable score. Now he is awash in weed and anxiety. I sure wish he had made it in.

Yes, not a hard test at all. You don't need an IQ much above 90 to pass the ASVAB.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
If you can’t get a passing grade on the ASVAB you are going to have problems in life. It is not a difficult test. At all. My nephew who wanted to be a Marine twice failed to get an acceptable score. Now he is awash in weed and anxiety. I sure wish he had made it in.

If he had barely passed to get in, I'm not sure that would have been the best thing for him. The military doesn't make anyone someone they're not, the military can bring out what's inside. Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad.

If he can't pass the ASVAB, there are other issues that need to be addressed.

I was a Marine recruiter, Post Vietnam years, 40 years ago now. Three most difficult/miserable years of my career. Quota was 4 enlistments per month. In reality, they only really needed about a 2.2 average from each of us across the recruiting service to make the Marine Corps annual enlistment numbers. Best I remember, they always made those numbers. Even then, it was surprising at the large percentage of potential recruits who couldn’t score the minimum 31 on the ASVAB. At that time The Army’s minimum score was 21, National Guard, for a time, went down to 11 to make their numbers!

When you guys are referring to ASVAB scores, are you stating a required average?

Made me look up my old scores, plural, and so I'm wondering if things changed.

quote:

Originally posted by apprentice:
When you guys are referring to ASVAB scores, are you stating a required average?

Made me look up my old scores, plural, and so I'm wondering if things changed.

Your individual scores in the 10 different sub-areas can dictate what specific jobs within each branch you qualify for.

But there's also an overall minimum score required to enlist at all in each branch, which is determined by taking the average of your Arithmetic Reasoning, Mathematics Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension, and Word Knowledge scores

Currently, it looks like the minimum for the Coast Guard is 40, and for the other branches it's 31.

99 is perfect. 50 is considered average. So at a minimum of 31, you can be nearly 40% below average in math and language arts skills and still get in. (You just might not qualify for any job besides cleaning toilets or stirring pots of beans. Or, you know, infantry. )

The previously mentioned score of 11 for the National Guard would be crazy low... Special ed low. Think "McNamara's Follies"/Forrest Gump/Private Pyle.

As I'd hoped then. Sounds like they separated overall categories a bit sometime after I took mine, but your description looks similar.

One thing the Marines still sell is the adventure of joining up.

When I joined up I wasn’t looking for opportunities or relatable skills. I wanted fun and adventure. I was eighteen with a useless piece of paper called a high school diploma and didn’t want to work at some fast food joint or construction or whatever. I wanted to get out of the house and see what the world had to offer. I wanted to do cool shit.

The Marines delivered.

The other branches might want to take note…

I think it’s due to the fact that the Marine Corps is still in the business of defending the country and killing enemies, and not ate up with all those woke diversity bullshit.

As far as the ASVAB I took that when I was 17 years old, and I thought the thing was easy as could be, scored a 98.

quote:

"McNamara's Follies"

?

Program instituted by Secretary McNamara where low IQ folk were inducted into the service to meet quotas. If I remember correctly their casualty rate was higher than regular troops. Quite sad actually. Called them the Moron Corps.

Their fatality rate was three times that of other GIs. We don't know exactly how many were wounded, but it is estimated at around 20,000.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ZSMICHAEL,

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:

quote:

"McNamara's Follies"

?

Jocko has a really good podcast where he talks about McNamara's Follies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...channel=JockoPodcast

Speaking as an old retired soldier, the Marines do attract a different breed of cat so to speak, and do push the fundamentals of being a marine, plus the relatively low numbers needed compared to other services all are helpful.

For a lot of years, the other services have been for the most part trying to push the idea of joining and acquiring a skill marketable to civilian employment, which does not appear to be working for them.
Make no mistake all the services Marines included are being forced from on high to be part of the wokeness and that has had a substantial negative impact on recruiting.
The debacle that ended our involvement in Afghanistan didn’t help either ( I recall being pretty shaken after spending a deployment there and seeing how it ended)

I've recently hired two retired Marines for software engineering positions. Both did the Afghanistan tours. Those guys have a can do attitude and they're not afraid of criticism. They can also think on their own exceptionally well. If these two guys are indicative of Marine recruits we're in pretty good shape Marine Corp wise.

On a side note, one did basic training at Camp Pendleton and the other did his training at Camp Lejeune. The Camp Lejeune marine calls the Camp Pendleton marine a "Hollywood Marine". Never heard that before. Personally, I can't tell the difference but they seem to enjoy the kidding.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Program instituted by Secretary McNamara where low IQ folk were inducted into the service to meet quotas …

So a Forrest Gump type serving in the army at that time was a real thing? Interesting.