To the calm, Mother Earth's
Waiting breast;
Duty done, Like the sun:
Going West.
Posted on 09/29/2008 7:06:59 PM PDT by RDTF
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Army is establishing a suicide prevention board to examine the mental health of its recruiters around the country after the fourth suicide in three years by Houston, Texas-based recruiters, according to Army officials.
The board will look at how to handle the high-stress climate facing recruiters who may be both under pressure from their job and victims of post-combat deployment stress, according to Douglas Smith, a spokesman from the U.S. Army Recruiting command.
"The United States Army Recruiting Command is deeply concerned by the instances of suicide within the Houston Recruiting Battalion," said a statement released by the Recruiting Command. "The board's objective will be to prevent future suicides, increase suicide awareness, analyze trends and highlight additional tools and resources to combat suicide within the Recruiting Command."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Has CNN ever reported a positive story concerning the military?
Sure, just not OUR military.
/johnny
I used to teach the topic for the Army. What they leave out of the media reports is that Army leaders really care.
They love the French.
And every Muslim whether in a traditional military or simply a jihadist.
Lets see how this works.
If a recruiter doesn’t make his quota, he feels the heavy pressure that he isn’t an NCO, isn’t doing his job, has to work more hours, has someone checking on every thing he did the last month. Basically the recruiter is made to feel worthless and is letting down the army.
It doesn’t matter that the recruiter was outstanding in his previous unit while deployed overseas. All that matters is he didn’t make numbers. After so much time away from family overseas, the recruiter thinks he can spend some time with the family since he isn’t going overseas and will be home in bed every night. So recruiter has to be at work by 0800 and may not get home till 2100. If your spouse isn’t understanding, it could get real rough since they have been told this assignment will be less stressful.
I haven’t even taken in account if you have a jerk for a Battalion Commander who is looking to make the next rank or a bad Command Sergeant Major.
How right you are. I’ve been lucky enough to not been pulled for that horrible duty. From other soldiers who have been “selected”, I’ve heard it’s exactly like you put it: every month is judged as a new month- even if the recruiter had the best numbers the month prior, he could end up getting a bad counseling statement. Friends of mine have finagled deployments instead of going to recruiting- that should tell you how much they didn’t want to do that.
“If a recruiter doesn’t make his quota, he feels the heavy pressure that he isn’t an NCO, isn’t doing his job, has to work more hours, has someone checking on every thing he did the last month. Basically the recruiter is made to feel worthless and is letting down the army.”
If you don’t make quota and that trend continues, you get FIRED. Even if your classifier is screwing you over by sending your prospects to other branches.
But sometimes it isn’t the recruiters fault. A recruiter can take a busload of high school kids who want to join the army down to be tested. No one will pass. These will be kids who will receive high school diplomas.
For the record, I was a Recruiting Company Commander. The Recruiting BDEs play with the numbers to make themselves look good. I never could understand how we as companies and battalions were failing but the brigades still made their numbers.
The army also has problems with understanding trends, market saturation, like other government agencies. They believe if they spend more money and have more recruiters, they will get more recruits. Remember a few years back when the agency that gives out food stamps had not given out its quota so they started advertising on the radio so people would come get food stamps. The examples are endless.
I understand what you’re saying. I was a Recruiter. It’s shocking how many prospects who try as hard as they can would only score an 18 on the ASVAB. Yes, that’s not the Recruiter’s fault, but it didn’t matter. It just meant we had to increase our outreach to find more prospects. We used to call it “dialing for dollars.”
My specialty was waivers. I would take the prospects other Recruiters didn’t want because of the extra paper work and time involved. It was worth it, because in a large percentage would get their waivers.
Whatever quota we missed would have to be made up in the following month.
I would work with a prospect for 3-4 months to get them qualified. Then my jackass classifier would send them to another branch of service. She didn’t last very long.
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