FormerRecruitingGuru
Making Recruiting Great Again
Admins, request sticky if possible.
About 10 years ago, RockyMtnNFO created a thread to give an insider scoop on the life of an officer recruiter. While some of the information remains the same, much has changed in which I believe needs to be addressed.
First and foremost, I've been in recruiting for over three years now. Three years as a recruiting division officer (essentially officer in charge of a geographical area) and currently as the Assistant Operations Officer overseeing everything officer recruiting related for the NRD (Navy Recruiting District), so I've been able to see and experience recruiting from the field itself as well as from the top.
Secondly, many folks here on AirWarriors are lucky to have some recruiters, past and present on here. We do our best to provide information (such as boards schedules and any big processing changes), especially the active duty/fleet folks who are often left out in the dark during the process. Most of the time, applicants know (or should know) the working relationship between themselves and us on here. However, at other times this privilege has been abused. So with that being said, WE ARE NOT YOUR RECRUITER. It is not my job on here to check CIRIMS, you have an actual recruiter for that. Also, before you do post please answer the following questions:
1. Can my question be answered by a simple search?
or (most important)
2. Can my question be answered by my recruiter?
A recruiter's job is to assist you and field any questions or concerns you have during the entire application, from simply learning about the Navy, to surviving OCS, to what to expect in flight school and/or the fleet. Furthermore, there's a highly likely chance your question/concern has already been asked and even addressed on here. Another thing I get commonly is "my recruiter sucks". Okay, care to elaborate? Even so, there might be miscommunication or something that really isn't nothing. If you're having issues with your OR, you need to have a sit down talk and address them. If they can't or won't be addressed, then please bring them up to the local NRD AOPS or ACR for further action. More than likely you're going to have a shitty department head, XO, and even CO that you have no choice but to work for. Consider your shitty OR experience a lesson on how not to be when you get to the fleet.
Moving to recruiters... your recruiter is very likely busy. Not solely from recruiting duty, but other collateral and even personal duties outside of work. If your OR is an officer, they're also likely a Division Officer responsible for both enlisted and officer recruiting and the 15-30 personnel assigned. If your OR is enlisted, they have other duties as well like PRT and CPO-365 coordinator that can take time away from the office. Also, both officer and enlisted ORs can be occupied conducting internal investigations. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to set aside 1-2 days of actual work to investigate a recruiter forging signatures. These duties tend to have high priority (aka by CO/XO) and so they'll have priority over working applicants. Finally, recruiting duty is shore duty. For officers, most of them are working on their master's (including me) on their off-time or polishing up that resume for civilian life (most ORs tend to separate or retire after their recruiting tour). For everyone else, recruiting duty is an opportunity to be away from deployments for a couple of years and enjoy normal family life once again. Remember, recruiters are people too. We have emergencies and of course we take leave. That whole "you get 30 days of paid vacation a year" slogan we sold you on... yes that applies to us as well.
There's three types of officer recruiters out there: Fleet officers, enlisted, and reserve officers. For the reserve officers, they have an opportunity to get back on active duty for a couple of years and recruit in their hometown. For the other two, it's an opportunity to get on shore duty usually somewhere near a desired geographical area. Also, some enlisted ORs are career recruiting force (CRF) meaning they do recruiting until they retire (or get kicked out, that's bad), but I'll get back to that later. The old stigma has been that only ORs or good ORs are strictly officers. That's not true whatsoever. A good OR is not determined by pay grade. I've personally seen some terrible ORs that are O-4s and some amazing ORs who are E-7s and E-6s. Hell, the National OR of the Year a few years ago was an E-5 (at the time) out of Raleigh. Anything is possible.
(to be continued...)
About 10 years ago, RockyMtnNFO created a thread to give an insider scoop on the life of an officer recruiter. While some of the information remains the same, much has changed in which I believe needs to be addressed.
First and foremost, I've been in recruiting for over three years now. Three years as a recruiting division officer (essentially officer in charge of a geographical area) and currently as the Assistant Operations Officer overseeing everything officer recruiting related for the NRD (Navy Recruiting District), so I've been able to see and experience recruiting from the field itself as well as from the top.
Secondly, many folks here on AirWarriors are lucky to have some recruiters, past and present on here. We do our best to provide information (such as boards schedules and any big processing changes), especially the active duty/fleet folks who are often left out in the dark during the process. Most of the time, applicants know (or should know) the working relationship between themselves and us on here. However, at other times this privilege has been abused. So with that being said, WE ARE NOT YOUR RECRUITER. It is not my job on here to check CIRIMS, you have an actual recruiter for that. Also, before you do post please answer the following questions:
1. Can my question be answered by a simple search?
or (most important)
2. Can my question be answered by my recruiter?
A recruiter's job is to assist you and field any questions or concerns you have during the entire application, from simply learning about the Navy, to surviving OCS, to what to expect in flight school and/or the fleet. Furthermore, there's a highly likely chance your question/concern has already been asked and even addressed on here. Another thing I get commonly is "my recruiter sucks". Okay, care to elaborate? Even so, there might be miscommunication or something that really isn't nothing. If you're having issues with your OR, you need to have a sit down talk and address them. If they can't or won't be addressed, then please bring them up to the local NRD AOPS or ACR for further action. More than likely you're going to have a shitty department head, XO, and even CO that you have no choice but to work for. Consider your shitty OR experience a lesson on how not to be when you get to the fleet.
Moving to recruiters... your recruiter is very likely busy. Not solely from recruiting duty, but other collateral and even personal duties outside of work. If your OR is an officer, they're also likely a Division Officer responsible for both enlisted and officer recruiting and the 15-30 personnel assigned. If your OR is enlisted, they have other duties as well like PRT and CPO-365 coordinator that can take time away from the office. Also, both officer and enlisted ORs can be occupied conducting internal investigations. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to set aside 1-2 days of actual work to investigate a recruiter forging signatures. These duties tend to have high priority (aka by CO/XO) and so they'll have priority over working applicants. Finally, recruiting duty is shore duty. For officers, most of them are working on their master's (including me) on their off-time or polishing up that resume for civilian life (most ORs tend to separate or retire after their recruiting tour). For everyone else, recruiting duty is an opportunity to be away from deployments for a couple of years and enjoy normal family life once again. Remember, recruiters are people too. We have emergencies and of course we take leave. That whole "you get 30 days of paid vacation a year" slogan we sold you on... yes that applies to us as well.
There's three types of officer recruiters out there: Fleet officers, enlisted, and reserve officers. For the reserve officers, they have an opportunity to get back on active duty for a couple of years and recruit in their hometown. For the other two, it's an opportunity to get on shore duty usually somewhere near a desired geographical area. Also, some enlisted ORs are career recruiting force (CRF) meaning they do recruiting until they retire (or get kicked out, that's bad), but I'll get back to that later. The old stigma has been that only ORs or good ORs are strictly officers. That's not true whatsoever. A good OR is not determined by pay grade. I've personally seen some terrible ORs that are O-4s and some amazing ORs who are E-7s and E-6s. Hell, the National OR of the Year a few years ago was an E-5 (at the time) out of Raleigh. Anything is possible.
(to be continued...)
