Want to hear about personal experiences

[BigJeffray]

Thank you guys for all the real talk about the officer/enlisted side. I have been working with an Enlisted recruiter for 5 months now, and never heard about OCS until a few weeks ago and realized that I qualify for it and it's much better quality pay and lifestyle.
The Enlisted Recruiter I've been working with told me that Officers aren't as respected as Enlisted because they don't get their hands dirty. It rubbed me the wrong way, because I know that officers have worked hard to get where they are too. Especially how much studying and testing has gone into getting my degree, I just don't want to go into this with an ignorant mindset. The officer recruiter recommended this web page.

I'd recommend not talking to this person anymore. Just tell him you decided to go a different direction and break contact and stick with the officer recruiter from here on out.

 

[HeartofTexas]

Hey now lol, y'all can tell me your Thailand stories! I came here for experiences and feedback, but thought that title would have been too long.

I'm sure it involved waiting in line at the ATM for half an hour followed by a few drinks and ping pong balls...

 

[Spekkio]

I don't know what dual entry is but I wish this wasn't a thing. If you have or will have a 4 year degree, and are eligible to be an officer, then I wish enlisted recruiters weren't allowed to work with you.

Things change but when I started my application to OCS circa 2007, the only way to get in contact with an OR was for the enlisted recruiter to forward your info to them.

They started heckling me and listing all sorts of ridiculous fake requirements (I had done my research and also helped that my academic record met their ridiculous standards).

Then my OR on our first meeting just sat me down to take the ASTB cold. Somehow I eeked out straight 7s by random guessing.

I still get sailors with bachelor's who joined because they were told that enlisting was the best path to become an officer or simply were too impatient to go through the application process, so something tells me NRC wants enlisted recruiters to get a chance at college grads.

 

[Meyerkord]

Things change but when I started my application to OCS circa 2007, the only way to get in contact with an OR was for the enlisted recruiter to forward your info to them.

They started heckling me and listing all sorts of ridiculous fake requirements (I had done my research and also helped that my academic record met their ridiculous standards).

Then my OR on our first meeting just sat me down to take the ASTB cold. Somehow I eeked out straight 7s by random guessing.

I still get sailors with bachelor's who joined because they were told that enlisting was the best path to become an officer or simply were too impatient to go through the application process, so something tells me NRC wants enlisted recruiters to get a chance at college grads.

I had a similar experience. The Navy website has a "find a recruiter" tool, but if you select the officer option, they only list the NRDs and not all the officer recruiters that work at satellite offices. I called the NRD countless times and ran into a full voicemail box because no one ever answered the phone. I eventually just called the enlisted office in town and they hooked me up with a local OR's number, just across the street from where I was working at the time.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Things change but when I started my application to OCS circa 2007, the only way to get in contact with an OR was for the enlisted recruiter to forward your info to them.

They started heckling me and listing all sorts of ridiculous fake requirements (I had done my research and also helped that my academic record met their ridiculous standards).

Then my OR on our first meeting just sat me down to take the ASTB cold. Somehow I eeked out straight 7s by random guessing.

I still get sailors with bachelor's who joined because they were told that enlisting was the best path to become an officer or simply were too impatient to go through the application process, so something tells me NRC wants enlisted recruiters to get a chance at college grads.

That is a bad NRD, and that BS happened too much, so much so at one point NRC put out that if a person came into a recruiting station and said they had a Bachelors degree there were to pick up the phone immediately.

Then it got to the point that before a person with a BA/BS could process enlisted a form had to be signed off by an OR saying they had discussed officer options with the person enlisting.

 

[FinkUFreaky]

That is a bad NRD, and that BS happened too much, so much so at one point NRC put out that if a person came into a recruiting station and said they had a Bachelors degree there were to pick up the phone immediately.

Then it got to the point that before a person with a BA/BS could process enlisted a form had to be signed off by an OR saying they had discussed officer options with the person enlisting.

I think I was lucky that the NRD I reached out to did get back to me, quickly. The OR wasn't familiar with BDCP, but after talking to him a few times, he figured it all out.

That said the first step was that I found this website, and it had LOTS of gouge, on both the process, and with lots of stories saying the same thing: "Don't go to the enlisted recruiter stations."

 

[AllAmerican75]

That is a bad NRD, and that BS happened too much, so much so at one point NRC put out that if a person came into a recruiting station and said they had a Bachelors degree there were to pick up the phone immediately.

Then it got to the point that before a person with a BA/BS could process enlisted a form had to be signed off by an OR saying they had discussed officer options with the person enlisting.

I started working with a recruiter around the same time as Spekkio and didn't run into any of those problems. I did go through 5 different recruiters, though. I had two up and retire on me without even telling me; one day the calls and e-mails just stopped. I wasn't aware until I talked to the Warrant in charge at the NRD HQ and he let me know. From my experience, officer recruiting for the Navy is a shitshow.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

I started working with a recruiter around the same time as Spekkio and didn't run into any of those problems. I did go through 5 different recruiters, though. I had two up and retire on me without even telling me; one day the calls and e-mails just stopped. I wasn't aware until I talked to the Warrant in charge at the NRD HQ and he let me know. From my experience, officer recruiting for the Navy is a shitshow.

It often is a shit show, they started getting it on track when they had about half senior enlisted and half officers, officers tend to only have a 2 year tour and by the time they get the hang of it (6 months) they get about 1 good year in and then they are getting ready to leave. The benefit of having both officers and senior enlisted is that senior enlisted know a great deal of what a new officer will experience at their first command (aviation not generally included in this) so we can talk about the jobs and such, we work hand in hand with the officers that are also in recruiting so if anything comes up we don't know we can ask. When on recruiting the senior enlisted OR's and officer OR's are more like colleagues than officer and enlisted relationship or it used to be.

NRC decided to "make things better" or someone decided that since they were in charge they needed to "change things" and had officers be in charge of several recruiting stations and do officer recruiting so you can guess how much time they actually had.

They also decided to have many E-6's become officer recruiters, many of which left the fleet as an E-5 which means they really don't have a good concept of what an officer would do in the fleet.

so yes it has become a shit show.

 

[picklesuit]

Realize that we generally send our community dirtbags to recruit, or the guys that are looking to skate for a couple years on the way out volunteer to go there.

Your top-end motivated types just don’t go there (from the Aviation side, at least) so you aren’t going to get the best representation of the Fleet on the Officer side.

Can’t t speak to the enlisted side, but my recruiter was a fucking dirtbag Chief who would do/say anything to make quota and then lose your number the day you hit boot camp.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Realize that we generally send our community dirtbags to recruit, or the guys that are looking to skate for a couple years on the way out volunteer to go there.

Your top-end motivated types just don’t go there (from the Aviation side, at least) so you aren’t going to get the best representation of the Fleet on the Officer side.

Can’t t speak to the enlisted side, but my recruiter was a fucking dirtbag Chief who would do/say anything to make quota and then lose your number the day you hit boot camp.

I had heard that before they started sending HR Officers to recruit that often it was the officers that were indeed on the way out that went to recruit. I don't know a single officer that went to recruit (non-HR) that ended up in command.

Too many recruiters are like the one you described, do anything to make quota, often they are CRF (career recruiting force) aka (criminal recruiting force) there are some that are good, but most would do whatever they could to keep from going back to the fleet. I can tell you there is nothing like hearing a CRF try to tell some kid what it is like in the fleet when they did 1 sea tour 10 years ago, hell I remember when I was recruiting in the mid 90's hearing a CRF telling a kid how he could go to the fleet and work on F-4's, I was like WTF, afterwards I told him F-4's were no longer in the fleet, if you are going to try to bullshit some kid at least keep up to date on what the USN has right now.

 

[Spekkio]

I did go through 5 different recruiters, though. I had two up and retire on me without even telling me; one day the calls and e-mails just stopped. I wasn't aware until I talked to the Warrant in charge at the NRD HQ and he let me know. From my experience, officer recruiting for the Navy is a shitshow.

I 'only' went through two. That guy who sat me down to take the ASTB cold ended up separating without saying anything and going incognito for a couple months. The next one was extremely helpful.

Realize that we generally send our community dirtbags to recruit, or the guys that are looking to skate for a couple years on the way out volunteer to go there.

This. The guy sent to be the nuke recruiter when I was a JO didn't screen DH.

For enlisted it depends on the rating. If you are talking to an engineering person, he's working out of rate and it's not because he's an EP performer.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

For enlisted it depends on the rating. If you are talking to an engineering person, he's working out of rate and it's not because he's an EP performer.

Not really, nearly every engineering person I sent to recruiting when I was on the CVN was an EP performer, mainly nukes but some conv MM's and EN's as well. The vast majority of the nukes were those who could not screen for nuke school or prototype because they were lower half, we sent more questionable sailors to prototype who were P/MP sailors than we did to recruiting, if you take out the class standing requirement for nuke instructor the recruiting screening was much more difficult. It seemed crazy that we would deny a person to go to prototype who was lower half when that person went to the fleet and excelled at conducting plant operations.

 

[Spekkio]

What you're saying doesn't match what the community managers have put out. Sure the stars can align for an EP sailor and he can get recruiting duty, but it's rare.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

What you're saying doesn't match what the community managers have put out. Sure the stars can align for an EP sailor and he can get recruiting duty, but it's rare.

An EP sailor who is upper half they won't sent recruiting duty that sailor will get pushed to instructor duty, it is that lower half that kills them, there are guys that stars align and they get waivers but it isn't a guarantee, the sending of P/MP to prototype is how we keep getting not the best CPO's back in the fleet since prototype duty pretty much guarantees you will make CPO, at least on the surface side, I worked with many CPO's who were denied prototype and sent to IMF/recruiting, from my friends that are still in it is still happening.

Maybe things are a bit different on the sub side as I rarely saw a sub nuke on recruiting?

There is what the ECM's put out and what actually happens, those two things overlap but they are not perfectly aligned. It is frustrating for the sailors and the commands that put those screening packages together.