Why Are Army Recruiters Committing Suicide?

[Gunny]

Guilt?

Not even. It is the pressure. Recruiting Duty can destroy careers and now a days you do not volunteer for the duty you get assigned. Even missing quote one month will result in a reprimand.

The hours are crazy, the work load unbelievable and the stress out of this world. If you are NOT a salesman type personality recruiting duty is the kiss of death for most.

RGS is right. One of my childhood friends is stationed here in MA as a Marine recruiter. He's putting in 14 hour days most of the time.

I chose to be a drill instructor rather than a recruiter. The hours are as bad, but the chance of failure due to no fault of your own is much smaller.

 

[Gunny]

Not a problem with the Coast Guard, I imagine. They are actually picky about who gets in.


When I was going through recruitment (Navy, 1987), they were very selective. No criminal records allowed/dropouts, etc.

They wanted smart and physically fit people.

I'm almost tempted to move this to Humor.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

There are two types of Recruiters.

There is a Marine Corps MOS for recruiting. But only a small percentage of the recruiters are by permanent MOS. Most are pulled from other duty , which used to be voluntary only, but is now mandatory dictated by the needs of the Marine Corps.

The marine Corps was not getting the numbers they needed for Recruiting duty or Drill Instructor Duty so made the change to mandatory assignments as the needs of the Corps occurred.

And if you fail out in the classroom or training cycle for either of these assignments you get..... a bad fitness report. There very few exceptions to that Bad Fitness report if you do not have a successful tour as either a recruiter or a Drill Instructor.

Ohh and Gunny? ONE bad fitness report is enough. Especially from a special duty assignment. There may be exceptions if the Marine in question has some stellar COMBAT Fitness reports, but knowing the system I doubt it.

 

[Article 15]

Not even. It is the pressure. Recruiting Duty can destroy careers and now a days you do not volunteer for the duty you get assigned. Even missing quote one month will result in a reprimand.

The hours are crazy, the work load unbelievable and the stress out of this world. If you are NOT a salesman type personality recruiting duty is the kiss of death for most.

RGS is right. One of my childhood friends is stationed here in MA as a Marine recruiter. He's putting in 14 hour days most of the time.

I chose to be a drill instructor rather than a recruiter. The hours are as bad, but the chance of failure due to no fault of your own is much smaller.

I understand drill instructor's divorce rates are pretty high.

Can you guys send a recruit back a couple of weeks in training for fucking up kinda like when trainees get recycled during AF BMT?

 

[eots]

Not even. It is the pressure. Recruiting Duty can destroy careers and now a days you do not volunteer for the duty you get assigned. Even missing quote one month will result in a reprimand.

The hours are crazy, the work load unbelievable and the stress out of this world. If you are NOT a salesman type personality recruiting duty is the kiss of death for most.

RGS is right. One of my childhood friends is stationed here in MA as a Marine recruiter. He's putting in 14 hour days most of the time.

I chose to be a drill instructor rather than a recruiter. The hours are as bad, but the chance of failure due to no fault of your own is much smaller.

my father did that for awhile my mom could see and hear him sometimes from the kitchen window as they lived on the base...sometimes when he was overly verbally harsh to one of the boys in the parade grounds she would int talk to him for awhile after he got home...except to say not to kiss her with that mouth...

 

[Gunny]

There are two types of Recruiters.

There is a Marine Corps MOS for recruiting. But only a small percentage of the recruiters are by permanent MOS. Most are pulled from other duty , which used to be voluntary only, but is now mandatory dictated by the needs of the Marine Corps.

The marine Corps was not getting the numbers they needed for Recruiting duty or Drill Instructor Duty so made the change to mandatory assignments as the needs of the Corps occurred.

And if you fail out in the classroom or training cycle for either of these assignments you get..... a bad fitness report. There very few exceptions to that Bad Fitness report if you do not have a successful tour as either a recruiter or a Drill Instructor.

Ohh and Gunny? ONE bad fitness report is enough. Especially from a special duty assignment. There may be exceptions if the Marine in question has some stellar COMBAT Fitness reports, but knowing the system I doubt it.

I think the "one bad fitness report" thing depends a lot on your MOS, and your competition, and what rank you are looking at. It also depends on rank. A bad fitrep for an officer is instant death.

No SDA was made mandatory. It just went from a way to get ahead when I was a troop to a "we better see that check in the box at promotion time" thing. Being relieved for cause on the drill field is instant death.

You know as well as I though that a "bad fitep" comprised not getting all outstandings. They were screwing around with this new fitrep at the time I retired, but it just looked like more of the same in a new package. They were trying to stop the over-inflation of marks but I'd be willing to bet they're right back up there by now.

 

[Gunny]

RGS is right. One of my childhood friends is stationed here in MA as a Marine recruiter. He's putting in 14 hour days most of the time.

I chose to be a drill instructor rather than a recruiter. The hours are as bad, but the chance of failure due to no fault of your own is much smaller.

I understand drill instructor's divorce rates are pretty high.

Can you guys send a recruit back a couple of weeks in training for fucking up kinda like when trainees get recycled during AF BMT?

It's very hard to not take that job home with you, when you DO get to go home. The stress of working lights to lights (5AM - 10PM) at times, couple with not being home, couple with getting bitched at when you DO get home can get to you. I know I tried my best to not take it home, but sometimes you just can't help it.

And I was better than most from the POV that I did not take it personally. I watched a lot of hats lose their reasoning, sense of purpose and direction, and their cool because they would get so stressed out they would start taking stupid little shit personally.

 

[editec]

The army should hire sales professionals to recruit, instead of wasting valuable people with real military skills.

Sales requires interpersonal and managment skill sets that few people have, and it requires a particular kind of intestinal fortitude that few people have, either.

Recent returning vet chum of mine told me he was "shadowing" a recruiter.

He told me all they did was sit around in bars and drink.

The recruiter was completely the wrong person to do that task, and he was, according to this guy, at least, totally defeated by the assignment.

 

[garyd]

Wait a minute here that's a whole 2. How many recuriters are there? The suicide rate for non hispanic white males is 17.8 per hundred thousand making it the 8th leading cause of death. (stat from NIMH)