I recently inquired about joining the Coast Guard (Reserves). I like their mission, I like that they help domestically especially with things like disaster relief and environmental issues, and sea-worthy things are in my wheelhouse. I reached out in THREE ways online and never got a callback.<p>I called my local office. The recruiter I talked to seemed to generally not care at all, I drove 90% of the conversation. Couldn't tell me what "rates" (jobs) the CG has and what would be applicable to my background. I'm stunned, I'm thinking this is literally your job to know this kind of a thing. The recruiter told me that I should go look at the jobs/rates on their website. Yep - go look at their website - which was offline for about at least week (or maybe still offline - I stopped checking).<p>This recruiter didn't offer to follow up, which would have been difficult because they also didn't bother to get any of my contact information, or even ask my name. My military friends absolutely could not believe this.<p>Of course, it could have been this particular military recruiter. Although I was also ignored in other channels, too. I'm thinking -<p>1 - Your branch is in DIRE need of people, both active and reserve. TEN cutters are being pulled from service, and nearly 30 boat stations are being closed.
2 - If you're this incompetent during the recruiting processes, what would service in your branch actually look like?<p>Not a great experience/impression. I may try again later (find a different recruiting office), but if this is how recruiting is being done, it's no wonder why they can't find warm bodies.
Lowering the recruitment bar was tried during the Vietnam War - it didn't end well.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100%2C000" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100%2C000</a>
<i>the difference hasn’t been significant so far for the low-scoring recruits brought in last year. Overall, 11.4% of those recruits didn’t finish boot camp, compared to less than 6.5% of the high-scoring sailors.</i><p>I was watching a documentary about US Navy boot camp, and was wondering if people who are headed for in-demand roles are given more help/slack than generalists? There was someone with a college degree who was going to intelligence, and I doubted they'd be dumped as easily as someone who just scraped their way in.
I was in the navy as an officer. It’s a toxic cesspool, probably worse after 15 years now. The whole military needs some changes but the navy needs to change more. Senior officers need to give more respect to the enlisted and junior officers. Junior officers have to be trained as midshipmen (not the rank but the job) first so they can learn how to have good relationships with subordinates that know more than them. Junior officers need to realize they’re useless for a year or two and senior officers need to realize the same, so there’s less pressure to perform and more room to learn. Mentorship is dead in the navy, now it’s just yelling and bullying.
This is a good move - academic qualifications are an inadequate proxy for the skills and mentality needed to succeed in combat roles. Just look at the enemies that the US has fought over the decades - rice paddy farmers in Vietnam, illiterate goat herders in Afghanistan - all were formidable opponents who fought the US to a standstill, likely with a single SAT between them.
Just gonna float this out there... Maybe the US is better without so many people in the military. Do we really need to be everywhere? And I'm not saying let's walk away from conflict zones. I'm saying there's not that much of an need to patrol the north Atlantic, or defend Japan or keep troops in other places which were only relevant in 1948.
I wonder if they have considered granting citizenship to non-citizen enlistees who go on to complete a standard 4 years of service (or whatever it is.)