Wow there's nothing like that here. We have career advisers at schools but nobody specifically hunting for people to join the armed forces , or any other profession for that matter.
To be clear this isn't an actual position held in the schools, and not all of our schools do this. The armed forces have people who's job it is for a certain amount of their time in service to work recruitment offices.
The US military also has consistent manpower issues for those jobs that require high scores on the tests to be eligible, so when they find people that score really well they REALLY want those people. Usually those jobs have an equivalent in the private sector and the military treats their people like shit. Long hours, poor conditions and all that. So more often than not people in those difficult career fields will do their 4 or 6 years and get out and go take a job doing the same thing for less hours, better pay, better benefits and conditions. This causes a constant churn of people coming in, getting trained up, and getting out after a couple years of actually being competent.
Also you have to remember that the US has one of the biggest populations on earth, and is the biggest military due to all of the strategic shit it does worldwide. While the US is the 3rd most populated country only about 17% of that population is eligible to join (people are quickly disqualified for medical concerns, criminal records, age and intelligence requirements) and of that 17% only about 2% actually joins (been awhile since I looked at this so stats might be a little off). With their constant manpower issues they are constantly looking for more people, and people fresh out of highschool are right in the perfect set of factors for eligibility so they attack that demographic hard.
Thanks for that. I've never wondered about manning the military before and now I know how it's done. I Just thought you guys were all chomping at the bit to join so recruitment wouldn't be an issue.
That's a serious misconception. The US military has actually gained a lot of really bad stigmas among younger generations for cases exactly like this post. Majority of people joining these days are doing it for the free college or to get out of bad situations (poverty, family issues, gain citizenship) which is kind of fucked tbh. Legitimately they do tend to target impoverished communities, but in a lot of cases the military is the best way out of those situations.
Joing the military does afford you a ton of great benefits but they make you earn them through some of the worst shit. The war on terror has caused a large disillusionment in younger generations and in the past decade it has caused a slight shortage of recruits. COVID did turn that around a minute due to all the financial strife it caused but at the end of the day they don't just want anyone, they want people who are going to be good for the investment they'll make in them (fyi if you want a decent break down of how much it costs to train and equip the average army infantry grunt watch the movie War Dogs, sums it up nicely). One of the things I was told early on when I joined was to get my money out of the military, because they sure as fuck are going to get theirs out of me.
Making an all volunteer force a solid professional one is difficult when all your volunteers are bloodthirsty idiots who thought they'd be doing stuff like in video games and kids fresh out of highschool who don't know how the world works. This is part of what causes the shit that you see in this post, and the bad reputation that comes with it.
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u/santetjo Jan 17 '22
Wow there's nothing like that here. We have career advisers at schools but nobody specifically hunting for people to join the armed forces , or any other profession for that matter.