Air University Review, September-October 1968
Brigadier General J. T. Scepansky
A decade ago, recruiting for the Air Force was a matter of obtaining sufficient officers and airmen to fill manpower requirements. Technological progress and specialization, however, have increased the need for an Air Force manned by more highly qualified personnel with increasingly specialized skills. The Air Force today recruits in almost 40 different categories, including officers and airmen of both sexes. Moreover, within the next decade the recruiter may find himself recruiting for over 200 programs on practically a man/job match basis. He will interrogate a computer, which will tell him what the Air Force needs by skill, by number, by place, and by time. The state of the recruiting art, in fact, would permit such a system today if sufficient funds were available to provide the necessary communications and electronic equipment.
A project called ECONOMAN, which will be completed shortly, will computerize and define specific jobs throughout the Air Force. When that computer program is completed and interfaced with the Personnel Data System, which defines and categorizes the precise Air Force personnel inventory, it will be a simple matter to program computers to determine what is needed to fill existing vacancies on a man/job match basis.
At that point, it will be necessary only to determine the degree of decentralization the Air Force can afford in permitting the recruiting effort to interrogate the computers. It is almost certain that the system will have to permit input into the computers from the 74 Department of Defense Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Stations, as well as interrogation from the 46 Air Force recruiting detachment headquarters. Whether this automated data processing can be extended down to the 900-plus recruiting locations throughout the country is, again, largely a matter of available funds.
Virtually everyone recruited for the Air Force today is tested, screened, and categorized before enlistment. The Air Force is testing in approximately 9000 high schools and has recently embarked on a joint testing program with the recruiting commands of the other services. All high-school aptitude test scoring for this program is being accomplished at Air Force Recruiting Service headquarters. The results from these tests aid materially in the pre-enlistment screening process.
The recruiting organization inherently feels the pulse of the nation’s
youth. An economic boom or slowdown in a large industrial city has an immediate
effect on Recruiting Service’s success in that city and region. Strikes,
seasonal economic cycles, the availability of jobs, optimism or pessimism in
the local, state, or national economy—all are barometers by which the
recruiting climate can be measured. When the climate is good and draft quotas
are high, the recruiter is chiefly involved in sifting for quality. When the
recruiting climate is less favorable and draft quotas are lowered or
eliminated, as can be expected when the crisis in Southeast Asia has abated, the
recruiter is faced with hard-to-meet quotas in numerous career fields and with
a sizable selling job if he is to persuade the right man with the right skill
to join the Air Force at the right time.
The techniques of recruiting have undergone rapid development to keep pace with the headlong scientific and technological advances in military methodology during this century. The same techniques which permit refined and expanded specific manpower requirements also permit rapid and vastly improved analysis of individual capabilities. However, recruiting today relies as much on modern methods of salesmanship and personnel quality control as military operations depend on the latest advances in weaponry and tactics. Recruiting can no longer depend on bands, parades, and missile displays to motivate the highly qualified young people needed in the Air Force; novelties and gimmicks will not impress a systems program analyst or an astronautical engineer. Thus, paradoxically, today’s scientific sophistication and automation demand and make possible greater human sensitivity than ever before on the part of the individual recruiter. He must treat his prospects, not as numbers on a chart helping him fill his quotas, but as individuals with valuable skills to contribute to the nation’s defense. Therefore, recruiting is and will continue to be a person-to-person process. The quality of the people recruited depends in the final analysis on the quality of the people who recruit them.
history
Recruiting has come a long way since the nineteenth century newspaper account of a typical recruiting effort:
We had a recruiting sergeant from Plattsburg parading our streets yesterday with a band of music, beating up for recruits. We hope he has been successful for we could spare a goodly number of loafers who, if they would serve their country as faithfully as they do the devil, would be a great acquisition to the Army.
Recruiting then was a catch-as-catch-can affair conducted by individual regiments. The United States Recruiting Service was established in 1822, but recruiting was streamlined and made more efficient only after World War I. During World War II, Selective Service handled procurement for all branches. After the war the Army recruited for the Army Air Forces, and when the Air Force became a separate service in 1947 the Secretary of Defense directed the two branches to continue a joint program through the Army’s recruiting organization.
The joint recruiting service was completely decentralized and exercised little control over its recruiters. As a result, the Air Force could not shift its procurement efforts into more critical areas or regulate the number of recruiters to meet fluctuating requirements. Early in 1953 the Air Force petitioned to withdraw from the 1948 agreement and in March 1954 was directed to assume operational control of all Air Force manpower procurement programs.
The Air Force assumed responsibility for its recruiting on 1 July 1954 and assigned the mission to the 3500th USAF Recruiting Wing. During its first year as a separate recruiting force, it attained 96 percent of its overall production objective. The demonstrated ability of the Air Force to recruit successfully was the first step toward achieving an Air Force composed entirely of volunteers.
In 1956 the Air Force raised its minimum qualifying score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). This resulted in a significant improvement in quality, as evidenced by the higher percentage of airmen enlistees who are high school graduates. Quality was emphasized further during fiscal years 1958 and 1959 with the introduction of the Airman Qualifying Examination (AQE), an aptitude test administered to all Air Force applicants. The test enables the Air Force to select only those applicants with the requisite aptitudes for technical training courses.
In July 1959 USAF Recruiting Service was established. It underwent a major reorganization in 1961-62 when Project Silver Spur increased the number of recruiting groups from 6 to 7, reduced the number of detachments from 48 to 46, and reduced the number of sectors from 190 to 181. These changes reduced the area of coverage, placed recruiting in more strategic areas, equalized the quota (based on market potential) in each group, and reduced the span of control and operating costs. The example set by the Air Force in quota allocations, manning, and market analysis during Silver Spur has since been emulated by the other services.
In 1963 Recruiting Service began to emphasize the “across-the-board” concept of recruiting, a management incentive program which stresses meeting quotas within all procurement categories instead of overproducing in some programs and ignoring others. The concept paid dividends in fiscal year 1964, when for the first time in its history Recruiting Service achieved 100 percent production in all procurement categories.
In January 1965 the headquarters moved from Wright-Patterson AFB,
selecting the recruiter
The reporting identifier AFSC 99120 is used to identify all personnel performing duty as recruiters. Recruiting Service is authorized 2224 recruiters, 1469 of whom actively recruit, the remainder being supervisors, testers, or administrators. Recruiters are noncommissioned officers who volunteer for recruiting duty at specific geographic locations. The selection of recruiters is a careful process; only one out of five NCO’s applying is selected. Today’s recruiter is highly qualified in his own career field and is a dedicated and resourceful individual. He is “Mr. Air Force” in many communities and is often the only contact between the Air Force and the public.
Successful manning of Recruiting Service requires an immediately available resource of qualified volunteer applicants when vacancies occur. A recruiter selection committee at Recruiting Service headquarters reviews all applications, considering such factors as formal education, age and appearance, service and grade relationship, performance ratings, number and physical status of dependents, and personal conduct. Applicants approved by this committee are then interviewed by a Recruiting Service representative (except overseas applicants). The interviewer notes the applicant’s personal appearance, voice and communication abilities, motivation, and overall knowledge of the Air Force.
The selection committee again reviews the application, along with the interviewing officer’s personal appraisal, before making a final decision. Normally, applications remain active for one year. Vacancies occur continually, and some areas are more difficult to man than others. Headquarters and the recruiting groups correspond directly with applicants in an effort to place the right man in the right community. Applicants are selected for specific geographical assignments consistent with their preferences before they enter training. They must successfully complete training before they are assigned to recruiting duty.
Officers may also volunteer for recruiting duty. Recruiting Service has a continuing need for highly professional officers who can motivate others to accomplish the recruiting mission. The major or lieutenant colonel who commands a recruiting detachment holds one of the most challenging and rewarding assignments in the Air Force.
recruiter training
Although all the noncommissioned officers selected for recruiting duty are
outstanding, few have background or experience in the techniques of
salesmanship and public relations. All would-be recruiters are introduced to
the techniques of recruiting and interviewing in an eight-week Recruiter
Training Course at Lackland AFB,
The course concentrates on five blocks of instruction—interview techniques, advertising and publicity, speech, selection criteria, and career benefits. The emphasis is not on memorizing techniques but on applying them in face-to-face confrontations. Students and teachers participate in mock interviews with every type of prospect. The students learn enough fundamental psychology so they can probe into a prospect’s basic interests, desires, and ambitions. Once these are established, the recruiter learns to concentrate on those aspects of an Air Force career which would most appeal to the prospect—education, job satisfaction, security, etc. He discovers how to establish empathy with the prospect and overcome objections, and he acquires an intuitive sense of when to close the sale.
To make their recruiting presentations more graphic and convincing, recruiters are taught the proper use of sales aids—posters, pamphlets, etc. The school has also set up a model recruiting office to show students how to create attractive and businesslike surroundings. The model office helps standardize the physical setup, filing system, and functional responsibility of recruiting offices throughout the country.
A recent innovation is a closed-circuit television system consisting of two monitors, a camera, and a tape recorder. The system saves about 32 man-hours per class and has lowered the failure rate by 25 percent. It is especially helpful in speech courses, permitting students to see and hear their own presentations. They are made aware—painfully, in some cases—of faults like coughing, stammering, and distracting motions. Public speaking ability is an important asset to the recruiter, who is frequently called upon to speak at high schools and before civic groups.
The course is by no means the end of recruiter training. A vigorous on-the-job training program keeps recruiters skilled, flexible, and motivated. Training at detachment level is conducted in commander’s management training, based on the philosophy that the knowledgeable recruiter is the successful recruiter.
benefits
Since most Air Force recruiters live and work in civilian communities where commissaries, base exchanges, and other USAF facilities are not readily available, they may face much higher living costs than their counterparts living on or near Air Force bases. In an attempt to offset these abnormal expenses, Recruiting Service has obtained authorization for 182 leased family-housing units for the use of recruiters assigned to 17 areas where cost of living is high. The units are leased by the Air Force and occupied by married recruiters, who forfeit their basic allowance for quarters. Occupancy of a leased housing unit saves the recruiter $30 to $60 a month, the average being $51.08.
Recruiters also receive the special subsistence allowance of $2.57 a day, paid when rations in kind are not available, and an initial uniform allowance to provide for purchase and maintenance of the extra military clothing required.
Recruiters also enjoy these benefits: they are assigned to their area of choice, usually to the specific city for which they volunteer; volunteers are sent to Recruiting School on temporary duty status and return to their home base before proceeding PCS to their recruiting assignment; when recruiters rotate after the normal minimum tour of four years, they know their new assignment three to four months in advance.
pre-enlistment testing
In October 1958, the Air Force began administering the Airman Qualifying Examination at recruiting offices instead of during basic training. This procedure enabled the recruiter to preclassify a non-prior-service (NPS) applicant into the broad career area for which he was eligible—mechanical, administrative, general, or electronic—so he could select his aptitude area before enlistment processing.
In 1961 the local testing program was expanded to include high schools. By administering the AQE in the classroom, the Air Force was able to make first contact with graduating high school seniors, and the test results enabled recruiters to identify potentially qualified applicants. Test scores are also made available to high school guidance counselors. The results of the program can be seen in the steady climb in the enlistment rate of high school graduates.
The success of the Air Force’s high school testing program prompted the Army and Navy to start similar programs, which resulted in all services competing for testing time in the high schools. To remedy this, in 1967 the services designed the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), a common test which enables each service to obtain its own particular aptitude scores. The test is administered in a joint high school testing program and scored at the Joint Centralized Test Scoring Branch at Air Force Recruiting Service headquarters. Test results are returned as a computer print-out record, which speeds processing and allows the results to be forwarded simultaneously to all services.
In addition to providing the standard mechanical, administrative, general, and electronic aptitude scores, the ASVAB has the capability of breaking these scores down into subtest areas. This opens the possibility at some future date for the ultimate in pre-enlistment classification—offering a prospective enlistee his choice of a specific career assignment at the recruiting office.
After qualifying on the ASVAB, approximately 96 percent of all regular Air Force nonprior-service enlistees are preprocessed at the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station (AFEES) to determine if they are mentally and physically qualified before enlistment. Preprocessing is necessary because:
· Recruiting Service must meet a daily, weekly, and monthly flow to the basic military training centers. The only way to insure this even flow is by sending qualified applicants to the AFEES for enlistment.
· Under Phase II of Project 100,000, 17 percent of all NPS enlistees must be from the group scoring in mental Category IV on the Armed Forces Qualification Test. These Cat-IV enlistees are divided into three subcategories, with specific quotas in each. Since the AFQT is administered only at the AFEES, it is only through preprocessing there that a person’s mental category can be determined in advance of enlistment.
Project 100,000
In August 1966 the Secretary of Defense announced a program intended to enlist in the military services as many as 100,000 young men a year who would previously have been unable to meet the mental or physical standards for enlistment or induction.
During Phase I of Project 100,000, which ran from 1 October 1966 through 30 September 1967, the Air Force enlisted 10,166 airmen in mental Category IV (those scoring between 10 and 30 on the AFQT). This was based on the OSD requirement that 15 percent of all NPS enlistees be from Category IV. The minimum score for Category IV enlistees, which was 21 when the program began, was lowered to 16 on 1 January 1967 and to 10 in April 1967. Although both high school graduates and nongraduates were accepted, high school graduates were given priority.
The medical aspect of Project 100,000 was implemented on 1 February 1967, with the Medically Remedial Enlistment Program (MREP). This authorized the enlistment of applicants who are overweight, underweight, or suffering from readily remediable physical defects; MREP enlistments are limited to defects deemed correctable within six weeks.
With the beginning of Phase II of Project 100,000 (1 October 1967 to 30 September 1968), the mandatory percentage of Air Force NPS enlistees from Category IV was raised to 17 percent. Air Force’s contribution to Phase II is 14,651 enlistments. In addition an objective of 1800 MREP enlistments was established for Phase II.
recruiting for women
The primary emphasis in Air Force recruiting for women is on quality
recruiting in the women’s programs—Women in the
Recruiting for Officer Training School (OTS) has been one of the most successful of all Air Force recruiting programs in recent years, as evidenced by consistent overproduction for practically all officer programs and by the positive acceptance of Air Force recruiters on most of the 1500 baccalaureate-degree college campuses where OTS recruiting originates.
Within the last two years, emphasis in the OTS program has been on pilots, navigators, and engineers. The only utilization field in which vacancies outnumbered OTS enlistments has been development engineering, AFSC 28XX. This field is composed of electronic, mechanical, astronautical, and aeronautical engineers. In late fiscal year 1967 the OTS program was directed to commission 300 development engineers. Requirements for specific utilization fields were imposed, and Recruiting Service submitted over 500 applications for these fields.
The requirement for engineers, as well as pilots and navigators, continued into FY 1968. That requirement for engineers imposed quotas on Recruiting Service for both applications and enlistments, resulting in increased production in both categories. Over 500 development engineers were commissioned in FY 1968, a record for the program. Overall, Recruiting Service submitted more than 20,000 applications to OTS during FY 1968, against a total goal of about 5600 officers in 42 career fields.
advertising
An essential tool for recruiting in all programs is advertising. Advertising builds an image and stimulates a prospect’s interest in the Air Force. At the same time it helps create a favorable recruiting climate. National advertising efforts are geared to the procurement objectives for each recruiting category. The recruiter is also provided with advertising materials for local use.
All aspects of advertising are employed by Recruiting Service to get the Air Force message to the public: periodical advertising, radio, television, printed publications, window cards and displays. These media are used with varied emphasis, depending on the particular recruiting program.
For radio and television advertising, the Air Force must rely on public service time, depending on the good will of a station to present Air Force messages during unsold time. To make the most of this public service, Recruiting Service tries to provide attractive materials and encourage interest and effort by local recruiters. The Air Force distributes to subscribing stations three continuing radio shows—”Serenade in Blue” (stereo and monaural), “Music in the Air,” and “Country Music Time.” Transcribed spot announcements, often recorded by famous persons, are sent to recruiters for placement with local stations.
Television spot announcement clips in both 60-second and 10-second versions
are also distributed by recruiters. “The Big Play,” a programmed series of
football highlights, is carried by more than 200 stations throughout the
nation. A large share of the advertising budget is spent on reaching the public
through the more than 700 television stations and over 5000 radio stations in
the
An equally important medium is periodical advertising. The marketing strategy of the contract advertising agency determines the appropriate magazines and proper advertising approach for each prospective group. Market analysis reveals such facts as the number of women who will graduate from college this year, the number of men who will earn baccalaureate or graduate degrees, and the number of nurses who make up the potential nurse pool. It also reveals the magazines read by the various groups and the most efficient media for reaching the prospects.
Since the current recruiting emphasis is on pilots and engineers and on nurses and WAF officers, Air Force advertising concentrates on these areas. Advertising is a vital part of the overall recruiting effort at all levels. Highquality national advertising, coupled with the ingenuity of the local recruiter, has been an important contribution to the accomplishment of the recruiting mission.
transportation
Essential to a recruiter’s job is his ability to travel throughout an entire area of responsibility to visit prospects and centers of influence. Accordingly, Air Force vehicles are assigned to each recruiting office and facility. Approximately 1700 Air Force vehicles are authorized to support the recruiting mission and are driven more than 23 million miles a year.
recruiting after
Recruiting Service is devoting considerable thought and planning to the changes that will have to be made to recruit successfully in a post-Vietnam recruiting market with its anticipated low draft calls. Many considerations and adjustments will be required:
To help provide for these changes, a mission plan is prepared before each fiscal year, estimating the recruiting situation and the workload for each program during the coming year.
big-city recruiting
The key to successful recruiting after
· The higher cost of living, which discourages many potential recruiters from volunteering for recruiting duty, compromises selectivity and the effectiveness of those assigned.
· Increased transportation costs from home to work and back.
· Congested and slow-moving traffic, which makes it difficult to visit applicants.
· Much greater difficulty in obtaining satisfactory newspaper publicity and public service radio and television time.
· Greater competition for available manpower from civilian industry.
Some steps which have been taken to ease living costs for recruiters have already been mentioned. Recruiting Service is also attempting to provide recruiters with additional allowances for out-of-pocket recruiting expenses.
One experiment now under way to improve big-city recruiting is the establishment of a full-time information center, the sole purpose of which is to answer questions from applicants and prospects. Recruiters spend much of their time on the telephone answering questions. With an assistant recruiter available to handle these calls, recruiters will be free to concentrate on securing new prospects or applicants.
automated recruiting system
Successful quality recruiting over the next several decades may depend on the long-range development of an electronic data-processing system designed to automate three basic recruiting tasks:
Phase I—Processing the enlistees into active duty (administrative processing)
Phase II—Selection of individuals for jobs (classification)
Phase III—Selection of individuals for entry into the Air Force (selective recruiting).
The administrative processing and classification phases have already been
implemented at
Phase III of the system, selective recruiting, which is still in the planning stage, has three main objectives:
(a) To procure manpower with the highest training and utilization potential from the total available resource, in order to improve the matching of individual skills and training potential to specific Air Force needs.
(b) To improve recruiting management capability by the use of advanced communications and computer processes.
(c) To reduce the time airmen spend in the recruiting and training pipeline.
The ultimate objective of Phase III is the pre-enlistment classification of recruits for specific training courses or a narrow range of job assignments. In the long-range time frame (1973 and beyond), this would provide for a specific contractual arrangement with the recruit which would guarantee training or a directed duty assignment in the job or career area for which he was classified. In the intermediate time period (1969-73) it will require the development of pre-enlistment job predictors which can be used to narrow the range of jobs offered to recruits. Instead of enlisting recruits into four pools corresponding to the four aptitude indexes of the AQE, the system envisions offering a small number of job possibilities to the applicant based on his qualifications determined prior to enlistment. At the beginning, no additional recruiting promises would be made to the applicant. As experience was gained and if it proved advantageous to mission accomplishment, a promise of a narrow range of jobs would be possible.
Recruiting Service recognizes that there are many problems in Phase III. Not the least of these is the need to consider expanding the recruiter force to include a capability for job counseling in line with the responsibility for pre-enlistment classification. Expanded mental testing capabilities will also be required to qualify applicants for some job assignments. From the recruiting standpoint, there is the problem of developing a method of selling enlistments in the “soft core” career fields. All assignments are now made at the Basic Military Training Centers, within the airman’s selected aptitude area. The problems facing a career counselor when informing an airman in basic training that he is being assigned to a sophisticated or glamorous career field are quite different from the ones which face the recruiter who must inform a prospective Air Force enlistee that he may enlist only in the relatively menial career fields. These problems are under study, and acceptable solutions will be found before Phase III is accepted.
To some, the computers, long-distance communications network, and modern
testing procedures threaten depersonalization. In fact, however, they are tools
to help the recruiter procure the most highly qualified people available and
match them to the jobs in which they will be of most value to themselves and to
the Air Force. These tools, the techniques of salesmanship taught at the
Hq
USAF Recruiting Service
Brigadier General Joe T. Scepansky (M.B.A.,
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of
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