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Hi there, I'm a film student who knows fairly little about the world of a recruiter other than snippets from blogs and news articles. I've learned that this is a very high pressure position that is not for the faint of heart.
My question(s) to you is, what is a day in the life of a recruiter like?
Please feel free to give a detailed description of your day, the good and the bad.
What tasks do you complete? Who do you talk to? What goes on in your mind driving to and from the job? Low and high points? How did you start? Where are you now? What are your fears related to the job? What are your goals? How has it effected your family/friends? etc.
I'm also curious what happens if a recruiter goes AWOL. The story I'm looking to write involves a recruiter who goes AWOL.
Any and all information is appreciated. Feel free to give your stories or just vent about the job.
This is my first post and I apologize if others like it exist already.
Don't know how many recruiters hang out here, but the answers you get will probably vary widely by what years they were a recruiter and the branch of service.
All I can tell you so far is that currently in the Army, not many want to volunteer for it. The class I just went through I'd say at most 1/4 were volunteers. The other person from my unit who also got voluntold that I talked to told me that only about 1/8 in her class were volunteers.
Air Force recruiting, 90% paperwork, very little recruiting.
Up to 30 voicemails a day, mostly from disqualified people, or people calling for reasons other than recruiting (reporting a death of a person who was once in, asking you to make the airplanes less loud, reporting conspiracies, etc).
It's impossible to return all the calls, because you can't even get 45 minutes to listen to all the messages. People constantly walk-in with no appointment, people you are already working with need their paperwork processed, they call with questions, and new phone calls happen all day. Inevitably, you end up with formal complaints because you don't return phone calls.
People walk in all day and completely waste you time. They lie and say they've never used drugs, so you spend 2 months helping them through paperwork, and then they get a positive drug test and get disqualified. They tell you they've never been charged with a crime, and month later, after they get a spot on the basic training list, the background check comes back and they have a criminal record and are disqualified.
It's a nightmare. Every action you do have to be documented, going to lunch, etc. Your planner has to reflect what you did in every moment of the day so you can "prove" you were working if you miss goal.
Air Force recruiting, 90% paperwork, very little recruiting.
Up to 30 voicemails a day, mostly from disqualified people, or people calling for reasons other than recruiting (reporting a death of a person who was once in, asking you to make the airplanes less loud, reporting conspiracies, etc).
It's impossible to return all the calls, because you can't even get 45 minutes to listen to all the messages. People constantly walk-in with no appointment, people you are already working with need their paperwork processed, they call with questions, and new phone calls happen all day. Inevitably, you end up with formal complaints because you don't return phone calls.
People walk in all day and completely waste you time. They lie and say they've never used drugs, so you spend 2 months helping them through paperwork, and then they get a positive drug test and get disqualified. They tell you they've never been charged with a crime, and month later, after they get a spot on the basic training list, the background check comes back and they have a criminal record and are disqualified.
It's a nightmare. Every action you do have to be documented, going to lunch, etc. Your planner has to reflect what you did in every moment of the day so you can "prove" you were working if you miss goal.
Anyway, almost all paperwork, data entry, etc.
Interesting, that's what I was looking for. I appreciate the reply.
Let's say you got fed up with all of this and decided to skip work with no explanation.
Air Force recruiting, 90% paperwork, very little recruiting.
Up to 30 voicemails a day, mostly from disqualified people, or people calling for reasons other than recruiting (reporting a death of a person who was once in, asking you to make the airplanes less loud, reporting conspiracies, etc).
It's impossible to return all the calls, because you can't even get 45 minutes to listen to all the messages. People constantly walk-in with no appointment, people you are already working with need their paperwork processed, they call with questions, and new phone calls happen all day. Inevitably, you end up with formal complaints because you don't return phone calls.
People walk in all day and completely waste you time. They lie and say they've never used drugs, so you spend 2 months helping them through paperwork, and then they get a positive drug test and get disqualified. They tell you they've never been charged with a crime, and month later, after they get a spot on the basic training list, the background check comes back and they have a criminal record and are disqualified.
It's a nightmare. Every action you do have to be documented, going to lunch, etc. Your planner has to reflect what you did in every moment of the day so you can "prove" you were working if you miss goal.
Anyway, almost all paperwork, data entry, etc.
This mirrors what my friends who were in recruiting told me. The upside, at least for them, is that it helped them make rank a lot faster. One of them was a sales type and actually loved it and ended up staying in recruiting for longer.
My friend was an Officer recruiter and told me he spent most of his days turning people away. I guess they get to be much more picky. He told me that if you walked in with under a 3.0 GPA or didn't score above average on the Officer entrance exam then he would politley tell you no thanks. This meant that he would have to scour college campuses and find people who had the grades, fitness level, ability to score high on the entrance exam, and actually had a desire to serve in the Navy. He said it was much harder than one would think.
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