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Old 02-15-2014, 03:52 PM
 
18,073 posts, read 18,692,582 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LBTRS View Post
I am aware of "open general contracts" with the Air Force, my argument is against the notion that people are enlisting in the Air Force without concern for the job they will be doing as he was trying to convince us of. That simply isn't the case as the majority of the people joining are very concerned about the job they will be doing for their enlistment. The truth is that Recruiters are being forced to "sugar coat" the open general contract to get kids to agree to this nonsense in the first place. This can be seen in the OP of this thread.

Most kids that are forced into or accept an open general contract have been SOLD on how they are going to get just what they want at a later time (something on their top three list). I suggest you Google "Air Force open general contract" and I bet you'll discover a whole bunch of young people that are concerned about their open general contracts.
You are correct, they do sugar coat it. In the Navy, they promote as the person can decide what they like after they are in, when in fact they will be just shoved into deck div forever, then get shoved into some rate like MM or BM to pick up a rate.
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Old 02-15-2014, 03:56 PM
 
18,073 posts, read 18,692,582 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gentlearts View Post
This is true of the Army also. My son, fortunately, had an older brother who knew the ropes. His advice was, unless he had a Ranger slot IN HIS CONTRACT, the chance of his getting into it later was not very likely. He sat all day in MEPS, and got up to walk out (as his brother told him). Only then, did someone ask him what it would take to get him to join the Army today. So it was written into his contract, and only then did he sign up.
It sounds like every branch is the same. Someone has to do the less glamorous jobs, which are also important, but everyone wants to be a Ranger, or Seal or a pilot, etc.
A few people I know found out that despite their interest to become an EOD, Diver, SEAL, etc, they have to be released from their current rate, in which since they were in a high demand rate, did not happen. I knew only one person that got released from a high demand rate to go into EOD, and I think it was just because of 9/11 and the Iraq War that he was allowed to do so.
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Old 02-15-2014, 04:17 PM
 
1,738 posts, read 2,995,210 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by boxus View Post
In the Navy they are called "strikers".
I forgot about those guys.

But, from the few strikers I knew at bootcamp, they were all promised they could try out different jobs and pick the one they like the most. All ended up getting orders to a deck division. I'm sure the recruiter left that part out.
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Old 02-15-2014, 04:32 PM
 
Location: Hard aground in the Sonoran Desert
4,866 posts, read 11,164,129 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyramidsurf View Post
I forgot about those guys.

But, from the few strikers I knew at bootcamp, they were all promised they could try out different jobs and pick the one they like the most. All ended up getting orders to a deck division. I'm sure the recruiter left that part out.
Yep, that is SOP for recruiters when selling the Professional Apprenticeship Career Tracks (PACT)...It always involves a discussion of how they will try all the jobs out and see what they all do and PICKING which rate they want to do. Most end up taking whatever rate they can get and there is very little trying out the jobs because they are all so busy in deck department.

The services create these situations because EVERYONE in the Chain of Command, above the bag toting Recruiting, convinces themselves that the service is doing the kid a favor by letting them join and they forget about all the promises (or at least insinuated promises) that are made to these kids in the commercials on TV and what Recruiters are trained to sell them on.

Recruiting school never once taught me that the Navy is doing these kids a favor by letting them join. What I was taught in Recruiter School was to SELL a kid on job security, job training in a career field they want, travel, money, college, etc. That is what Recruiters are taught so that is what they do but as the active duty recruiter in this thread is telling us and what I'm telling you is that it is actually not delivered and there is a bait and switch at some point along the way. It eventually turns into what the service needs and Recruiters have to find a way to adjust since they can't deliver what they sold the kid on originally.
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Old 02-15-2014, 06:01 PM
 
1,738 posts, read 2,995,210 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LBTRS View Post
Yep, that is SOP for recruiters when selling the Professional Apprenticeship Career Tracks (PACT)...It always involves a discussion of how they will try all the jobs out and see what they all do and PICKING which rate they want to do. Most end up taking whatever rate they can get and there is very little trying out the jobs because they are all so busy in deck department.

The services create these situations because EVERYONE in the Chain of Command, above the bag toting Recruiting, convinces themselves that the service is doing the kid a favor by letting them join and they forget about all the promises (or at least insinuated promises) that are made to these kids in the commercials on TV and what Recruiters are trained to sell them on.

Recruiting school never once taught me that the Navy is doing these kids a favor by letting them join. What I was taught in Recruiter School was to SELL a kid on job security, job training in a career field they want, travel, money, college, etc. That is what Recruiters are taught so that is what they do but as the active duty recruiter in this thread is telling us and what I'm telling you is that it is actually not delivered and there is a bait and switch at some point along the way. It eventually turns into what the service needs and Recruiters have to find a way to adjust since they can't deliver what they sold the kid on originally.
I guess it's just the reality of the self licking ice cream cone. Crap jobs need to be filled. The chain of command doesn't care because it's not going to affect them. They're not the ones stuck in the job.

My recruiter tried to sell me on nuke and told me it's the best job in the Navy. I didn't believe him and had no desire to go subs so I passed on it. The guy pushed it constantly til I signed my contract.
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Old 02-16-2014, 12:08 AM
 
Location: Middle America
37,409 posts, read 53,290,191 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by boxus View Post
You are correct, they do sugar coat it. In the Navy, they promote as the person can decide what they like after they are in, when in fact they will be just shoved into deck div forever, then get shoved into some rate like MM or BM to pick up a rate.
Yep. Every striker I have known in this situation has ended up shuffled into the BM rating.

Quote:
Originally Posted by LBTRS
Recruiting school never once taught me that the Navy is doing these kids a favor by letting them join. What I was taught in Recruiter School was to SELL a kid on job security, job training in a career field they want, travel, money, college, etc.
Not sure when you were recruiting/training to be a recruiter, but the situation's really a little different, currently.
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Old 02-16-2014, 02:00 AM
 
Location: Tucson, AZ
1,588 posts, read 2,516,741 times
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The problem is the quality and character of troops; always has been, and always will be. However, it seems to be getting worse and worse. I blame the digital age and lack of male role models that do traditional male things. I don't know how many people my age and under have never used hand tools or done manual labor, it's sad relay.

Was I lied to by my recruiter? depends on your definition of lying. But for all the bull**** I was fed by a recruiter. I signed on the line, from that day forward I knew whatever could happen probably would. My character remained outstanding and I did everything I was told to do even if I didn't like it. I lived up to my end of the contract and the Air Force lived up to theirs.

Did I get the job I wanted? No not hardly.
Was it rough, was I bitter? Of course.
Did it transfer to the outside world?.... Not really.

but....

Did the Air Force pay for my bachelors degree in full? Yes they did!
Did the Air Force pay all of my living expenses in Germany, Japan, Korea and Guam for 7 years? Yes they did!
Did they pay me a liveable wage, pay my housing and give me money for food? Yes they did!
Did they teach me valuable skills? Yes they did!
Did they keep me healthy and give me incentive to keep in shape. Yes they did!

I say the more that get weeded out in BMT the better. The more that get weeded out in Tech School awesome. That's countless LOR LOCs and LOAs I wouldn't have had to write and lot less times I would have had to stand tall in front of the man for something that is not my fault.

Recruiter Squadrons need to do the Air Force a favor and get rid of quotas. Instead they should fight like hell to keep the experienced people. Bring back SRBs for those with proven job experience. The Air Force could do itself a huge favor if it could keep people in the same positions but they could still go up in rank. Another problem is the AF should have a different pay structure, paying E5s larger year step increases. Or figure out a way to award flight line maintenance jobs bonuses.

As the commander of a Maintenance Squadron it was always heartbreaking to see the outbound/retiring list. Names of people you knew could actually get the job done. We used to start the process of retaining good folks long before they were going to separate. But inevitably anyone that was sharp had no problem making it in the private sector. With the Post 911 being so good in that it paid full tuition plus MHA ($1000-1500/mo) + Work study or part time job, it was a no brainier for those that were tired of the politics. In 1 year, I lost (they separated or retired) 2 good flight chiefs, 3 good lead expeditors, 5 lead crew chiefs, 3 experienced weapons team chiefs, 5 experienced avionics E5-E6s. MC rates plummeted, 8 hour fix rates were abysmal, repeated code 2s and 3s were standard, release rates tanked, failed QA inspections shot up, Load training stats were laughable. Serious incidences were on the rise, the ORI was marginal. LSET results were embarrassing. I separated in 2011 and never looked back. I talked to a CAPT friend of mine (well he's my best friend) he said that he's jumping ship, and that it has gotten even worse lately. Our base was particularly terrible.

The reason I bring this up is that it all came back on the quality of troops entering the Air Force. In every meeting we had every morning, we would hear about how new techs were fundamentally clueless how to solve electrical problems and were disinterested in doing anything beyond swapping LRUs. None of them even had basic system knowledge. Most of them couldn't follow a TS to save their life. They didn't understand the proper use of a multimeter. So we would go to their training records and sure enough they had been "trained" on these things.

bottom line. Recruiters are failing weed out the turds, because they just want their quota, even though they are putting in troops that are clearly detrimental to the Air Forces well being. AETC is failing other commands with subpar tech school graduates and inadequate training. If a troop doesn't grasp basic concepts they should not be graduated plain and simple. If you don't understand how to properly read a T.O., use all common hand tools and understand principles of electronics they should never let you anywhere near a $50-300 million fighter jet.

Talking to friends at Sheppard they have noticed that the new troops know nothing about hand tools and have zero mechanical aptitude. Most of them say they are there because education benefits and they couldn't find something else in the civilian world. Why are we taking these people? If you said I just want this job because of pay and benefits and no one else would hire me to a HR person at a private company, your application would be thrown away immediately. But the military says "well, that's okay, we don't care you have no vested interest in anything beyond benefits. Take this test and sign here."

Sorry, this thread struck a nerve, I feel better now.
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Old 02-16-2014, 08:51 AM
 
1,738 posts, read 2,995,210 times
Reputation: 2230
Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyAMG View Post
The problem is the quality and character of troops; always has been, and always will be. However, it seems to be getting worse and worse. I blame the digital age and lack of male role models that do traditional male things. I don't know how many people my age and under have never used hand tools or done manual labor, it's sad relay.

Was I lied to by my recruiter? depends on your definition of lying. But for all the bull**** I was fed by a recruiter. I signed on the line, from that day forward I knew whatever could happen probably would. My character remained outstanding and I did everything I was told to do even if I didn't like it. I lived up to my end of the contract and the Air Force lived up to theirs.

Did I get the job I wanted? No not hardly.
Was it rough, was I bitter? Of course.
Did it transfer to the outside world?.... Not really.

but....

Did the Air Force pay for my bachelors degree in full? Yes they did!
Did the Air Force pay all of my living expenses in Germany, Japan, Korea and Guam for 7 years? Yes they did!
Did they pay me a liveable wage, pay my housing and give me money for food? Yes they did!
Did they teach me valuable skills? Yes they did!
Did they keep me healthy and give me incentive to keep in shape. Yes they did!

I say the more that get weeded out in BMT the better. The more that get weeded out in Tech School awesome. That's countless LOR LOCs and LOAs I wouldn't have had to write and lot less times I would have had to stand tall in front of the man for something that is not my fault.

Recruiter Squadrons need to do the Air Force a favor and get rid of quotas. Instead they should fight like hell to keep the experienced people. Bring back SRBs for those with proven job experience. The Air Force could do itself a huge favor if it could keep people in the same positions but they could still go up in rank. Another problem is the AF should have a different pay structure, paying E5s larger year step increases. Or figure out a way to award flight line maintenance jobs bonuses.

As the commander of a Maintenance Squadron it was always heartbreaking to see the outbound/retiring list. Names of people you knew could actually get the job done. We used to start the process of retaining good folks long before they were going to separate. But inevitably anyone that was sharp had no problem making it in the private sector. With the Post 911 being so good in that it paid full tuition plus MHA ($1000-1500/mo) + Work study or part time job, it was a no brainier for those that were tired of the politics. In 1 year, I lost (they separated or retired) 2 good flight chiefs, 3 good lead expeditors, 5 lead crew chiefs, 3 experienced weapons team chiefs, 5 experienced avionics E5-E6s. MC rates plummeted, 8 hour fix rates were abysmal, repeated code 2s and 3s were standard, release rates tanked, failed QA inspections shot up, Load training stats were laughable. Serious incidences were on the rise, the ORI was marginal. LSET results were embarrassing. I separated in 2011 and never looked back. I talked to a CAPT friend of mine (well he's my best friend) he said that he's jumping ship, and that it has gotten even worse lately. Our base was particularly terrible.

The reason I bring this up is that it all came back on the quality of troops entering the Air Force. In every meeting we had every morning, we would hear about how new techs were fundamentally clueless how to solve electrical problems and were disinterested in doing anything beyond swapping LRUs. None of them even had basic system knowledge. Most of them couldn't follow a TS to save their life. They didn't understand the proper use of a multimeter. So we would go to their training records and sure enough they had been "trained" on these things.

bottom line. Recruiters are failing weed out the turds, because they just want their quota, even though they are putting in troops that are clearly detrimental to the Air Forces well being. AETC is failing other commands with subpar tech school graduates and inadequate training. If a troop doesn't grasp basic concepts they should not be graduated plain and simple. If you don't understand how to properly read a T.O., use all common hand tools and understand principles of electronics they should never let you anywhere near a $50-300 million fighter jet.

Talking to friends at Sheppard they have noticed that the new troops know nothing about hand tools and have zero mechanical aptitude. Most of them say they are there because education benefits and they couldn't find something else in the civilian world. Why are we taking these people? If you said I just want this job because of pay and benefits and no one else would hire me to a HR person at a private company, your application would be thrown away immediately. But the military says "well, that's okay, we don't care you have no vested interest in anything beyond benefits. Take this test and sign here."

Sorry, this thread struck a nerve, I feel better now.
Sounds like AF maintenance suffers the same problems the Navy does. In the last two months, I've had two maintainers get caught "gun decking" QA audits.
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Old 02-16-2014, 12:36 PM
 
Location: Hard aground in the Sonoran Desert
4,866 posts, read 11,164,129 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TabulaRasa View Post
Not sure when you were recruiting/training to be a recruiter, but the situation's really a little different, currently.
I recently retired and recruited in today's recruiting "situation". Recruiting isn't any easier today than it was 15 years ago, matter of fact it is harder. Recruiters today have to deal with greatly increased qualification standards as compared to what we dealt with years ago. 15 years ago I could put in anyone with a 31 on the ASVAB, GED's, drug usage, police involvement, medical issues, weight issues, etc. that Recruiters can't touch today. Studies presented to Congress say that less than 25 percent of today's youth can meet the qualifications to get into the military. 15 years ago I rarely had young kids that their weight was an issue, today we turn away a large percentage of the kids we talk to because they are outside the weight limits. More kids today have police issues that can't be worked with than they did years ago. Years ago I could work with almost any police involvement, not so today. Lots more kids today with minor in consumption or possession of alcohol/paraphernalia/drug tickets than there was years ago.

Now we have smarter and more qualified kids we're trying to enlist who have legitimate opportunities to go to college or get entry level jobs in the civilian sector and we're only offering them the chance to be a cook or some other job that no one wants to be. All while we turn away the kids that can't qualify for college or entry level jobs in the civilian sector which in the past we would have scooped up and they would have filled all the jobs that no one else wants.

Having recruited for the last 15 years I can tell you it was much easier to Recruit 15 years ago then it is today.
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Old 02-16-2014, 01:20 PM
 
18,073 posts, read 18,692,582 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyramidsurf View Post
Sounds like AF maintenance suffers the same problems the Navy does. In the last two months, I've had two maintainers get caught "gun decking" QA audits.
I do not think the quality and character is any worse now than years ago. I think the military is getting overall nit picky and enforcement obsessive as is society in general. Plus, as a person gets older and more advanced, many things younger people do seem rather poor in character and quality; it is just the older and more experienced person has outgrown and risen out of that circle years ago they were actually part of.

The military always has changing standards, that is why I cringe every time someone refers to military standards; it changes with the needs, thus hardly a stationary standard to make a comparison to, they cannot even keep a standard uniform for long.

Gun decking has been around for as long as there have been logs. Every command I was ever with someone has been caught gun decking, security departments being the worse about it. I have seen punishment ranging from a counseling chit, to being "fired" from the position, never a mast though.
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