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Word of mouth boosts Guard recruiting

When the Army National Guard was losing people faster than it could replace them three years ago, leaders turned to a strength that’s unique to the Guard.

In addition to almost doubling the number of full-time recruiters and sending them out of the recruiting stations and to more sporting events and high schools, Guard leaders turned to their part-time soldiers who live and work in their communities full-time.

The result is the Guard Recruiter Assistant Program, which Guard leaders credit as a major factor in helping the Guard meet its manpower goals this year for the first time since 2003 and achieve its highest level of troops since 2001.

“The biggest seller in the Guard is word of mouth,” said Lt. Col. Paul Griffin, recruiting and retention commander for the Virginia National Guard. “A guy has a good time [at a weekend drill] and comes back, tells his friends about it. That’s usually how we get the enlistments.”

Army Secretary Pete Geren testified at the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that the program “has been extraordinarily successful.” The regular Army and Reserves have adopted it under a different name: “Every Soldier a Recruiter.”

107,442 ‘recruiter assistants’

The Guard pays a private company named Docupak $2,320 for each GRAP recruit, which covers commissions and administration. It has cost $81 million so far, said Guard spokesman Manny Pacheco. The 107,442 part-time “recruiter assistants” in the program have brought in 35,000 new recruits since the program was started in February 2006, Pacheco said.

Another reason for the success is that recruiter assistants approach people in places where most professional recruiters would not, said Col. Mike Jones, chief of recruiting and retention for the Army Guard.

One of the most productive part-time recruiters in Virginia is Sgt. Keith Sydnor, a Guard member whose civilian job is to bring bail skippers back to justice. Since February 2006, Sydnor has earned $30,000 in extra commissions for referrals to recruiters.

“Based on the time period of the day, if they should be in school or should be at work and I see them out on the street or at a bus stop, I’ll stop and talk to them,” Sydnor said. “Nine times out of 10 they’re unemployed or looking for work.”

Sometimes he pulls aside people in trouble with the law who he’s had to track down and bring to court, provided they’re found not guilty or are convicted of misdemeanors.

“When they get a little confused in life and need some discipline or to go in a different direction, that’s when it comes in,” he said.

Among his first questions: “What’s your passion?” The Guard has so many different jobs that recruits who qualify can often find something they’d like, Sydnor said.

Recruits often want to know what it’s like in Iraq. Unlike many full-time recruiters, Sydnor’s been there.

“I tell them the heat over there is no joke,” Sydnor said.

Each recruiter assistant takes advantage of his own strengths.

Pfc. Dolton Goolcharan, 22, of Baltimore has earned $28,000 in GRAP commissions through his easygoing and approachable manner. Goolcharan talks to other young people about the Maryland National Guard while strolling in uniform at the mall.

“I like to meet new people,” Goolcharan said, adding they usually approach him and ask if he likes the military.

“Then we start having a conversation,” he said. “Some of them are like ‘Oh, I don’t want to go war.’ ”

Goolcharan said there’s always that possibility but that he emphasizes the Guard’s educational benefits.

Helping to change a life

Pvt. Daniel Strickland, 17, of Manassas, Va., learned about the Guard through Meredith Raynor, his social studies teacher at Commonwealth Challenge, a five-month military-style boot camp program for at-risk children.

Raynor, 35, is also a recruiter assistant who has earned $16,000 in commissions this year by referring young people she works with to join the Guard.

“There were some posters in the classroom and I asked her about the Guard,” Strickland said.

Strickland said he ended up in Challenge because he was getting in trouble and his parents decided “it was time for a change.”

He earned his GED through the program, and now the Guard is helping him attain two more important goals: Serve his country and get an education.

He’s enrolled in Northern Virginia Community College and hopes to transfer to Virginia Military Institute. And it doesn’t bother him that Raynor earned $1,000 when he enlisted and will get another $1,000 when he goes to basic training.

“She just helped change somebody’s life,” he said.

Jodie Evans, co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink, said the idea of recruiting at-risk children to go to war is “really frightening.”

“I’ve worked with at-risk kids,” Evans said. “Every single one of the at-risk kids in my community, their fathers were in Vietnam. It takes years to get them balanced.”

Strickland disagrees.

Raynor only talked to him about joining the Guard because he expressed interest and after he graduated from the program. Kids who finish “are no longer at risk, they are adults,” he said.

A change in technique

Through May, the Guard had 351,400 troops, the most since November 2001, according to data provided by the National Guard Bureau. It’s also the first time the Guard has exceeded its target of 350,000 troops for three consecutive months since May 2002.

Guard leaders overhauled recruiting practices in 2004, when it became clear that recruitment problems “weren’t temporary,” Jones said.

In response, the Guard:

• Started a “buddy program,” in which members earn $2,000 for every recruit they sign up and who enters boot camp. The Guard says the program has brought in 35,000 enlistments since December 2005.

• Hired more recruiters. It had 2,700 full-time uniformed recruiters in August 2004, the same as in 1989. That number grew to 5,100 by December 2006.

• Boosted enlistment bonuses from a high of $6,000 in 2004 to $20,000 today, said Manny Pacheco, a Guard spokesman.

• Sent recruiters to more high school sporting events, NASCAR races and shopping malls.

Pacheco said a lesser chance of serving overseas probably had an impact on retention.

In the three years the Guard fell short of its manpower target, it also saw its largest deployments, peaking at 98,493 in 2005. That year, Guard membership bottomed out at 333,177 members. This year 44,723 members have been deployed.

The Guard’s message also changed, from promoting educational opportunities to emphasizing the warrior-soldier, said military sociologist David Segal of the University of Maryland.

The new recruiters had experience in Iraq or Afghanistan so they could talk to parents “honestly and frankly about the risk,” Jones said.