This provides an hourly record of what each recruiter did all day long and informs the noncommissioned officer- in-charge and the recruiting station commanding officer of exactly how each recruiter spent every day of every week. For example, each morning, the recruiting substation noncommissioned officer-in-charge reports his station’s numbers-including telephone calls, home visits, interviews, and contracts performed by each recruiter-from the previous working day to the operations officer. Superiors are provided a daily report card on his activities, allowing the operations officer to identify problem areas and keep the recruiter working at 100% efficiency. Systematic recruiting plans the recruiter’s month down to the last minute. A recruiter contacts everyone in his assigned area in hopes of persuading at least one individual to enlist. Systematic recruiting is designed to make even the most inept Marine recruiter successful. The zero-defects mentality has created the most extensive micromanagement system in existence today: systematic recruiting. This is when a recruiter is most likely to commit a breach of ethics. He is under pressure to produce or be fired. Somewhere between the second and third failure, however, the Marine becomes desperate, working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, doing everything he can to succeed. A fourth and final failure brings relief for cause. A third failure brings probation, a severe reprimand from the commanding officer, and a great deal of micromanagement from the operations officer in an effort to place him back on track. A second failure brings an official letter of caution and additional remedial PSS training. This is followed by an extremely stern reprimand and remedial Professional Selling Skills (PSS) training, to put him back on the path to success. The first failure places him in the “Zero Hero Club” and results in an early Saturday-morning drive to the recruiting station to explain his dismal failure to the executive officer. Immediate steps are taken to eliminate either the problem or the recruiter. however, he becomes a detriment to the command. More often than not, the recruiter returns with his prize-and with his ethics intact, no regulations broken, and no impossible-to-keep promises tendered. Anyone who has served a tour as an enlisted recruiter (MOS 8411) or as an officer selection officer has heard the following statement: “I don’t care how you do it just don’t come back until you’ve found a warm, breathing body qualified to be a Marine.” The recruiter takes this to heart, and-unwilling to fail in his mission or let down the commanding officer-he will go to the ends of the earth to make it happen. Nowhere else in the Corps is zero-defects pressure prevalent than within the recruiting service. How long can the recruiting service continue to treat high-quality officers and staff noncommissioned officers as though they are expendable? The Marine | Corps should eradicate this zero-defects environment, and make room for sound leadership. The drive to succeed lures too many Marines down an unethical path, ultimately leading to their relief for cause and a bad reputation for the recruiting service. This pressure to make quota begins at the commanding general level and pushes down through the chain of command to the sergeant manning the recruiting sub-station. A zero-defects atmosphere and high incidence of micromanagement combine to create an unhealthy environment-“accomplish the mission or else.’ Recruiters are ordered to make their assigned goals no matter what the cost. Marine Corps recruiting duty forces leaders to place their subordinates in ethically compromising situations.
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