The Army´s Sales Pitch-Part 2
Stuart Nachbar
August 05, 2008
My July 29th post on the HBO documentary The Recruiter (see>http://educatedquest.blogspot.com/2008/07/armys-sales-pitch.html) attracted a thorough and thoughtful response from Scott Fielder, an Army veteran served on active and reserve duty, as well as a few tours on recruiting duty, assisting as a subject matter expert on language school and military intelligence.
Scott shared information on Army recruiting and pointed me to several factual resources. After reading his e-mails, I watched The Recruiter again as well as snippets of interviews with Sergeant Clay Usie, the lead recruiter in the story and two recruits that were filmed after the documentary was completed. After completing his recruiting assignment in 2006, Sergeant Usie went to Ranger orientation and became a part of the 75th Regiment. Identified by tan berets, the 75th, according to Usie, sets its own standards of excellence; those who fail to meet them can be removed at any time.
Fielder told me that Sergeant Usie is a soldier´s soldier. For instance, he pointed out that Usie wears a badge for Physical Fitness Excellence on his physical training t-shirt. Fielder sent me a link to the badge, which I again when I watched The Recruiter a second time. Usie is wearing the badge in a scene where he pushes a prospective recruit to beat the Army´s cut-off time for the two-mile run. It´s interesting that Usie turns around while running and extolling the recruit to "watch his hips," and the badge is smack in front of the prospect´s eyes. Fielder explained that few soldiers earn and keep this badge for any length of time. Although Usie was on a recruiting detail, he maintained his fitness qualifications as if he could be assigned to a fighting unit at any time. The running scene also showed me that Usie is a soldier who would not ask another soldier to perform a physical task that he would not do himself.
Scott informed me that non-commissioned officers, such as Sergeant Usie in the documentary, who rank in the top five percent of their military operational specialty (MOS is Army-speak for professional expertise) must do a three-year tour as a drill sergeant or as an Army recruiter. This was interesting and makes sense: the Army needs its best soldiers to convince others to follow their lead, just as a corporation needs some of its best sales people to become sales managers. However, in corporate America the best sales people are often lone wolves and poor managers, while lone wolves have no place in the military. Usie himself says in the snippet that a salesman and a leader are the same thing. I would agree with him to a point; loyalty is a job requirement in the military and the Army takes the Soldier´s Creed quite seriously, but Clay Usie could not expect to find the same qualities in peers and subordinates in corporate America, unless they had also served in the military.
But Fielder added that corporate America has tried to learn from the military as well. He told me that he had once received a Marketing lecture given by a senior VP of for Xerox. The executive was part of a joint commission that conducted a 2 year study on the training of military recruits. The study was conducted nearly 20 years ago, when the nation was not at war. The commission was curious; they wanted to know how the military could take kids from all places and stratus in life and teach them how to repair 20 million dollar weapon systems, yet they could not teach senior executives to handle basic business tasks. Scott explained how the military succeeds, and I summarize in brief: they teach to slowest person in the room, emphasis repetition and give the trainees nothing to do in their free time except practice what they´ve learned. This, according to Fielder, has been the military practice for over 60 years.
And the Army knows far less in advance about its recruits than corporations have learned about their best and brightest entry level candidates through rounds of rigorous interviews and testing. It takes a Sergeant Usie to separate the soldiers from the posers; if anything The Recruiter, and the stories that have been perpetuated about other recruiter´s lies, have convinced me that the Army needs more men like him. Corporate America has the luxury of casting their "adequate" performers aside in difficult times.
The Army does not.
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
Scott shared information on Army recruiting and pointed me to several factual resources. After reading his e-mails, I watched The Recruiter again as well as snippets of interviews with Sergeant Clay Usie, the lead recruiter in the story and two recruits that were filmed after the documentary was completed. After completing his recruiting assignment in 2006, Sergeant Usie went to Ranger orientation and became a part of the 75th Regiment. Identified by tan berets, the 75th, according to Usie, sets its own standards of excellence; those who fail to meet them can be removed at any time.
Fielder told me that Sergeant Usie is a soldier´s soldier. For instance, he pointed out that Usie wears a badge for Physical Fitness Excellence on his physical training t-shirt. Fielder sent me a link to the badge, which I again when I watched The Recruiter a second time. Usie is wearing the badge in a scene where he pushes a prospective recruit to beat the Army´s cut-off time for the two-mile run. It´s interesting that Usie turns around while running and extolling the recruit to "watch his hips," and the badge is smack in front of the prospect´s eyes. Fielder explained that few soldiers earn and keep this badge for any length of time. Although Usie was on a recruiting detail, he maintained his fitness qualifications as if he could be assigned to a fighting unit at any time. The running scene also showed me that Usie is a soldier who would not ask another soldier to perform a physical task that he would not do himself.
Scott informed me that non-commissioned officers, such as Sergeant Usie in the documentary, who rank in the top five percent of their military operational specialty (MOS is Army-speak for professional expertise) must do a three-year tour as a drill sergeant or as an Army recruiter. This was interesting and makes sense: the Army needs its best soldiers to convince others to follow their lead, just as a corporation needs some of its best sales people to become sales managers. However, in corporate America the best sales people are often lone wolves and poor managers, while lone wolves have no place in the military. Usie himself says in the snippet that a salesman and a leader are the same thing. I would agree with him to a point; loyalty is a job requirement in the military and the Army takes the Soldier´s Creed quite seriously, but Clay Usie could not expect to find the same qualities in peers and subordinates in corporate America, unless they had also served in the military.
But Fielder added that corporate America has tried to learn from the military as well. He told me that he had once received a Marketing lecture given by a senior VP of for Xerox. The executive was part of a joint commission that conducted a 2 year study on the training of military recruits. The study was conducted nearly 20 years ago, when the nation was not at war. The commission was curious; they wanted to know how the military could take kids from all places and stratus in life and teach them how to repair 20 million dollar weapon systems, yet they could not teach senior executives to handle basic business tasks. Scott explained how the military succeeds, and I summarize in brief: they teach to slowest person in the room, emphasis repetition and give the trainees nothing to do in their free time except practice what they´ve learned. This, according to Fielder, has been the military practice for over 60 years.
And the Army knows far less in advance about its recruits than corporations have learned about their best and brightest entry level candidates through rounds of rigorous interviews and testing. It takes a Sergeant Usie to separate the soldiers from the posers; if anything The Recruiter, and the stories that have been perpetuated about other recruiter´s lies, have convinced me that the Army needs more men like him. Corporate America has the luxury of casting their "adequate" performers aside in difficult times.
The Army does not.
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
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