Recruiting Challanges

After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States of America occurred, recruiting for the National Guard has suffered in many ways. As a whole the National Guard has missed its annual recruiting goal for the last three consecutive years. Since the War on Terror began in March 2003, the demands of the National Guard have been unprecedented. Over half of our 15,000 service members have been called to active duty. The National Guard mantra is, "When called, we respond with ready units." To uphold our mantra we must overcome these new recruiting challenges. To address the need of meeting our current recruiting goal from a senior management perspective, our command leadership at the highest levels had to make drastic changes in both our recruiting force structure and our targeted recruiting market. Due to the fact that we were blind-sided by these attacks my immediate leadership responded by utilizing the reactionary leadership style. Reactionary leadership responds to conditions only after they have occurred. Although this leadership style is not the most desirable sometimes leaders have no other choice but to react. If we would have had plans in place for what had happened my immediate leadership could have responded using the visionary leadership style. Under visionary leadership you plan for change ahead of time by carefully considering thought through, long-range plans and goals based on quality information.

Before September 11, 2001 the Jersey recruiting area encompassed 10 counties, we had 1 Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge (NCOIC) and 9 recruiters. Our yearly recruiting goal would average around 300 enlistments. Since the early 90's we had always met or exceeded our recruiting mission. After September 11, 2001 came along we met our recruiting mission through September 2002 this was by and large due to patriotic Americans joining both prior service and non-prior service. Every year since 2002 we have failed to meet our recruiting mission. By using the reactionary leadership style my senior management simply thought by adding 15 additional recruiters to the area we would be able to make up the difference in our recruiting shortfalls. There were many unforeseen issues that came along after these recruiters were hired: no office space, no telephones, no vehicles and no computers.