Courtesy of Surface Navy Association (www.navysna.org)

 

Edward H. Lundquist: How would you describe your job here as Commander of Navy Recruiting Command, both for someone who doesn’t know much about the Navy, and then to someone who thinks he or she knows a lot about the Navy? There are probably a lot of people who think they know the Navy and recruiting, but don’t really have a full appreciation of the challenge or the opportunity.

Rear Adm. Brendan R. McLane: That’s a great way of putting the question because I didn’t know anything about recruiting when I came to the job. I’m just a fleet ops guy and my preconception was recruiting was all about signing people up. And what I learned here is it’s really about shipping people to Recruit Training Center (RTC). That’s what it’s all about. We’ve got a goal of about 39,000 Sailors this year, and our goal has been growing. Of course, signing people up is a lead indicator for shipping people to RTC, but at the end of the day, the whole supply system is based on us meeting our shipping numbers. The Navy manpower system is based on getting new Sailors through boot camp and on to their A Schools so they get to the fleet on time to fill their billet. So the force development supply chain—the Manpower, Personnel, Training & Education (MPT&E) enterprise starts with us. We’re organized into two regions – east and west – the dividing line is the Mississippi, but we also have a third region where we lead our districts that are transforming. Transformation is something that we’ve been on for about two years now. The old model of recruiting is the one that we’ve been using since John Paul Jones. A recruiter at a station would find a potential applicant; sells that person on the Navy; takes that person to a Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS); the applicant takes the ASVAB test (if they haven’t already); and they then are offered a rating based on the individual’s interests and aptitude, as well as the needs of the Navy; and they are given a contract with a rate. They’re sworn in, and become part of the recruiters delayed entry pool, and when it’s time to go off to RTC the recruiter takes that future Sailor and puts them on the bus, or takes them to the airport, and sees them off on their way to boot camp. For each future Sailor, one recruiter per future sailor does everything. However, we’ve learned that there are many different skills involved in that process. There’s selling, closing, and there management and a discipline skill. Not everybody is great in all four of those. Now, when a Sailor shows up at the Recruiting Academy in Pensacola, we give people an evaluation tool to see what they are really good at. When they get to their district they are divided up into these four pillars: sales, sourcing, assessing, and onboarding. And the sourcers go out there and they do presentations in high school, and the salespeople are the ones that close. The assessors find the right jobs for them, and determine when the school seats are available, and bring them into the Navy. And then the on-boarders are the ones who run the delayed entry pool. Our people really like the new way of doing it. It takes a lot of stress out of the process because you are not juggling all those things at once. Now you just have to do one thing, and hopefully, that’s one thing that you’re really good at. We’ve found that recruiter job satisfaction has gone up.

How many districts are in this transformation mode now?

We have converted eight districts to this new way of doing it. We’ve learned with each one, and the process has gotten better, quicker, and easier every time we’ve gone through a transformation. Technology has helped us. We have a customer relations management tool that will connect all the other systems that we have, such as PRIDE Mod 2 (Personalized Recruiting for Immediate and Delayed Enlistment) and NALTS (National Advertising Leads Tracking System.) the things that we put data into and take data out of and connect it to this customer relations management tool which makes things quicker, better, paperless, and they don’t need a CAC-card. That’s the transformation journey that we’re on.

We recruit from two populations groups. We have the students who are in high school and the people who are already in the job market—we can recruit up to age 39. In the past, when the economy has not been doing so well, the students who want to go to college later or don’t want to go to college, the Navy has been a great option.

As the U.S. Navy is growing, we need to help fill the need for more Sailors. And even as we are growing the force, we currently have a 6,000-Sailor shortfall in the Navy. It takes about a hundred TYCOM-level manning actions to get a strike group out the door for deployment, and have every ship in that strike group at 92 to 95 percent manned.

So we’re recruiting to help close that gap, and to grow the Navy to 355 ships. We’re at 288 now. I tell my recruiters that we won’t be at 355 ships next year, but one of the future Sailors that they recruit this year will be the plank-owning CMC of that 355^th ship that commissions in 2050. And that resonates well.

 

How is the current economy affecting recruiting?

It’s a blessing that our nation had had 100 months in a row of job growth. So hopefully it will keep going. But that makes it challenging for recruiting. Unemployment now is in the 3 to 4 percent average across the nation, and some areas it’s as low as 2 percent, and we’re looking at better than 3 percent wage growth, which makes recruiting really hard. We recruit from two populations groups. We have the students who are in high school and the people who are already in the job market—we can recruit up to age 39. In the past, when the economy has not been doing so well, the students who want to go to college later or don’t want to go to college, the Navy has been a great option. It’s a sure thing when they graduate. If you don’t have a job, it’s a great way to seek employment. But right now just about everybody has a job. If job satisfaction is high and people are getting paid well, it’s much harder recruiting-wise to talk people out of the jobs that they have to join the Navy. That’s the market we’re in right now. It takes a lot longer to recruit each future Sailor because the value proposition is different today. We’ve got a very good ad campaign – “Forged by the Sea” – that resonates well with centennials who are looking for growth opportunities and ways to make themselves better, and they’re looking for authenticity, and teamwork and diversity, and we offer all that as just a natural thing.

There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal about how they’re teaching Marines at Parris Island about what happened on 9-11 was, because the new generation didn’t experience what happened then.

Is that the generation is we’re trying to reach? Centennials?

Yes. Some people refer to them as Gen Z, but everybody who’s between the ages of 2 and 21 is part of the centennial generation. And we’re graduating 800 centennials into the fleet every week. The generation before them are the “Millennials,” and DOD is 70 percent millennial now! We’re a very young organization

 

The people who are joining now may not be old enough to remember 9-11.

Or who were born after 9-11. That’s correct. There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal about how they’re teaching Marines at Parris Island about what happened on 9-11 was, because the new generation didn’t experience what happened then.

 

How does retention impact your job?

We’ve been at war for a long time, but one of the counter intuitive things is that retention is really high in the fleet. Usually, when the economy starts booming, Sailors start leaving the Navy and going out and doing things in the civilian world. But they’re not doing that now. Better retention has an impact on our recruiting goals. Our people are staying in in record numbers. I think that’s because of two things. First, it’s because of the Navy’s personnel policies that we’re running because Admiral Burke (VADM Robert Burke, chief of naval personnel and deputy chief of naval operations (manpower, personnel, training and education) (N1)) has focused like a laser on making things better. There were a lot of little dissatisfiers—hassles with PCS, or orders, or dealing with the personnel systems–but compounded over the years, they just made people tired. Those are the things that have always dissatisfied – and that affected spouses, too. Not only were our Sailors suffering with these dissatisfiers, but then they got to hear it when they got home at the end of the long day. Those things, I think, are all getting better and that’s showing in our retention. I think the other thing is that we are now in a great power competition. Sailors recognize that there is a really big challenge that we NEED them. I think that need is being communicated well and Sailors buy into how important their jobs are.

Going back to the process, when I was a recruiter we wanted our recruiters to sell the Navy, not a rating, and leave that to the classifiers at the MEPS. The classifiers would look at what the applicant was qualified for and what the Navy, and find the RTC seat and A school seat to fill that need for the Navy.

That’s changed. Now that our customer relations management tool has come online, and we have the permissions to connect to the NALTS and PRIDE systems, and see what’s available before an applicant goes to MEPS. And the way our recruiting stations are being organized under transformation—we’re calling them “NTAGs”– Navy Talent Acquisition Groups – their numbers are better now than they used to be. Everybody respects that.

 

Results speak for themselves.

And that’s one of the neat things about recruiting, is you really are as good as your last month’s production. We’ve always been number-driven, and we really use metrics to quantify success, or lack thereof. And we have the blessing of being a pretty big command that only does one thing, and that’s recruit future Sailors. I think some credit is due to recruiters for the higher retention. When we deliver what we say we’re going to deliver, and put people into the jobs that they really want, people are so much happier if they get to do what their natural inclination is.

Now, of course, there’s a huge education piece, and this goes really to my long-term challenges. But there is an important part of that to educate people on what the many opportunities are. A lot of people see SEALs or corpsmen or intelligence specialists because they saw that in a movie or on TV, so that’s what they think they know about, and what they think they might want to do. We need to expose people to all the other opportunities that are out there, especially the ones that pay very well. We’re up to $40,000 enlistment bonuses now, like nuclear field. We’ve got five ratings that that all fall under what we call “Warrior Challenge,” which is SEAL, Special Boats, Air Rescue, and EOD. And those all get a $40,000 bonus, too.

They have tougher requirements.

Yes, there is a tougher screening process. There are higher physical standards that they have to meet, and then they go through a draft process where Special Operations “scouts” draft who they will be accepting for training.

Based on DoD’s analysis, we have 20 million 17-21-year-olds in America, and that waterfalls down, but comes down to 370 thousand who are physically qualified, have the grades, and motivated to serve their country in the military. So I’m competing with the Army and the Marine Corps and the Air Force over that 370,000.

So the SPECWAR community is your customer.

I have lots of customers: I’ve got Naval Reactors; SPECWARCOM; BUMED; Reserves, the Chaplain Corps, etc.—I have to recruit for all of them and they all have their own individual goals. My big goal for the year is 39,000 Sailors– and that’s active duty Sailors – but then we also have 5,500 reservists, we have probably about 5,000 officers that we also have to meet.

 

You talked about educating your potential market. How do you do that?

Our research has shown that about 100 percent of Americans know that we have a Navy, but about 1 percent of Americans know what the Navy does. And when we talk about our available market, not all of them are physically qualified, have the grades, and also are interested in serving their country. Based on DoD’s analysis, we have 20 million 17-21-year-olds in America, and that waterfalls down, but comes down to 370 thousand who are physically qualified, have the grades, and motivated to serve their country in the military. So I’m competing with the Army and the Marine Corps and the Air Force over that 370,000.

 

And they all have other options besides the military.

That’s right. Beyond that number there is about 1,700,000 “fence-sitters” who are considering it, but the data shows us that people don’t know really enough about the military in general, not just the Navy, to make an informed decision. There are fewer veterans now than there used to be.  In 1990, 45 percent of American families had a vet in the family, and therefore, when everybody got together at Thanksgiving or Christmas, Uncle Larry told his war stories. That’s changed now. It’s gone from 45 down to 15 percent of American families have a vet in it.

That means we have to tell more war stories.

And it means that our community outreach – from ALL aspects of the Navy. The fleet needs to do more. Sailors can do more when they go home on leave. The reserves need to do more when they’re out in the communities. The retired community needs to do more with the VFW or the Fleet Reserve Club. The Navy League is an organization that has as part of its charter to inform the American public about what the Navy does. We need to do more of that. Popular culture can give a boost, like TV shows and movies.   People keep saying, jokingly, that we need another Top Gun. Well, thankfully, another Top Gun is coming out.

 

A lot of people that watched that movie thought it was about the Air Force.

When our ad agency was developing our Forged by the Sea campaign, they showed focus group videos. When they showed them aircraft carriers with planes landing on them, without any kind of an explanation, some of the participants said they thought the Navy was providing those ships as a service to the Air Force for their planes. So that’s how low the knowledge level in the public is about the Navy. And it’s really not about “Whose fault is it?” That’s just where we are right now. So we need to do more to educate the public.

 

What is the average production per recruiter each month?

An average recruiter is somewhere at 1.2 contracts per month. The good ones are 2 and above.

 

What percentage of applicants are in the Delayed Entry Program, and what percent ship to RTC right away?

I would say it’s very rare that we write a contract and then ship them immediately. The chances of attrition are higher. If we get them for two to three months in DEP, we have time to teach them what to expect so they have a leg up before they get to RTC. That’s probably the ideal because that gives them time to put their affairs in order, particularly ones who are already in the work force.

And you can work with the DEP pool to bring their friends in.

We have incentives for that. If you bring in somebody, particularly if he’s a high quality applicant, you could be a push-button E3 on graduating from boot camp.

This generation uses their phones, but not to actually talk to people–they use them for texting. They use apps like WhatsApp or Instagram. And with robo-calls, people don’t answer their phones, so cold calling doesn’t really work anymore.

What’s the most interesting thing that you’ve learned so far from this job?

I’m not going to say I’ve learned or mastered this – but my answer would be the art of goaling. There is the human dynamic in that. You want “stretch goals” and challenge people to really perform, but not make it out of reach so that they give up. We want them to succeed. I’ve also noticed something about those stations that consistently do well. When I walk in, it’s like walking onto the quarterdeck of a ship. You can tell within three seconds if they’re making goal or not – without even looking at their numbers – you can tell by the way the recruiters carry themselves whether or not they’re making goal. Sometimes I sit down with the recruiters who are successful, and I explain the big picture to them, answer their questions, explain what the priorities are, and thank them for what they’re doing, and then they’re looking at their watches because they’re anxious to get back to work.

 

Maybe they should give you some of those suspect/prospect cards to help them make some calls.

That’s what recruiting used to be about, reaching potential applicants on the phone and getting them to come into the station. But we’re doing less of that. This generation uses their phones, but not to actually talk to people–they use them for texting. They use apps like WhatsApp or Instagram. And with robo-calls, people don’t answer their phones, so cold calling doesn’t really work anymore. We have changed our strategy for marketing and advertising. We’re 70 percent digital now and only 30 percent on TV. It’s been successful, although our recruiters do miss seeing the ads on TV and seeing those big billboards. Digital has been effective because we can track how we do online and tie that to the number of contracts. It’s easy to show the return on investment. We run those 6-second clips that you have to watch to get to content, and we match that to the content you are looking at. If you have to watch the 6-second preroll before you get to your gaming site, we have a spot that has a gaming tag-line on it, such as an EOD Sailor operating one of our high-tech robots and then you see the tag-line, “We are AFK,” which means “away from keyboard.” If it’s a movie site, there’s a quick scene of aircraft taking off from an aircraft carrier and then the spot shows, “This is what WE binge watch.” And what we find is that 80 percent of the time our spots get watched to the end—which means they don’t opt out and hit “skip ad,” And our ad agency can show them more, and they usually watch THAT to the end, and that usually takes them to the website and then the call center. We have metrics that show that–funneled all the way down to contracts. It’s not the same as that positive affirmation I get when I see that billboard, but going digital is more cost effective.

The Centennials are digital natives – they’ve had iPhones since they were born. They’ve got a very short filter for detecting whether the content is relevant for them. It’s about 8 seconds. That’s when they look at something and then they’re moving on to something else. But if they’re watching to the end of our spots that shows that it resonates with them.

We’ve decided to shake things up. We’ve starting doing what we call “swarms,” which helps us target critical areas, get maximum exposure, and reward some of our top performers. We focus on big events, and bring recruiters from around the country to take advantage of the increased attention that that event already has. We ran a pilot right before Christmas in Miami for two back-to-back Miami Heat games. We brought down one of our virtual reality trucks. We have two—Nimitz and Burke. Nimitz is a virtual reality center inside an 18-wheeler where you walk in and you get a dog tag that has your info on it and then you become a special boat driver who has to go into a hot extraction point to get the SEALs out and then drive them back down the river. You have a VR headset with great 360-degree graphics. After your mission, you get your debrief. We bring in instructors from the Recruiting Academy, and recruiters-of-the-year from the other districts, as a way of recognizing them, and we swarm. We hit the high schools in larger groups than we usually do. Using Nimitz or Burke gives us greater access because we show up with something. Everybody’s interested in it. We do lots of presentations in the classrooms on, particularly about STEM, to really drive the nuclear field recruitment. We also invest in local media about 14 days before the event. So all those things combined drive the number of contacts up, which leads to higher numbers of interviews, which leads to great number of contracts. We’ve done that for the Miami Heat games, we did that at the Pro Bowl in January, which also coincided with a military expo focused on high school kids in Orlando. We did the Mobile Navy Week at the end of February. And then in March we were at the Minnesota Ice Hockey State Championship in Minneapolis.

Do you select places where you have not been as successful and you’re trying to improve that? Or are you picking places that you know will be successful because we’ve always done well there?

I think we’re doing both. We want to balance it so that East gets as many as the West region. We started with markets that were already good. Miami is probably the number two market in the United States as far as district performance goes, so we started there. Orlando is also a market that has a high propensity to serve, as is Mobile, Alabama. Minneapolis has been a greater challenge for us. We get high quality but we don’t get large numbers out of NTAG Northern Plains. We’re very interested to see how that swarm activity translates into contracts. There is usually a 30- to 60-day lag time on the interviews turning into contracts because you have to get them through MEPS. Our next swarm will be for the Boston Marathon, which coincides with Patriots Day in Massachusetts, with reenactments, and a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. So we’re going to swarm on all of that. So we’re going to places that we haven’t been in in a while, we’re increasing our presence there to get more market share, and then we’re doing these swarms.

 

Do you also focus on areas with higher unemployment?

Yes. One of those areas is Puerto Rico. After the hurricane destroyed some of our recruiting stations, we reduced our numbers there in 2016-2017. We’re working with Army Corps of Engineers now to open two new stations in Puerto Rico. But we’re not waiting until that comes through because that usually takes about 12 months. We’ve got two mobile recruiting stations that we use throughout Puerto Rico, and presence in two malls where we’re recruiting. And we’re increasing the number of recruiters that we have in Puerto Rico. We’re bringing Spanish-speaking Sailors who are in the reserves onto active duty to help in recruiting there. So we’re looking to increase the number of future Sailors we get from Puerto Rico by probably a third this fiscal year so our goal is 389 future Sailors coming out of Puerto Rico.

We need to have 100 percent contact with every Sailor before they get out, because it makes it so much easier for them to stay in the reserves, or to transition in the reserves, rather than getting out.

What about prior service? Is there an emphasis to get people to come back into the Navy?

The Navy Reserves is one of my customers. Prior service in the reserves is their number one priority. And it just makes a lot of sense.

We need to have 100 percent contact with every Sailor before they get out, because it makes it so much easier for them to stay in the reserves, or to transition in the reserves, rather than getting out. It makes it so much easier than if they decide a few years later that they want to come back in. We have focused our prior service recruiters in fleet concentration areas–such as Norfolk, Jacksonville, San Diego, and, Pearl Harbor and Pac NorWest–and their goal is 100% contact with EVERY sailor who is getting out of the Navy to make sure that they’re aware of the great benefits that they can get if they sign up, and how much harder it would be if they wait and decide later on.

You’ve mentioned the high priority of the Nuclear Field, and the bonuses, as well as some of the special warfare jobs. Do you have other jobs that are high priority?

CTI (Cryptologic Technician Interpretive) is high priority for us. We’ve got a $30,000 bonus for them, and we will have shipping bonuses attached to the electronic submarine ratings, as well.

 

We’ve been talking mostly about enlisted recruiting. How do you go after officer applicants, people that are college graduates or about to be?

The officer recruiting stations are usually located close to college campuses. We recruit for unrestricted line, but we also need doctors, chaplains, and fields like that. These can be very challenging, because unemployment is so low, a lot of those people have choices.

 

You mentioned you mentioned the Career Recruiter Force. What is the CRF? How do you get to be a career recruiter?

If you’re really good at recruiting, you can convert to the Navy Counselor rate—NC—and become a career recruiter, which has its own whole career path. You go back to our Recruiting Academy where you become a trainer at the district level and then can be a career recruiter at the district, or you go up to the region and then it tops out at National Chief Recruiter. Master Chief Petty Officer Franklin Tiongco is our NCR, and is a great example of reserve and active duty integration in recruiting because he’s an FTS (full time support) reservist.

 

What would you tell a junior officer or a Sailor who was considering recruiting for shore duty?

For division officers, department heads, and our Sailors and chief petty officers in the fleet, going recruiting for their Sailors is probably the best thing that they could do for their career. So if you are a third class petty officer and you go recruiting, it’s an automatic advancement to E5. So that’s a push button. No other area in the Navy has special duty assignment bonuses up to level 7–that’s an extra $500 a month if you meet all of the criteria, qualifications, the training. Nobody else gets that. We meritoriously advance our sailors at a 50 percent higher rate than the fleet. And the proof is in the pudding. If you look at the numbers, the selection rate to E-7 for the FY ’19 chief’s board in the fleet was 19 percent. But for recruiters in the field it was 29 percent; and for our career recruiting force it was 44 percent. If you go recruiting, you’re going to be making more money and will get advanced quicker. And, if you go to one of the more challenging areas, like Michigan, you get sea duty credit for the years that you’re in NRD Michigan. We have five areas like that. Plus, if you’re an E5 and you go to an E6 recruiter billet, you’ll get advanced into that. We call that Advance to Vacancy. So the Navy is putting its money where its mouth is. Recruiting is highly valued and, therefore, highly incentivized.