Selling America: The Army’s fight for recruits
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2024
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
This summer, at a small recruiting station in Toms River, New Jersey, Sgt. 1st Class Dane Beaston met with a team of Army recruiters to offer some encouragement.
“Let's change the places we're looking,” Beaston told his colleagues. “Let's change our messaging. Let's change what we're doing if it's not working, right? But the potential's out there.”
Beaston has given a lot of talks like these lately. While his team has gotten closer to meeting its goals since he joined a couple years ago, it fell short of meeting its quota in June.
This isn’t just a problem in Toms River. Across the country, the Army is struggling to sign people up. Negative trends accelerated by the pandemic have shrunk the number of young people able to meet the Army’s academic and athletic requirements. Trust in American institutions is also waning.
Today on “Post Reports,” Martine Powers speaks with Greg Jaffe, a national reporter at The Post, about the time he and reporter Missy Ryan spent at the Toms River recruiting station to see how recruiters there are trying to persuade young people to join the Army.
Today’s show was produced by Sabby Robinson, with help from Peter Bresnan. It was edited by Monica Campbell and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So there are certain times when we can feel a lot of pressure at work, especially when it comes to hitting a particular goal or a target. |
| 0:11.0 | On a recent morning this summer, a team of Army sergeants, they were feeling just that type of |
| 0:17.3 | pressure. |
| 0:18.3 | They met at their office to work through it. |
| 0:20.3 | All right, so let's go through the admin stuff, then we'll go through the training stuff, right? |
| 0:24.8 | I'm not worried about people. |
| 0:26.2 | That's Sergeant Dane Beeston, leading the meeting at an army recruitment station in |
| 0:30.9 | Tom's River, New Jersey. It's next to a bagel shop and a nail salon. |
| 0:36.2 | Lately, Beeston and his team have been struggling to meet their recruitment goals. |
| 0:41.1 | So Beeston is giving a bit of a pet talk. |
| 0:44.0 | You're going to get no after no after no after no after no |
| 0:47.0 | but being creative, going out there, putting yourself out there |
| 0:52.0 | and doing everything you can to get that yes to be successful is what needs to be done in this job, right? |
| 0:58.0 | Most months, the team fights to deliver the number of new recruits they need. |
| 1:02.0 | Some months, they hit their target. fights to deliver the number of new recruits they need. |
| 1:03.0 | Some months they hit their target, |
| 1:05.0 | other months they miss. |
| 1:07.0 | But this is typical. |
| 1:09.1 | Army recruitment is a struggle across the US. So that is pushing people like Beeston and his team to meet their goal. |
| 1:17.0 | If you miss it, it hurts your career. There's not that same sort of accountability elsewhere in the Army. |
| 1:27.0 | So there's a lot of pressure on these guys. |
| 1:29.0 | Greg Jaffey is a reporter on the democracy team at the post. |
... |
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