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By Spc. John Higgins
National Guard Bureau
ARLINGTON, Va. - What has worked for enlisted recruiting in the Army National Guard is now working for the officer ranks.
A critical shortage of officers prompted the Army National Guard to offer recruiting incentives to its Soldiers through the Guard Recruiting and Assistance Program-Officers.
"This program has been very successful for the enlisted side, so we figured if it works for them then it would work for us," said Lt. Col. Walter Woodring, Officer Strength Maintenance branch chief for the Army National Guard.
Started last fall, GRAP-O is the officer version of G-RAP, which allows a Soldier to be a part-time recruiting assistant and earn up to $2,000 for every new Soldier that joins the Guard - $1,000 when the new Soldier enlists and another $1,000 when he or she ships to basic training.
GRAP-O has proved to be an invaluable tool for finding qualified officer candidates.
Woodring said the Army Guard gained 400 officers with GRAP-O in last fiscal year.
"It's just another tool in our tool bag to get folks to join."
The Guard is offering $2,000 for basic officer and warrant officer recruits, and up to $7,500 for finding certain specialties, such as doctors, lawyers and chaplains.
And while the program's financial incentives are tempting, Maj. Tanya Evans, the G-RAP Officer Program manager, said there was a wide range of reasons for Soldiers to participate.
"It's not only just money, there's esprit de corps. There are so many more things to being a recruiting assistant than money," she said.
As a recruiting assistant for G-RAP, a Soldier can have a direct affect on the flow of officers, selecting from their own peers within the military and assisting them in becoming officers.
"A lot of people just don't understand the path to becoming an officer," said Evans. "Or we get stuck in enlisted vs. officer instead of how we work together to make the Army and the Army National Guard and all the service entities better. So, we limit ourselves. The RA's job is to get those people on the pathway."
One Soldier who has helping bring officers into the Guard is 2nd Lt. Taihei Hongo, a counter intelligence officer and native of Tacoma, Wash., who has produced 10 officer candidates, all from his pool of friends.
"From the recruiter's prospective, you're recruiting a friend or someone you know and feel comfortable working with," said Hongo. "That is the kind of Soldier others can trust and rely on.
"From the recruited Soldier's prospective, you're talking to your friend which, in my opinion, is a hundred times better than working with a regular recruiter in the sense that the Soldier won't be pressured into anything they don't want to do. The Soldier can trust stories and experiences that the G-RAP recruiter has."
Recruiting assistants such as Hongo have their work cut out for them, since the Guard is 5,000 officers short, and most in need of captains, Woodring said.
"You can't just hire a captain, you have to grow a captain from a lieutenant," he said. "It's a long-term problem that requires us to grow more lieutenants to fill in the captain jobs."
While the Army Guard is 107 percent strength in lieutenants, the shortage of captains requires a strength increase to 125 percent in lieutenants to fill in those shortages.
Warrant officers are also at critical lows, said Chief Warrant Officer Bonny Bell of the Army Guard's Strength Maintenance Division.
"We are currently 3,000 short in the National Guard ... 500 of those are for aviators, and 2,500 are for the technical warrant officers," she said.
However, the need for warrant officers extends beyond that shortage. "Of our force, about 50 percent are eligible to retire at any time. Even though we have 3,000 vacancies, we're looking to fill 6,000 slots."
Recruiting warrant officers is a unique challenge for the RAs because the rank requires a high degree of technological know-how.
"They're looking specifically for enlisted Soldiers who have specialized technical expertise," said Bell. "Many times the recruiter assistant is actually telling the enlisted Soldier ... the [career] path to become a warrant officer."
| Date Taken: | 10.17.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 10.17.2008 22:48 |
| Story ID: | 25157 |
| Location: | ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 136 |
| Downloads: | 94 |
This work, Army Guard providing incentives to Soldiers to help find new officers, by John Higgins, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
