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MILLINGTON, Tenn. (NNS) - The U.S. Navy is hiring. Despite all the safety precautions Navy Recruiting Command (NRC) has made during the coronavirus pandemic that message hasn’t changed. What has changed is the way in which the message has been getting to the qualified people across the world.
Like many organizations across the nation, the shutdowns and required changes in behavior during the pandemic have had major effects on day to day operations.
“March was probably the peak month for shock value — no one wanted to go outside, no one wanted to do anything,” said Commander, Navy Recruiting Command, Rear Adm. Dennis Velez.
However, in order to continue the essential business of manning the fleet, Velez said he empowered his recruiters to rely on the tools and resources at their disposal.
“Recruiters right now have pretty much everything they need on a laptop,” said Velez. “So, when they do need to meet with potential Sailors, they can take biometrics and get signatures all right on the spot — with no need to meet in the building. The entire process can pretty much be done anywhere.”
The Navy has been moving their recruiting efforts, including marketing and advertising, into the digital realm for years now. This effort is in addition to recruiting command’s effort to transform Navy Recruiting Districts (NRDs) into Navy Talent Acquisition Groups (NTAGs). This new method has been taking the place of the classic one-to-one, recruiter-to-applicant, recruiting method, and the plan is to have all NRDs transformed by the end of 2020.
In an NTAG, the duties that would typically be handled by a single recruiter are divided into three disciplines, and recruiters are assigned one main discipline based on their individual skill set. This created Sailors who are dedicated to sales and sourcing, assessing, or onboarding, instead of one person doing all of that for each applicant.
The advantage this created for NTAGs during the pandemic is that Sailors who were already dedicated to sales and sourcing have had the chance to hone their abilities to make contact with applicants over social media and other digital methods. Whereas, in the NRDs where older methods still prevail, recruiters are often overtasked, with their time being divided between sourcing, assessing, and onboarding, while also continuing to mentor contracted Sailors until they ship to boot camp.
“The NTAG model, in my opinion, has been key to preparing my team for virtual recruiting,” said the Commanding Officer of NTAG Houston, Cmdr. Mary Decker. “Just a year or so ago, many of my recruiters were inclined to believe virtual recruiting couldn’t work. That we had to have that in-person interaction . . . The pandemic forced what was already in progress, and the results prove that virtual recruiting is a success.”
Decker embraced virtual recruiting as the way of the future. She doesn’t believe recruiting, at least in her command, will ever fully return to the way it was before the pandemic.
“To me to go backward is to fail,” said Decker. “We have a new and proven method of recruiting that we as leaders need to acknowledge and continue to develop. It’s the way of the future.”
Even in certain NRDs that haven’t shifted to the NTAG recruiting model yet, they have created dedicated social media outreach positions to broaden their footprint. One recruiter, who has been doing this for years, is Logistics Specialist 1st Class Derrick Elefante.
“Over the years, I’ve found that recruiting online is just an extension of recruiting in real life,” said Elefante. “It won’t ever replace being face-to-face with someone, but it can definitely extend our reach.”
For Elefante, the pandemic didn’t change very much for his recruiting numbers because he and his E-talent division had already embraced, and began perfecting, digital recruiting long before the pandemic began.
Many districts have similar E-talent divisions where the recruiters’ entire job is to create online content and interact with potential applicants through social media. If someone is interested, they direct applicants to their local recruiters to continue the process.
“In my district, our E-talent numbers did not fluctuate at all; they did not rise or go down,” he said. “We average 20 to 25 contracts per month, and in April we had 23 contracts and 22 contracts in May.”
For Sailors just now trying their hand at recruiting via social media, Elefante had some advice.
“To be successful at recruiting virtually, you need to understand the structure is still the same as recruiting face to face. There are still the four stages of sales, and they need to address those stages to increase their engagement.”
Just like Elefante, many recruiters had taken it upon themselves to penetrate the virtual space long before it became a necessity. Recruiting for the Navy had been challenging before the pandemic because of the booming economy and cuts in traditional marketing and advertising. This forced the necessity for innovation on the ground level recruiters before, and in this regard, the pandemic is just another hurdle.
“Recruiters understand how critical it is for us to get new Sailors and recruits into the Navy,” said Velez. “Because, at the end of the day, we have 90 plus ships at sea today — over one-third of our force is underway doing the nation’s business, and if we fail at doing our part, a Sailor is going to stay at sea longer because we can’t get the right Sailors through the schoolhouse to relieve them.”
People looking to speak to a recruiter remotely can do so by going to www.navy.com and clicking “apply now,” or by calling 1-800-872-6289.
Navy Recruiting Command consists of a command headquarters, two Navy Recruiting Regions, 15 Navy Recruiting Districts and 11 Navy Talent Acquisition Groups that serve more than 815 recruiting stations across the world. Their combined goal is to attract the highest quality candidates to assure the ongoing success of America’s Navy.
For more news from Commander, Navy Recruiting Command, go to http://www.cnrc.navy.mil. Follow Navy Recruiting on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NavyRecruiting), Twitter (@USNRecruiter) and Instagram (@USNRecruiter).
| Date Taken: | 06.10.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 06.10.2020 16:46 |
| Story ID: | 371850 |
| Location: | TENNESSEE, US |
| Web Views: | 235 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Navy Recruiting Sets Full Steam Ahead, by PO2 Zachary S Eshleman, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
