Every (Reserve) Marine a Recruiter

Much has been written about the armed forces’ recruiting crisis. Finding the right Americans to meet the nation’s growing threats is a national security challenge that demands greater attention. Fortunately, the Marine Corps continues to meet its recruiting and retention goals, but it should look for ways to sustain this momentum given continuing geopolitical instability.¹ To do this will require innovative tactics and resources that have been overlooked and underemployed. The Marine Corps Reserve is one such resource. If incentivized and administratively untethered, the reserve component could unlock the recruiting potential of the total force and continue to guarantee the Marine Corps meets its recruiting mission. 

A Recruiting Station Case Study

Examining a standard recruiting station (RS)—for this article, a historically successful station that encompasses 20 municipalities and is staffed by 50 Marines ranging from corporal to major—can highlight the realities and obstacles facing recruiters. Real-world data collected through interviews has been anonymized for confidentiality. A few elements to consider:

• Propensity to serve. While Americans’ propensity to serve is at an all-time low of 10 percent according to recent RAND testimony to Congress, recruiters at the sample station did not see this as a problem.² Instead, they reported two primary obstacles to recruiting: (1) a general ignorance about the Marine Corps as a career path, and (2) varying degrees of access to schools, which prevents them from educating the recruitable population.

 • Direct sales approach. Recruiters at this RS spend a substantial proportion of their time doing “direct sales”—making phone calls, texting prospects, and canvassing their sectors.³ Throughout fiscal year (FY) 2024, their cold call success rate was 0.2 percent; social media engagement success rates stood at 1 percent; home visit success at 10 percent; and area canvassing at 16 percent.⁴ From roughly every four subsequent office interviews, one contract was generated—a nearly 25 percent success rate. Bottom line: The more that recruiters got physically in front of prospects, the higher was their likelihood of success.

 • Indirect sales approach. While canvassing generates 30 percent of all recruiting station contracts, it is the most time-consuming approach and is surpassed in effectiveness by the combined effect of two indirect approaches: the Delayed Entry Program and Recruiters Assistance referrals. Future Marines in the Delayed Entry Program are incentivized with promotion to private first class for any referral they provide recruiters. FY24 Delayed Entry Program referrals at the sample station accounted for 27 percent of all contracts—the second-highest and most time-efficient recruiting tactic. Marines assigned to Recruiters Assistance (Marines who support their local recruiting station while on leave) accounted for 20 percent of total contracts, which was the third most effective method in the case study.⁵ 

 • Supporting activities. Per Marine Corps Recruiting Command doctrine, recruiters are expected to spend 60 percent of their time on “productive” activities, 30 percent on “supporting” activities, and 10 percent on “unproductive” activities. Medical and administrative requirements have grown following implementation of Military Health System Genesis (the Department of Defense medical screening tool), and recruiters now spend more time conducting supporting activities such as assisting prospects in collecting required medical and administrative documentation from hospitals and schools.⁶ While it varies for each recruiter, the Marines in the sample RS spent on average 40 percent of their time on such supporting activities. When that is combined with all the “unproductive” activities, recruiters in the sample RS are, at best, spending only half their time generating and closing leads. 

Although the case-study recruiters are making mission, the data and firsthand experiences tell a challenging story. First, recruiters spend most of their time on tasks that do not capitalize on their recruiter-specific training and experience. Cold calling and helping prospects track down documents take recruiters away from more effective tasks such as area canvassing, home visits, or simply focusing on more qualified prospects. Second, referrals from the two indirect sales approaches are among the most effective tactics the station employs to get prospects to contract. The Marine Corps must find ways for recruiters to spend time where it matters: closing and signing highly qualified and high-probability contacts.  

Untapped Potential: Marine Forces Reserve

The Marine Corps’ reserve component comprises more than 64,000 Individual Ready Reserve Marines and 32,000 Selected Marine Corps Reservists in 230 reserve units throughout 47 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.⁷ These Marines are embedded within their local communities, employed by small businesses, enrolled in community colleges and universities, and sometimes are business owners themselves. Currently, they have three ways to aid the service’s recruiting mission—but little incentive to do so. 

 • Recruiting support officer (RSO): RSOs are Selected Marine Corps Reserve officers assigned to Marine Corps Recruiting Command district-level Individual Mobilization Augmentee (IMA) detachments. These Marines are then assigned to a specific RS. They assist the stations as educational liaisons and with civic affairs and are force multipliers within their communities. They spend the standard one weekend a month, two weeks per year, supporting their stations.⁸ 

• Extended active duty: Reserve component lance corporals to gunnery sergeants can activate for two to three years, attend the Basic Recruiters Course, and work for an assigned station in a full-time status. They receive an active-duty salary and basic housing allowance.⁹ 

 • Appropriate duty orders: Reserve component Marines may claim nonpaid retirement points for any activity supporting recruiting regardless of their assigned unit.¹⁰ 

While well-intentioned, these programs are inadequate and flawed. The RSO program, for example, is limited in scope. Typically, an RS has one Reserve Marine assisting in this capacity. This translates to just 38 days of support a year.¹¹ In addition, the program does not incentivize any other reservists in a station’s region to support the recruiting mission. 

Extended active duty will not appeal to most high-performing reservists, who typically are too busy being high performers in school or their civilian professions. They are unlikely to take three years off to experience the six- or seven-day, 70-hour workweeks of Marine recruiters. The opportunity cost is too high. 

Finally, unpaid retirement points also are not a sufficient incentive for most reservists, many of whom will complete their minimum service requirement (typically six years) and will not retire from the service. As a result, they will not care to accumulate retirement points. In the sample RS, 3 percent of all contracts are expected to be sourced from such reserve referrals, but they rarely result in a contract.¹² 

The Marine Corps needs a more innovative approach. The key to unlocking the reserve component’s potential to enable and assist Recruiting Command’s mission is properly incentivizing reservists’ time and breaking down existing administrative barriers that inhibit their assistance. 

The Solution: Partner-Driven Recruiting

In private industry, companies often allocate large budgets to marketing and direct sales activities. Time, money, and effort are spent to advertise directly to consumers, and junior sales representatives prospect and vet potential customers through mass phone and email campaigns. Like some elements of the Marine Corps’ current recruiting strategy, this is expensive, time-consuming, and inefficient. A different strategy, one with great potential, is known as partner- or channel-delivered sales.¹³

In partner or channel sales, companies find other businesses, entities, or trusted agents to market, advertise, and prospect for them. These partners then bring prescreened, qualified customers who fit an “ideal customer profile” to the host company’s senior sales team. The host company’s team then focuses exclusively on closing these high-probability deals. As an incentive, the partners get a fraction of the sale as a referral fee. The Marine Corps could easily adopt this concept through a partnership between Recruiting Command and Marine Corps Forces Reserve. Reservists could partner with local recruiting stations in the following ways:

 • Prospecting and vetting: Established in their communities, many reservists have deep knowledge of the local area. This knowledge, combined with the reservists’ good reputations, could help sectors with prospecting. For example, a reservist who graduated from a nearby high school might stay connected with the football coach, marching band director, or guidance counselor. This rapport could result in solid leads. In addition, a reservist who attends the local community college could provide information to fellow students on Marine Corps opportunities. With a little training (easily provided), reservists could be the front line in helping recruiters find candidates with the basic qualifications, saving recruiters from having to spend time vetting applicants.

 • Supporting activities: Often, recruiting substations attend local fairs, high-school sporting events, or other events with an information booth and a pull-up bar. Reservists could help man these displays, assist with contacting prospective applicants, and help with various other supporting activities.

Two changes would unlock this potential:

First, Recruiting Command should provide recruiting stations and districts with additional funding to incentivize Reserve Marine support—for example, referral fees or bonuses to reservists whose actions directly result in a contract or funds to support attendance at recruiting training, where reservists could hone recruiting-specific skills. Rewarded tasks primarily should be tied to candidate recruiting through a reservist’s personal network or canvassing, telephone, email, or social media contact. Monies also could be used to compensate reservists for assisting with supporting activities that result in a contract. 

To do this, the Marine Corps should explore untethering reserve component compensation and retirement point allocation from reservists’ home Selected Reserve units and IMA detachments. Recruiting station commanders should be authorized to reward paid additional training periods to any reservist who attends the RS-based Reserve Marine recruiting training and whose actions directly contribute to a contract based on the commanders’ requirements and conditions.¹⁴ 

Second, administrative barriers between Marine Corps Reserve units should be broken down. Currently, no policy or procedure allows reservists of one unit to drill or “work” for another unit concurrently and be compensated. Marine Corps Forces Reserve and Manpower and Reserve Affairs should address this unnecessary barrier to allow Reserve Marines to be given temporary additional duty orders to any Recruiting Command IMA detachment. These orders would allow the reservists to belong to two units: their assigned Selected Reserve or IMA detachment and the IMA detachment associated with their local recruiting station. This would give RSs access to a pool of Reserve Marines from whom they could request support. 

Consider, for example, a Reserve Marine living in Irvine, California, and attending a local college. He is in Alpha Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) Battalion, at Camp Pendleton. In addition, he is associated with RS Orange County (he lives in the sector). When not drilling with 4th LAR or going to school (e.g., during summer break), he is available to assist the recruiters of RS Orange. Aware that incentives are available to compensate him for his time, he taps into his network and identifies and screens likely candidates. He also helps with making phone calls, canvasses the sector, and brings all his leads to the RS’s active-duty closers. He could then facilitate a prospect’s journey to contract by assisting the recruiter with prospect-specific supporting activities. His efforts bring solid leads to the RS with far less work required from active-duty recruiters. 

Reservists not only can find leads that result in contracts, but also can set conditions for recruiters to focus their time on productive, high-contract-probability activities.

Unlock the Reserve

The reserve component stands ready to augment the active-duty component in confronting today’s recruiting challenges. While there are barriers, the Marine Corps has a legacy of innovation and adaptation that has allowed it to navigate turbulent times. With proper incentives and policies, the distributed network of Reserve Marines could transform the Marine Corps’ direct sales recruiting approach into a more efficient and effective partner recruiting strategy that would result in more leads and contracts and optimize active-duty recruiters’ time. The recruiting potential of Marine Forces Reserve is waiting to be unlocked.