What the Recruiter Never Told You

By Rod Powers


Jobs Vacancy, Job vacancies, Employment Jobs

The vast majority of U.S. Military recruiters are honest, hard-working professionals, completely dedicated to the core values of their service. In fact, few military personnel put in more hours of work per week than recruiters.

The recruiter's job is to find enough qualified volunteers to fill projected vacancies for the fiscal year, for their particular branch of service. While a majority of military recruiters are hard-working, honest, and dedicated, there are some (and I emphasize some) recruiters who are tempted to bend the truth, and/or downright lie, and/or blatantly cheat in order to sign up a recruit. It happens often enough where we've all heard "horror stories" about military recruiters.

So, why do some recruiters do this?

It's because of the way the recruiting system is set up. It's a numbers game, pure and simple. Recruiters are judged by their superiors primarily upon the number of recruits they get to sign up. Sign up large numbers, and you're judged to be a good recruiter. Fail to sign up the minimum number assigned to you (known as "making mission"), and you can find your career at a dead-end. This policy pressures some recruiters to adopt unethical practices in order to "make mission."

So, you ask, "why don't the services put a stop to this?" Easier said, than done. Each of the services have recruiting regulations which make it a crime for recruiters to lie, cheat, or knowingly process applicants that they know are ineligible for enlistment. Recruiters are punished when they are caught violating the standards. However, the key phrase is "when they are caught." Not that easy to do, as there are usually no witnesses. It becomes a "he said/he said" type of deal.

I should also mention here that, in many cases, "lies" told by a recruiter are actually cases of selected listening by recruits. A recruiter may say, "Many of our bases now have single rooms for most people," and the applicant may hear, "You are definitely not going to have a roommate."

Anyway, enough "recruiter-bashing." As I've said, most recruiters are honest. The purpose of this series is not to run down military recruiters, but rather inform potential recruits the truth about joining the military; the benefits and disadvantages of joining the military, whether for a four-year enlistment, or a 30-year military career. The subject matter of this series necessitates that the "tone" be somewhat critical, or negative. I don't mean it that way. I spent 23 years in the Air Force and enjoyed every minute of it. My primary profession today is to manage this web site and research/write about the United States Military. Both of my daughters are happily serving in the Air Force (one on active duty, one in the Air National Guard). I love the military and every aspect of it.

However, the military is not for everyone. Fully 40 percent of recruits who enlist in the military today will not complete their full term of service. While many discharges will be for reasons beyond the recruit's control, such as medical problems that develop after joining the military, as a First Sergeant for 11 years, I found that a significant number of the involuntary discharges we imposed on first-term recruits was because they simply stopped trying -- they discovered that the military wasn't what they thought it was going to be. Many of them told me that the military wasn't even close to what their recruiters told them it was going to be (either the recruiter lied to them, or they were guilty of "selective listening.") When this happens, everyone loses.

This series is intended to "save" some of that 40 percent by letting potential recruits know up front, just what they are signing up for. Let's get on with the show!

How to Find Job Search Help

From Donna Marino

Jobs Vacancy, Job vacancies, Employment Jobs

As a professional career counselor employed by a college, I will often receive requests for assistance from "non-affiliates" (individuals not affiliated with my institution). Due to the ratio of staff to client-base, our policy is to limit services to only our own students and alumni. Over the course of many years, my colleagues and I have often helped non-affiliates to realize that there may be a wealth of other local and Internet resources that they’ve not yet tapped, including career counselors in private practice. This brief article is meant to help college graduates and other job seekers identify free, or inexpensive, resources in their geographic areas.

Contact Career Services

If you are a college graduate, be sure to contact the career services office at your own alma mater(s). Many institutions, like mine, offer lifetime career development services for alumni. Others offer limited services; still others offer services at extremely reasonable rates. And much of what is offered may be available long-distance.

One of the most important services to request will be access to your alma mater's version of our Career Advisor Network (alumni who have volunteered to speak with you, respond to your career-related questions, and advise you on your job search).

You may be able to request telephone appointments with the career development professionals at your alma mater(s) for services such as resume reviews and advising sessions on job search strategies or interviewing techniques.

You’ll also want to get any required passwords for access to your alma mater’s online job listing databases.

And it never hurts to ask if your alma mater(s) have existing reciprocity agreements with institutions in your geographic area (allowing you to access the services of the local college’s career services office). But be prepared to hear that your access will be limited to non-password-protected job listings (no counselor contact).

Find Free Job Search Help

Here are some other ideas that are helpful to all job seekers, whether they’ve graduated from college or not.

Check with your local public library to see what they have in their career research and job search collections. Ask if they offer job search workshops or run a job search club.

Look for regional/local branches of professional associations for the field(s) of interest to you to tap their networking potential.

Go online for advice and job listing links. Some of the best sites include:

• The About Guide to Job Searching
• The Riley Guide: Employment Opportunities and Job Resources on the Internet

Check with your local Chamber of Commerce to ask about career/job fairs that may be planned for the near future. Search the Chamber of Commerce International Directory for contact information.

Tap resources and services available through your state’s Department of Labor. You’ll find both online resources as well as in-person options. For more in-depth information on this idea, refer to the previously published article, Departments of Labor: Job Referrals, Training and Other Employment Services.

Locate a Career Counselor

Finally, if you want actual career counseling (rather than just job search advice and resources) and live at too great a distance to make the often-mandatory in-person sessions with career counselors from your alma mater(s) feasible, you may want to engage the services of a private career counselor in your local area. Before doing so, be sure to consult the National Career Development Association’s (NCDA) Consumer Guideline for Selecting a Career Counselor. It provides an excellent overview of the roles of a career counselor, training and credentials information, what you should expect and demand as a client, ethical practices, and more.

Keep Company and Employee Information Safe

From Jeremy Wunsch

Jobs Vacancy, Job vacancies, Employment Jobs

Right now, someone within your company may be accessing confidential corporate information either dishonestly or by accident.

In the news virtually every week, you read about large, well-known companies suffering from the loss of sensitive corporate information at the hands of employees. Given that Human Resource departments often hold the key to valuable corporate and employee information, the risk of data breaches presents unique challenges for HR.

Fortunately, through simple and effective internal threat management procedures, HR can help prevent employee information leaks from happening to their company. These procedures will protect employees' most confidential and valuable information from being exposed to unauthorized parties.

• Be aware of where critical employee information and corporate data are located and who has access to them.

• Develop an acceptable use policy for all employees that outlines appropriate use of corporate assets and employee information. The policy should also outline the company procedures when a violation takes place.

• Consistently enforce policies and procedures.

• Regularly review and revise existing policies to ensure all necessary policy changes and additions have been addressed.

• Ensure your company has an internal incident response plan and the appropriate resources in-house to handle an incident of employee information or corporate data loss or access by unauthorized employees or outsiders.

What Not to Do if a Data Breach Occurs

If the worst should happen and your company does experience a situation where sensitive data is leaked or lost, don't fall prey to common mistakes such as turning on an employee's computer to check around. Turning on the computer or any electronic device involved may destroy potential evidence.

Here are ten common ways a computer forensics investigation is compromised. Company employees:

• Boot up the computer. Turning on a computer that's relevant to a case can overwrite sensitive files that may be important to your company's case and change important time stamps. Compromised computers should not be used at all and should be stored in a secure location until it can be handed over to a computer forensics expert.

• Turn off a relevant computer. If a computer is running at the time it is discovered to be relevant to a data breach or investigation, it should be powered down in a way that will be least damaging to potential evidence. The only person that should turn off a suspected computer is a certified computer forensics expert, or an IT employee under the supervision of such an expert.

• Browse through the files on a computer. Resist the temptation to snoop, even with the best intentions. HR may know exactly where to look, but it's the act of looking that causes problems for retrieving untainted evidence. Browsing through files may cause file times to change which may make it impossible to tell exactly when an important file was deleted or copied from your company's network.

• Fail to use a computer forensics expert. Your company's IT department is not a computer forensics department. In fact, asking the IT staff to conduct even routine checks into a system's files can destroy potential evidence. A professionally trained computer forensics expert should be retained for the handling of all sensitive data.

• Fail to involve all parties. In-house counsel, IT staff, and every business player involved with the case should be included when conducting electronic discovery. Failure to involve all parties can result in overlooked or lost data.

• Fail to learn the lingo. Even tech-savvy support professionals may become confused by the expanded vocabulary used by computer forensics experts. It pays to become familiar with the new language.

• Don't make a forensics image of the computer(s) involved. Imaging is the process in which you create a complete duplicate of a hard drive. This is done for the purposes of copying a complete and accurate duplicate of the original materials, with no risk of flawed or overlooked data.

• Copy data in "cut and paste" or "drag and drop" methods. It is true that you can buy an $80 external USB hard drive and copy your data to it. However, this process does not preserve the unallocated space (where deleted files reside) and will change the file times and other data on the files that have been copied out.

• Wait to preserve the evidence. The longer a computer is in operation without any preservation, the more likely that the data that is relevant to your company's situation may be permanently altered or overwritten. Always preserve your electronic data the moment you believe that litigation is possible.

• Fail to maintain a proper Chain of Custody at the time of collection. Not documenting who had access to the electronic evidence after the alleged incident can lead to problems down the road. Opposing parties can poke holes in the collection and preservation process. They can argue that the data could have been altered on the device while the computer was not securely stored and unused.

You can protect the integrity of your corporate data and employee information for purposes of litigation and restoring and protecting against data loss. Just follow the rules shared here to maintain the integrity and not compromise the usability of your electronic devices and their stored data.