Selling the service: veterans’ reflections on their past experience of the military recruitment process

Every year 180,000 young people are recruited to join the US military. The 1973 shift from the draft to an all-volunteer recruitment model, recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq employing the use of reserve troops, wavering public support of military deployments, and stories of recruiter indiscretion have led to a renewed examination of military recruitment. Despite abundant research into motivations for military enlistment, little qualitative research has explored the interaction of prospective service members and their recruiters. Further, despite emotionally charged accusations of recruiter deception, scant research exists related to the honesty of military recruiters. As a result, two questions remain relatively unexplored related to military recruitment: (1) how do veterans describe their past experience of the enlistment process, and (2) how do veterans describe the honesty of the recruiters who helped them enlist, and in many cases convinced them to enlist? The article analyses military recruiter training manuals and 45 interviews with recent military veterans to illuminate the military recruitment process. This paper reveals that the US military has enthusiastically embraced corporate marketing and sales techniques, and, in contrast to Defense Department reports, most veterans perceive that recruiters either lied or significantly stretched the truth in an effort to secure their enlistment.