Fanatical Military Recruiting

2Nothing Prepared You for This War

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

—General George S. Patton

Recruiting is a war. Just a different kind of war than the one you prepared for and trained to fight. Recruiting is a War for Talent—for the hearts and minds of the next generation of talent that will protect and defend our country and way of life.

Rather than bullets and bombs, this War for Talent is won through disciplined use of time, intellectual agility, emotional intelligence, mastering your own disruptive emotions, leveraging human influence frameworks, and massive prospecting activity.

But make no mistake: The War for Talent is real. All organizations in America—businesses, health care, nonprofit groups, sports, education, and the military—are in an outright and never-ending battle to recruit and retain the brightest and most talented people.

Smart, competent, and capable people are rare and in high demand. You are competing with every other organization and your fellow recruiters from other armed services branches to gain the attention of and engage this talent. It’s winner takes all. There is no good enough. There is no prize for second place. Once you lose prospects to your competition, the probability that you will ever get them back plunges.

On this highly competitive, ever-changing, asymmetric battlefield you must be at your best—always. If you:

• Allow your discipline to slip, you lose.
• Let your guard down, ...