Dress for success: Navy recruiters compete in paratrooper country

All Hands, July, 2004 by James Pinsky

The Navy has a delayed entry program commonly referred to as DEP. Qualified recruits join the Navy and simply wait in a holding pattern while going about their daily lives until it's their turn to go to boot camp. Sometimes "deppers" can wait for more than a year before their training pipeline is ready for them to go to boot camp. A lot can happen to a well-qualified recruit in a year, a fact that has grayed the hairs of more than one Navy recruiter over the years.

"A year is a long time," said Ashworth. "Recruits can gain weight, turn into couch potatoes, get into legal trouble and ruin their credit rating if you don't keep a close eye on them. No, getting a person to join the Navy isn't the toughest part of my job; it's [getting our depper] safely to boot camp. That's where the real challenge is."

Getting someone to join the Navy is the easy part for Ashworth, because he was trained to sell the Navy. All recruiters receive six weeks of sales-related education at the Naval Recruiting Orientation Unit (NORU) based at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla. Potential recruiters learn how to talk to people about the Navy, how to introduce the Navy as a plausible option to people and how to make sure the Navy is getting the right kind of people.

Earning the right to be a recruiter is a challenge in and of itself.

All recruiting hopefuls must complete at least one prescribed tour, receive a commanding officer's endorsement, get released from their rating into the special programs detailer and pass NORU. Recruiters get to pick their naval recruiting district (NRD), which in some cases can cover a lot of square miles. An interview with NRD's chief recruiter settles the exact location within the district. For Fayetteville native Ashworth, getting shore duty in his hometown was a two-step process.

"When I talked to the chief recruiter for NRD Raleigh, N.C., the closest I could get to Fayetteville was the town of Lumberton, about an hour south," Ashworth said. "But it worked out well for me there, because that's where I met my wife. We just had our first child and I was able to move to the Fayetteville region where I can go back to E.E. Smith High School, where I graduated in 1997.

Now if only Ashworth can keep his kid from growing up to be a paratrooper....