Every Single Military Branch Is Missing Their Recruiting Goals By A Mile And Recruiters Are Speaking Out About The Reason

There's a major recruiting crisis in the U.S. military right now. In 2022 the Army missed its recruiting goal by 15,000 active-duty soldiers, the other branches are struggling as well, and there's been a ton of scuttlebutt as to why. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain there's a whole slew of valid reasons leading to this perfect storm (or drought), but Military Times reporters went straight to the recruiters themselves and found that a new medical screening system (Military Health System Genesis) was likely the biggest culprit. Who would have thunk the government would make things more complicated in a very costly quest to make them more simple.  

Whereas before it was relatively easy to leave out certain parts of a recruit's medical history that might disqualify them from service, the Genesis program finds & red-flags them asap… And if you know anything about military recruiting culture you know that's a big time problem. According to multiple recruiters from different branches & locations in the article, 

…Genesis has ended an applicant’s ability to gloss over or knowingly ignore minor medical issues, such as past use of ADHD meds or inhalers, before signing up.

In the process, those recruiters say, it has turned the military’s stream of applicants into a trickle and made a recruiter’s already-difficult job even harder.

“Nobody says it out loud in the wrong company, but the whole DoD knows that before Genesis we were able to put people through with a lot of different things, within reason, because whatever that applicant decides to disclose is whatever that applicant decides to disclose,” Joe Brown, a Marine Corps recruiter and staff noncommissioned officer in the South, told Military Times. “Now that Genesis exists, we can no longer hide things.”

For better or worse, hiding things was THEE name of the game to join the service back in my day. If you read the comments on that ZBT Instagram post there are countless variations of other veterans saying, "Yep, I told my recruiter XYZ and they told me to never speak of it again and I'd be fine." Pretty much every vet I'm friends with was coached to tweak at least a couple things by their recruiter, and I'd also disclosed things that my own recruiter told to omit if I really wanted to serve the country, too. My spine injury playing rugby didn't affect my physically at all anymore, but would have been a hold up, so we quietly left it off. With the Genesis system, it would have been flagged because there'd been a hospital visit. Others in the comments who tried to join recently said even a trial run of ADHD meds they took during their middle school years got flagged by this system and held them up. Not sure I'd have made it in were Genesis around back in '08. 

Anyways, a wacky screening system aside, I'd say if they want to reel in the troops they need better pay, a cool ass commercial about getting stationed in Italy and partying on a yacht with hot people or something, and a really sexy new war. Hope that helps. 

Also on the latest ZBT, we talk about Texas Billionaire Harlan Crow & his 'Garden of Evil', a horny police dispatcher, and how a huge percentage of men believe they could fly a plane with zero training if the need arose. Check it out!