Today we look at the Marine Corps (USMC). As is often the case when it comes to performance, the USMC is an outlier. When it comes to recruiting, the dip they suffered in 2022 was minimal, and in 2023 they do not expect any falloff. In the sense that this week’s coverage is supposed to focus on recruiting shortfalls, we could just as easily have skipped the USMC entirely, or just mentioned that last year was uncharacteristically “off” for them but observe that this year’s fine and move on to the next subject.

Instead we’re going to look at advantages the USMC enjoys, and disadvantages it faces. Then we’ll interrogate the narrative that’s been forming around why the other services are having so much trouble recruiting.

This will also help lay the groundwork for tomorrow’s piece, on the Army, the service that has had the most trouble attracting troops — at precisely the moment they’re trying to expand.

THE BIG STORY

Cracking the Code

The USMC seems to have figured out how to solve the recruiting woes that bedevil other services.

The first thing to acknowledge up front is that recruiting is traditionally a strength of the USMC. Known for their focus on recruiting and retention, the USMC is the last organization one would expect to have trouble with either. And last year — in which they met their recruiting goals by dipping into the following year’s numbers (the same accounting trick used by Navy and the Air Force) — wasn’t quite as bad or alarming as people said. At least, not for the USMC.

Since then, its recruiters made some tweaks and adjustments, rolled up their sleeves (in accordance with regulations), and got to work. The results speak for themselves. This year the Marine Corps expects to meet their recruiting goals without issue.

How is this, and why? According to the Marine Corps it’s a combination of hard work, their own process for selecting effective recruiters (they offer an attractive package of incentives for people to serve as recruiters, including bonuses and choice of next station), and the reputation of the Marine Corps itself. Intuitively, this feels right: the branch that’s perceived as “elite” would be the last to suffer, presumably, in a culture characterized by a reluctance to serve in the military.

This story provides an example of an effective Marine Corps recruiter — who is, by her own admission, recruiting all the time, even while out for dinner at a restaurant. She could just as easily be selling real estate. It’s not just her duty assignment, it’s her identity. She’s like Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross hustling over drinks after work.

And that, more than the app they’re working on that allows people to enlist that gets mentioned in a lot of articles, is probably why it comes together the way it does year after year for the Corps.

So the advantages of the USMC when it comes to recruiting are: (1) a great reputation and “brand,” (2) heavy investment in good recruiters as the front line for attracting and retaining talent, and (3) (somewhat more controversially) an institutional flexibility toward embracing novel approaches to interacting with recruits, as evidenced by this app they’re developing of which they’re proud.

What are the disadvantages? To begin with, the USMC is always on the chopping block when it comes to budgets — it is the branch that has to justify why it isn’t part of every other service year after year. Why aren’t its planes just Navy aviation? Its helicopters Army aviation? Its infantry, artillery, and armor personnel soldiers instead of Marines? You’d save billions on overhead and redundancy. Why have a Marine Corps, when if you broke it up you’d just have another Army Corps?

Without going into the arguments over why to, or why not, the more interesting idea to me is how knowing that this is a problem, every Marine Corps leader has explaining the Marine Corps embedded in their DNA. To them, there’s no margin for error — there are already arguments to disband and dismantle the Corps. This helps the Corps be extremely conscious of failure at all times, and proactive about success. If an institution like the Navy or Army is “too big to fail,” in a sense, the USMC is not.

The disadvantage of always having to justify themselves, then, seems less like a disadvantage and more like a disadvantage the institution of the USMC has found a way to overcome, and turn to their advantage.

Another disadvantage that the Corps faces is more confusing at first glance. The presumed problems facing military recruiters include a population that is out of shape, disinterested in service, and (as covered in the first couple newsletters this week) increasingly worried about death, injury, and madness from service. Far more than any other branch save the Army, these are risks that are very present and possible within the Corps; moreover, the USMC prides itself on fitness so that it can be in those places where a person is most likely to encounter death, injury, and madness.

Again, the Corps has been able to transform apparent disadvantages into part of their approach to “selling” young Americans on the idea of service.

Overall, if it is true that Americans are becoming less likely to serve, the USMC has found a way to put the right people with the right message in a place where potential Marines can hear it. That message reaches those people of whom generalizations about fitness or fear of service are not true.

It’s also possible that complaints about the quality of recruits have been overblown. Perhaps — again going back to Glengarry Glen Ross — it really isn’t “the leads,” it’s the motivation and skill of the people making the sale. It’s easier to blame civilians for what amounts to a problem of recruitment, branding, and HR (finding the right people for the right job).

To what degree is the Corps’ message one that others can use? It’s certainly false that the Marines have a monopoly on violence, discipline, or fitness in the military, now or in the past. If one is the sort of person who wants to make their way to combat and prove themselves as part of an elite unit, it’s just as useful to dream about joining an Army airborne unit, or a Ranger battalion. But just as everyone can’t be a Marine, not everyone has what it takes to be a paratrooper, Army Ranger, or Navy SEAL.

The answer for the Air Force, Space Force, Army, and Navy is probably not competing exclusively for the same people who are inclined as young men and women to seek out and destroy the enemy. Those branches are so big — and comfortable — that they’re actually hoping to attract a more diverse group of troops. Many of the jobs and responsibilities common in those larger forces are not jobs and responsibilities for which many Marines join. The USMC recruiting strategy works for the Marines. It’s not clear that one could apply it to other services effectively — at least, not directly.

But the principles the Marine Corps uses would be useful to the other services. Develop a mission, create a brand and an identity from that mission, find and empower the right people to execute that mission. Any other service could do this, and I’m sure if one asked them they’d say “this is what we do.”

The results speak for themselves — nobody does recruiting better than the Marine Corps. Everyone else is struggling in 2023. The Navy floated the idea of having its recruiters work six days a week, but then decided to back down. Maybe if they had, it would’ve resulted in mutiny. On the other hand, maybe they would’ve made their numbers like the Corps looks likely to do this year.

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