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Recruiting duty, with perks, opened to E-4s

SAN DIEGO — If you are a hot-running petty officer third class and want a challenge for your first shore duty, the Navy could give you one — as a recruiter.

The job will put an extra $5,400 in your pocket each of the three years of the tour and could put you back in your hometown.

With the need to grow the recruiting force by 500 sailors this year and another 500 next year — in addition to refilling nearly 1,000 current recruiting billets because of annual turnover — the service has opened the duty to E-4s for the first time in a decade.

The goal is a recruiting force of 5,000 by fiscal 2010, up from 3,800 a year ago. At the same time, the Navy’s recruiting goals will increase in the next few years as the drawdown comes to a halt. But so far, the number of E-4s applying to pound the pavement has been low.

“We’ve been given the goal of getting the [recruiting] force to 4,470 this year,” said Chief Yeoman (SW) Paula Grantham, who is in charge of detailing E-4s at Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn. “So far, we’ve had very few [E-4 applicants] — only about 20.”

That’s a far cry from the nearly 200 whom officials had hoped to pull from the third class petty officer ranks, they said last year.

But Force Master Chief (SW/AW) Chris Penton, the senior enlisted sailor at Navy Recruiting Command, said they’ve set the bar high for E-4s and limited the places they can serve — which limits the pool of eligible sailors.

“We’ve set the standards high, as we need to ensure we are not putting anyone at risk for failure in what is a tough job, often in isolated areas,” he said. “We can’t just take anyone.”

To even get their foot in the door, E-4s must have at least one warfare qualification. And in addition to being recommended by their command master chief and commanding officer, they must not have received less than a “must promote” recommendation on their last three evaluations.

But that’s not all. They must also undergo a complete financial screening by their command’s financial counselor.

“But for those who qualify, there’s a chance they could be assigned at or near their home of record,” Grantham said. “It’s not a guarantee, but it’s a real possibility.”

Penton said recruiting command will shy away from putting these junior recruiters into high-cost-of-living areas, since that can lead to financial hardship — causing problems on the job.

Though this move was necessary, Penton also sees it as an opportunity: “This gives the chance to see if these junior sailors can connect to potential candidates out there, as they are closer in age, more like peers than some of our older sailors. I’m optimistic it will work.”