Military recruiters face new challenges after Iraq, Afghanistan, pandemic

As a military recruiter, Staff Sgt. Terry Hong is an anomaly.

Instead of a drill sergeant from central casting, Hong is Le Cordon Bleu-trained and has worked as a Twin Cities sushi chef. He's one of the most active Minnesota National Guard recruiters on social media, a funny and engaging poster on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

The 38-year-old Coon Rapids man is the son of refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam. The other recruiters on the Minnesota National Guard's recruiting and retention team in St. Paul also reflect the city's diversity — one speaks Karen, the other Hmong — and Hong knows their backgrounds help with recruitment in a city whose population is almost half minorities. Hong's office wall, which he calls his "recruiting resume," is a testament to that success: photos of 81 diverse young men and women he's recruited into the Guard.

In other words, Hong is a layered, surprising, modern person, just like the population he recruits.

Perhaps that personal approach is a reason Minnesota has fared better than most weathering a difficult time in military recruiting, despite being one of only nine states without an active duty military base.

Last fiscal year, Minnesota had 1,093 enlistments in the Army National Guard, ranking fourth out of 54 states and territories. So far this fiscal year, only Texas has seen more enlistments than Minnesota.

"The challenges resulting from the pandemic made recruiting really difficult," said Lt. Col. Ryan Rossman, the Minnesota National Guard's recruiting and retention battalion commander. "We still struggle, but we're not struggling as much as other states."

Hong's recruiting strategy is deceptively simple: Shape his pitch for the individual.

As one of 100 recruiters statewide, Hong knows telling his own story is vital: He talks about never considering the military until he saw a recruiter at Osseo High School. He speaks about the educational benefits helping his family. And if recruits ask, he tells about deployments to Iraq and Kuwait — the challenges, certainly, but also how they made him fully appreciate life in America.

"I'm able to relate to lots of applicants from this area because I've been there," Hong said. "This country has provided a really safe place for my family. To show that gratitude, to serve the country, was something I discovered along the way. That's not why I joined, but it's definitely why I'm still here."

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Among recruiters, one challenge currently stands out. It's not the predictable ones: the long tail of COVID, the low-unemployment economy, the memories of the Guard's full mobilization during the civil unrest after George Floyd's murder, or the mental health issues among some veterans of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They say their biggest obstacle is Genesis, a new electronic health record for the Military Health System unveiled in 2022. The system flags old medical issues that can render recruits ineligible or create long delays, adding a frustrating level of bureaucracy.

"It used to be you could go enlist in like three days, and now it can take nine months," said Sgt. First Class Lance Meyer, who runs the recruiting office in Alexandria. "To keep someone interested for nine months is hard to do."

The pandemic hurt the academic and physical fitness of young Americans, Rossman said. Recruiters often get frustrated when a recruit signs up but doesn't make it to basic training.

In the first two months of the fiscal year, 409 Minnesota recruits made it to the Military Entrance Processing Station, where they're tested for mental aptitude and physical and moral qualifications. More than a third didn't qualify.

"You just feel like you're getting kicked in the shins," Rossman said.

The Minnesota Air National Guard peaked at 224 new members in 2021 — but that dipped to 162 in 2022. Leaders will more than double its recruiting staff in the next two years.

"We need to get back to normal ASAP," said Senior Master Sgt. Melissa Piazza, the Minnesota Air National Guard's senior enlisted leader for recruiting and retention. "We have missions we need to fill."

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There's a credo frequently repeated among Minnesota National Guard leaders: The organization focuses on people.

That credo comes out when recruiters like Hong try to be a regular, approachable, genuine presence in schools.

Guard recruiters who used to be financial planners put on finance seminars for students. Others put on leadership classes for sports teams. The Guard occasionally does an "educator lift," where counselors, principals and superintendents fly on a helicopter, then tour Camp Ripley.

Hong brings MREs — meals ready-to-eat — for students to try. He hosts physical fitness classes. He highlights financial and educational benefits.

Minnesota is one of the few states where National Guard educational benefits — up to $22,000 a year toward tuition, plus more money available through the GI Bill — can be used in any state. Service members can attend college in, say, Florida, and return to Minnesota for drill weekends.

A recent New York Times story highlighted the sometimes coercive tactics in nationwide military recruitment, showing how public school students in low-income neighborhoods were required to take or automatically enroll in classes for the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. (That is against Pentagon guidelines, the Times reported.)

But Minnesota National Guard recruiters say coercion is not part of their playbook. Meyer, the Alexandria recruiter, says he doesn't just put people into uniform — he treats them like family after they enlist. "My daughters go to school in Alexandria, my wife works here, so if I do something wrong, it's just like when a restaurant does something bad – they put it on Yelp," he said.

Hong simply tells his story. As the youngest of four — his father a factory supervisor, his mother a social worker — the educational benefits sold him on the Guard. He developed the deeper sense of service later. More than 15 years after deploying to Iraq, he's still on a daily text chain with his unit buddies.

"The camaraderie I have with my team, the benefits we get, the feeling of wearing the uniform, the feeling of that selfless service," Hong said. "If we're able to show that, the recruiting mission writes itself."