When I reported for duty in 1985, neither the Nevada submarine nor I was ready to go to sea. The submarine was under construction in the shipyard, and I was an unqualified third-class petty officer.

By the time I left the USS Nevada nearly six years later, I was a salty first-class petty officer who had completed seven deterrent patrols, multiple special operations, and sea trials; launched MK 48 torpedoes and Trident C4 missiles; and had swum in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

And I was burned out.

The relentless operating tempo of submarine duty had exhausted me. I was sick of submarines and the Navy—and I had three years left on my enlistment.

So naturally, they offered me recruiting duty.

I wasn’t opposed to the concept, but I didn’t see how I could possibly talk anyone into joining the Navy when I was tired of it myself.

Plus, I had devoted the last seven years of my life to being a submarine sonar technician. How could I possibly leave all that training and experience and pivot to being a salesperson?

But recruiting was a high-risk, high-reward career move—exactly the kind of challenge I relished. So I accepted orders to become a Navy Recruiter in Beaverton, Oregon.

Coincidentally, Navy Recruiting Station Beaverton was the same office where I had enlisted eight years earlier, in 1983.

While I did not cover the neighborhood where I grew up, I was definitely in familiar territory. Once I started meeting prospective recruits, I realized how far my life had progressed since I was 17. I was now married with two young children, owned a house, and had completed three years of college. I thought that I could help directionless young people achieve the same and more.

But I quickly discovered that people would use any excuse, real or imagined, to not join the military. This perplexed me. Why would someone prefer to live at home and work in a dead-end minimum wage job when a world of opportunities awaited?

I was taking weekend college classes while working as a recruiter. One day, my philosophy professor opined that, “People take the career path of least resistance.” That lit the light bulb in my brain.

Traditionally, it was mostly working-class and disenfranchised young people who enlisted in the military. As my friend Clayton Hires, an All Army boxing champion and sergeant during the Vietnam era, noted, “The Army was the first time in my life I had three solid meals a day. We were eating with other men, and it was like family. We depended on each other for success and survival.”

As a recruiter, I would learn about candidates’ personal needs for tuition, jobs, shelter after their parents kicked them out—and explain how the Navy could offer an answer.

You want money for college? The Navy College Fund and GI Bill have it. You need some technical training? The Navy will provide training in your choice of career fields and then give you work experience in that field.

I learned how to gauge a potential recruit’s commitment versus his general interest. High school seniors were usually ideal candidates with long-term goals. Those who had already graduated from high school often needed a job or housing immediately. If I didn’t get them on a bus to basic training within a few weeks, they would likely find another option regardless of career viability.

I was a good enough recruiter, but we all had to constantly hustle.

Even the most basic Navy enlistee required a high school diploma, an Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery score in the top 50th percentile (referred to as an “upper mental group”), no felony convictions, and perfect physical and mental health.

Most people are not eligible for basic military enlistment, according to the Department of Defense. In theory, that left me searching for the small group who qualified and then convincing them that the military was that path of least resistance.

But societal tensions and military policies cut that sliver of eligible candidates even further.

In the early 1990s, there was no longer institutionalized racism in the military, but discrimination still existed. People who were LGBTQ+ were banned from serving openly (the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy was still more than two years away). Women were not yet allowed in combat roles, restricting their career choices. At times, the military actively disincentivized us from recruiting women.

That meant I only had about half of the so-called eligible pool.

Every month, our recruiting station was given two goals that we had to meet. The first was a “new contract” goal, which was straightforward: One new recruit equaled one new contract.

The second goal was in “quality incentive points,” which was more dynamic and represented the Navy’s specific recruitment goals.

While a basic contract was worth three points, a man from the “upper mental group” was worth six points. If the candidate was from an underrepresented ethnic group, we might get an additional point.

And most coveted of all, we would get an additional two points for someone joining the Navy’s nuclear power program—the most academically challenging program the Navy offered. Do the math and you can see that it was possible to hit your new contract goal and miss your quality goal or vice versa. Ideally, you would hit both.

But priorities would change from year to year and even month to month, and our quality incentive goals reflected that. When I started recruiting in 1991, a female recruit was worth three points—half of a man’s possible six points—regardless of her aptitude. It was a disincentive to recruit women since we would have to recruit twice as many to earn the points that a few male recruits would win us.

But less than a year later, the Navy decided it needed more women and we were suddenly granted an extra point for recruiting a woman and an additional three points if she went into an understaffed engineering job field. Female recruits became more valuable than men for a while.

During my recruiting tour, my district reached its quota most months, but it wasn’t always easy. If we fell behind pace, the Chief of Naval Recruiting Command might ease the standards a little.

Suddenly, a prospective recruit who had too many parking tickets might get a waiver. A GED might be accepted in lieu of a high school diploma, if someone had enough college credit on top of it.

Every good recruiter always kept a few low-scoring candidates on standby who wanted to join but couldn’t get over the test hurdle. When the Navy needed a few extra candidates at the end of the month, we gave those people a shot.

These were all borderline candidates, but it was an opportunity for them to prove themselves with a basic enlistment. We did this for the less demanding jobs. Since the Navy’s minimum enlistment standards were higher than some jobs required, no specific job standards were compromised and no concessions were ever made for race or gender.

My experience in recruiting was over three decades ago. Some things have changed, but many are the same. All branches of the military achieved their enlistment quotas in fiscal year 2025, but it was accomplished after creating new preparatory programs to help those who had traditionally struggled to meet the traditional recruiting standards.

Additionally, the applicant pool has widened. The military today is far less white and male than it was when I served. Women were allowed into combat roles, including submarines, and many members of the LGBTQ+ community can now serve openly (except for transgender troops, given the Department of Defense’s new directives).

During my tenure, whites were overrepresented in submarines, and there were no women. That paradigm has completely flipped since then. Today’s submarine force has more women and racial minorities, while the pool of willing and able white men continues to decrease.

For my part, I may have been skeptical about becoming a salesman for the Navy, but that experience became the seedbed for my civilian career. After selling the Navy to would-be recruits, I have spent more than 30 years selling business application software. I had enlisted in the Navy with one set of career goals, and I walked through a door into a completely different field and have thrived.

I hope I have helped some of my recruits do the same.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.