Quotes from Dan Carrison

When you think about it, it makes sense," says Lt. Colonel William Leek, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Recruiting Station. "Recruiting and basic training are two sides of the same coin. Why have two commanders for what is essentially one process, the making of Marines?

Are poor recruiting practices less consequential to the fate of a corporation? Clearly, every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. No function is more important to the ultimate survival of the company than human resources.

If the world's finest fighting force assigns only its best people to a three-year challenge in recruiting, and then rewards them afterwards with promotion, why shouldn't corporate America make HR a similar rite of passage for its most promising managers?

In private enterprise, the human resources office is the prospective employee's first introduction to the corporation. Management must realize that the company is being appraised from the moment a bright, discerning candidate enters through the door. If he is greeted by a cheerful receptionist and led to an office that exhibits signs of good taste and stability, he will be pleasantly biased before the interview even begins.

If we want to be the best company for our customers and investors, we must first be the best company for our employees.

How many companies can say they have sent their "best knights" out onto the college campuses and job fairs to represent them? More often than not, management hires out this critical responsibility to a third party. Headhunters represent the company, taking on the perceived burden of interviewing and screening so many candidates.

belief in the product may be the single most compelling factor in that exchange of trust we call a sale.

The headhunter, generally paid by commission only, must place his applicant somewhere, and soon. He is motivated by a successful placement, rather than by a successful matching of individual talent to companies.

The recruiter is confident that the transformation will take place. He can cast a wide net because of his faith in the best training in the world.

It's the training, not the screening, that can put a high school graduate, who may have never driven a car, at the wheel of a fifty-million-dollar tank.

Employees, too, could sign on for a year's tour of duty, at a certain department, branch, or product line. Having the option to extend their stay or to apply for a lateral move into another assignment would give most employees a much appreciated sense of autonomy. Tours of duty could also be mandatory.

It's the training, not the screening, that creates Marine Corps leaders of all ranks.

Every drill instructor knows that leadership is something to be cultivated and that virtually every recruit has the potential.

By emphasizing its screening procedures, instead of its training, management rarely experiences that pleasant surprise of watching a leader emerge from an unlikely recruit.

The training of new personnel, whether they are Marines or corporate "soldiers," simply costs too much to be thrown away on the uncommitted.

Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience.

A proper training and management culture will cultivate the leadership qualities desired.

It must be remembered, however, that everything looks good on a resume and that previous experience is difficult to verify and to quantify.

If the company has a reputation for offering the most complete, albeit rigorous, training in the world, one will feel cheated by working anywhere else. A corporation cannot develop and sustain this kind of attitude purely through PR.

These kinds of programs require a commitment from the company, which must invest time and energy into the community.

They have spoken, perhaps for the first time in their young lives, words that cannot be retracted. There is no turning back. They are in the Marine Corps, for real.