Do military recruiters ever deny or turn away qualified applicants?

Recruiters do not set the time frame or conditions for you to join. They are simply the individuals who process the paperwork. The decisions for job and ship date are made by different people. This is actually based on the needs of the military. If the military does not have a need or slot available, then the recruiter will be told such, and will relay the info to you.

They don't do it to waste their time. You can bet that 90% of those well qualified candidates that say I can't ship for XXX number of months change their mind when they are told it is now or never. It is no different from the used car salesman that keeps bothering you when you tell him you are just looking. He knows there is a reason you stopped by the lot. And the recruiter has to sit at his desk processing your papers or making calls all day anyway. He might as well work on you.

Recruiters job is to recruit you and process the paperwork.

The recruiter does NOT determine when you will ship for basic training

So why would a recruiter say, go away, when he has no idea when you would be scheduled to ship to basic.

Job selection and ship date are done by MEPS, not the recruiter.

For the most part, if you're fully qualified you won't be turned away. When I say fully qualified that means you are a high school graduate or senior, you have no criminal charges or medical conditions that disqualify you (felonies, asthma, etc.), you're not a single parent, you're not overweight or underweight, you are a citizen or a Green Card holder, and your age is between 17-42 (other branches have a lower maximum age). The Army actually has a policy stating that you cannot be turned away if you are fully qualified or if you require a waiver that is currently open on the recruiter or station level. For example, if you come in the office and you have four children or you have three non-drug related misdemeanors you are disqualified but you're eligible for consideration for a waiver. Because you're eligible for a waiver the recruiter can't turn you away. Instead, they will tell you what is needed for the waiver and from there forward the waiver up for processing. If they waiver is approved you get to process. If the waiver is denied either you can try to appeal the waiver or you have to move on. The recruiter isn't supposed to just say "You need a waiver for your kids and I don't want to do it, so go away!"

However, it's not unheard of for a recruiter who has a bunch of fully qualified applicants ready to go telling someone who needs a waiver that they don't have the time to process them. We put in one person two weeks ago who lived almost 60 miles away because the closest recruiting station to them didn't want to take the time to do her enlistment packet. The reason? She was married to a service member with two kids and she was a Green Card holder. She needed a dual-military waiver and with a Green Card holder you have to enter a lot more information in their enlistment packet to cover their foreign ties, their passport, etc. as well as getting translations for her foreign documents if they're not in English. Recruiting stations near military bases get a lot more walk-ins than ones far away from bases because the civilians in the town see troops with nice things (especially after deployments when they buy new cars) and decide they want to join for the same thing. This is in comparison to a recruiting station where the closest base is 100 miles away and your average civilian thinks troops make less than people who work in McDonald's or think we live in basic training barracks with drill sergeants screaming at us for our entire enlistment if we're not in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The reality is that if you want into the military you need to be prepared to wait. If you tried to enlist in 2005 you would have probably been to training very quickly. A great economy combined with two wars few people wanted to have anything to do with caused recruiting to go south. Few people wanted to join when they had other options and didn't want to deploy. As a result, waivers opened up allowing people with a felony to join, we took GED holders in droves, enlistment bonuses skyrocketed, and we were allowing people in with low ASVAB scores. The people who were willing to join were finding themselves getting ship dates as soon as a week after signing their contract. Today, the economy sucks and people need a job. As a result, recruiting is great. Each branch deals with it in their own way. On one hand, you have branches that actually put a cap on how many people can enlist out of each station each month. The Army doesn't put a cap on the amount of people who can enlist each month but what they did was push out ship dates (people joining today ship around February or March) and they closed several categories. That means no GEDs, no applicants with felony or drug convictions, no Category 4 waivers (waivers for people who score less than a 31 on the ASVAB), and the waivers that are currently open get looked at harder. Recruiters have little room to tell you if you can leave earlier or not. The Army has a computer system where we can reserve your job before you go to MEPS to join. However, MEPS still has more pull with that and can show you jobs that we may not be able to. Other branches you just have to wait until you get to MEPS to get an idea when you leave.

yes. currently for the Navy it is not uheard of to be QNJ: Qualfied to enlist, no jobs available to sign a contract on. kids with 99 ASVAB scores who qualfiy for ALL ratings and have ZERO issues are finding it can take three and 4 trips to MEPS before they can sign a contract as there are no openings in A schools for them.

recruiters DO NOT have any control over what jobs come open or when they class up.

In todays recruiting climate: you take what they give you. there is NO room to negotiate any ,more. they will only work with if you can fill a need THEY Have, they are not interested in catrering to yours.

Well first off i would like to say, that as of late. (Mind you as of late) There has been allot less in the way of quatas.

But that being state i would say this.

They have NO CONTROL over when you ship, they have to go throw most of the proses of recruiting you before THEY get the ship date. Especially with NON army branches, that only start Basic At a couple times a year.

In your case i would say this= They do not control the scheduling/billeting of the basic training camps. They don't have all the answers. There is no shortage of qualified applicants so it gives them..leeway...in who they accept. So while yo may have been a qualified applicant..their needs for personnel were not great enough that they had to accommodate your desires. If they REALLY want or need you..they will try to accommodate you but as you have seen first hand if they don't really want you that badly....

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I served in the US Air Force. Recruiters have to get so many applicants a month. From that, they must have a percentage of those applicant's actually join. They really don't care about your "conditions". Their job is solely to get you to join no matter what they have to tell you. Honesty isn't a requirement for their job.

Air Force is the pickiest branch bar none. Don't be surprised, its very hard to join the Blue.