For Coast Guard, Recruiting Is Smooth Sailing

When Steve Sisk took over the Coast Guard recruiting station here this summer, he wondered how much he’d have to hunt to find new people.

Turns out the recruits are the ones hustling for his attention.

With the Coast Guard’s heightened profile in recent years and a heroic image that isn’t entwined in wartime politics, the Coast Guard isn’t having any trouble recruiting active-duty members.

National Coast Guard officials are again throttling back as the fiscal year closes, worried they’ll bring more recruits than the budget can handle.

“After 9/11 happened, I think the Coast Guard got much more high visibility,” Sisk said. “We’ve noticed a pretty brisk business, I would say.”

Steve Barry, 23, joined the Coast Guard as a reservist two years ago to help pay for school.

Since then, he has monitored pollution at piers in Seattle and chased drug smugglers between the San Juan Islands.

“I like the fact that we’re the only service with a peacetime mission,” he said. “We’re not just all about offense and defense. I’d rather help people.”

Other recruiters haven’t been so fortunate -- most notably those in the Army, which is trying to hit recruiting goals as it shoulders the bulk of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Coast Guard expects to meet its goal of 4,110 new active-duty members this fiscal year, as it has each year since 1999.

It has a much smaller order to fill than does the Army, whose fiscal-year goal of about 80,000 recruits is about double the entire standing Coast Guard force.

The attraction, officials say, lies in the Coast Guard’s peacetime mission, its variety of careers, and its tendency to give new members a lot of responsibility at a young age.

And although some Coast Guard members are performing security missions overseas, most of the agency’s jobs offer the benefit of operating a good distance from a war zone.

“You’re not seeing pictures of Coast Guard guys getting shot at,” said Lt. Lane Solak, chief of enlisted recruiting in Arlington, Va. “Parents don’t want to send their children to war.”

But if they weren’t held back, Coast Guard recruiters say they could beat conventional enlistment targets.

In terms of money and training, newly minted “Coasties” are on par with the four traditional military branches: They start on the same pay scale, and have to complete an eight-week boot camp.

Hurricane Katrina has again highlighted the Coast Guard’s role as a frontline rescue squad in disasters, with images of distinctive orange helicopters plucking survivors from the roofs of buildings.

Even in the bustling port city of Seattle, where Coast Guard choppers and boats are a familiar sight, those television images have prompted more than a few calls from would-be recruits, said Randal Dennis, chief of the city’s recruiting office.

Although the Coast Guard’s latest media campaign plays up its part in the Department of Homeland Security, those traditional rescue and service jobs are probably as pivotal in attracting recruits, said Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.

“It’s really quite an important set of mission, and they’ve just added one,” he said. “It’s not as though the Coast Guard was known to have stopped another 9/11.”

The Coast Guard’s responsibilities increased about 25% after the 2001 terrorist attacks, including armed maritime security, and its budget jumped as well.

Some observers, however, say that new spending still has not been enough, leaving the Coast Guard with a small force and an aging fleet.

And although battles over the agency’s multibillion-dollar fleet renovation plans have drawn attention in Congress, a robust roster of Coasties also is important, O’Hanlon said.

“They’ve only gotten a little bit bigger in personnel,” he said.

For recruiters like Dennis, the budgetary brakes do provide some benefits -- instead of gobbling up every recruit, many Coast Guard offices can take their pick, he said.

“We’re, right now, the employer of choice,” he said.