Just spoke with a Navy recruiter-wtf?
Started by Sophocles
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I assume you've spent enough time here to know that these are all lies. This is too extreme to be a lack of knowledge.
Ask your recruiter to come on SDN and tell that tale with attribution. Its almost sad.
You might not be speaking with a medical recruiter. Regular recruiters know little to nothing about the medical side.
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I think a lot of the "lies" told by HPSP recruiters are simply due to a total lack of knowledge about the medical education process. But this seems extreme, especially the random statistics.
I'd talk to another service and see if they are more straight with you.
I'd talk to another service and see if they are more straight with you.
Why do you need to find a new recruiter? The contract is one size fits all, and you can get the answers to your questions here. His job is to fill out your paperwork. Do you just not want him to get credit for a recruit?
By all means look for another recruiter if you don't think he knows that much. Most of the med recruiters won't know the details that you want to know. I doubt if any of them are physicians themselves. All of the ones I have seen/spoke to were nurses. That isn't a bad thing it just means they are automatically going to know more about the nursing stuff.
By the way, since you are prior enlisted if you are serious about the Navy I would look at HSCP, especially if you are looking at a state school and have any GI Bill remaining.
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It wasn't an accusation, I think that trying to keep an unscrupulous recruiter from filling his quota is a reasonable motivation for finding someone else to work with. My point, though, was that that's the only reasonable motivation I can think of for finding a new recruiter. I think you're taking a lot of things that apply to enlisted recruiters and are applying them to medical corps recruiters when they don't really apply. There are a few differences between the two:
1) Medical corps recruiters only have one contract to offer. An enlisted recruiter is like a used car salesman. He has a lot of different things he can sell you, and he gets different commissions based both on the product he moves (the quality of the contract he sells you on) and the amout he gets for it (the quality of the recruit he gets to sign the contract). He can negotiate with you: offering you a chance at better jobs, bonuses, or even higher rank. He can also try to sell you on starting out as an E1 despite your college degree and 99 ASVAB. It makes sense to treat him like a salesman, and finding someone who is wiling to play ball with you rather than giving you a hard sell it really worthwhile. On the other hand a Medical Corps recruiter is like a pharm rep. However good or bad his personality, however much or little he knows about his product, ultimaetly he only has a handful of products to sell you (HPSP, HPCP, and FAP) and he only has one price he can sell them at (Every HPSP recipient signs the same contract), so if you're sure you want what he's selling based on your own research, it shouldn't really matter how good or bad a saleman he is. Actually the objective source of information that you really want is a copy of the contract you're going to sign, since that's the final word on your rights and responsibilities in any event.
2) Medical Corps recruiters do not have the benifit of experience. Enlisted recruiters are almost always recruiting, at least partially, for a job they themselves filled and will fill again when they rotate off their tour as a recruiter. Medical Corps recruiters are, at best, medical service corps or nurse corps officers, maybe even line officers, who have NO IDEA what your training entials or what the military offers beyond what they learned from the half a dozen powerpoint lectures that were emailed to them. They don't waste doctors on recruiting students full time, they just don't have enough physicians for that. So if your guy had no clue what he was talking about he might have been genuinely misinformed.
3) Medical Corps recruiters are (supposedly) recuriting older, wiser people. There is a moral compent to an enlisted recruiter: when you are negotiating with an 18 year old you are dealing with someone who is, at best, half an adult. While there remain a decent number of people who believe that 18 year olds should be able to sign up for the armed forces, almost no one believes ALL 18 year olds should. As you said, a responsible recruiter turns some people away. On the other hand Medical Corps recruiters are dealing with future doctors: men and women who are in their mid 20s and in the top 10% on every IQ tests. Its reasonable to expect them to do their own due diligence, which is why as a general rule they do not turn anyone away because 'the military isn't for you'.
4) Medical Corps recruiters have a much more aggressive recruiting mission. The fact is that the military has trouble getting doctors, and has throughout almost all of its modern history. In the best of times they've had maybe an applicant and a half for every scholarship, and a couple of years before me they had barely more than one applicant for every two scholarships. Again, they don't turn people away, and they aren't necessarily briefed that agressively on all the downsides to the military.
So the short answer is, again, I'm not sure you're going to find anyone better than the guy you have, and I'm not sure how much it would help if you did. If you think he's a scumbag by all means find someone you'd rather have fill their quota, but if you're looking for guidance on your contract I would focus on reading your contract, reading offical SECNav instructions, and this website. Your recruiter will have a limited amount to offer. BTW I agree HPCP might be a better option for you, especially if you have more than 4 years in. In HPCP your time in medical school is time towards your retirement.
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SO here is my recruiters info (ARMY)...so he just sent his info to the current Army HPSPers that are under his command (in his area). He said he just took over the Pittsburgh Medical Recruiting Company. Even though he is in Pittsburgh he is in command of PA and NY (according to his email), and he has recruiters all over he is in charge of. Here is his contact info if you want. Maybe he covers NYC maybe he doesnt, but if he doesnt he will be able to put you in contact with the correct person. Again this is for Army.
NICK NUSSDORFER
CPT, MS
Commander
Pittsburgh Medical Recruiting Company
412-281-2637 office
443-694-1004 cell
NICK NUSSDORFER
CPT, MS
Commander
Pittsburgh Medical Recruiting Company
412-281-2637 office
443-694-1004 cell
I was Army, so I will try to help you out as much as possible.
First, you HAVE to apply to military residency programs. HAVE TO! Now what happens if you don't match into a military residency program? You might get permission to be deferred to a civilian program. MIGHT!! The rules change all of the time and are branch specific. I would ask a current Navy doc this question.
Second, how does the recruite define deployment? Technicallly, if you are on a boat off near Japan, you are deployed. To some, deployment = Afghanistan (or formerly Iraq) tours. Navy docs have been deployed to the CSH in Afghanistan. However, bear in mind that in the Navy, you might get paired up with some marines and yes be in a combat zone.
Third, you will owe four years at baseline. Internship is the only dead time. Thus, if you do more than 5 years of training, you will end up owing more. The military has cute ways of doing this, e.g. many surgery based programs adding on an extra year for "research". In the Army, they always dangled fellowship and strung you along.
Fourth, okay, I will speak on what I have been told by Navy colleagues but please be aware that what I say may be fraught with error or outdated. GMO is NOT a punishment. That is false. Many Navy guys in my time did GMO, its all about what is available. Again, ask a Navy doc their experience on this.
Fifth, depends on how the Navy does it. In the Army, we have a consultant to the surgeon general for each specialty. This is the person you wheel and deal with. I did not have a wish list for my specialty but I have heard that some programs do. Assigments are based on points, rank, and HEAVY politics. Sorry, no way to change that. Unlikely that you will be given a staff assignment at heavily sought after locations if you are competing for that spot against those that have already put in their time, have rank on you, and thus more points, unless of course, there are politics involved (e.g. maybe some O4 is not well liked by your consultant do they screw with his/her career and give you the spot instead, gasp, it happens).
Overall, bear in mind that the recruiters are NOT lying, but only telling you what they know from their training as a recruiter. So, I think of it as, not lying, just ignorance. The best way to know anything for sure is just to talk to a Navy doc.
The so called "wish list" is sort of a lie. You'll have no seniority. All the physicians with more seniority will first get to choose slots from the projected openings (usually there aren't a lot of openings in desirable slots). After they've submitted their wish lists and been put into slots, the graduating residents get to choose from what's left. So you could have a 90 percent chance of getting your choice of either el paso texas or fort hood.
If GMO is a punishment, it is much more one for ambition than for bad performance
How much overlap is there between the slots for senior and junior physicians, though? Can an O-6 really fill the general Pediatrician role that I would fill at some random Navy medical center? I thought they had their own range of awesome (senior medical officer in San Diego) and less awesome (senior medical officer at Guantanamo) spots to fill.
Yes they can. The O6 became O6 not because s/he wrote a bunch of papers, did a fellowship, and climbed they academic ladder. They became O6 because they did well on PRTs, were chair of ECOMS, credentialling, or pharmocotherapeutics committees. So, if an O6 is up for a billet the same time you are up for a billet. Say he wants to go back to Jacksonville FL because he "likes it there", believe that he will get that billet. I have met plenty of O6's who are generalists and not necessarily the XO or CO of a hospital.
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They will also find a way to make you see most of the patients so they can be doing 'admin' work as well, usually the kind of admin that has them out of the clinic hours before you.
Good luck
I AM out
