The Marine Corps announced a campaign Wednesday to draw certain Marines into special duty assignments, an annual push to fill some of its most critical jobs.
The campaign is aimed at Active Reserve Marines, a small component within the Corps that serves full-time in the reserves and provides support for reserve units. According to the service, those troops also help integrate the reserve component into the rest of the Marine Corps.
The service will use the campaign, which was announced via an administrative message last week, to fill recruiter, drill instructor and combat instructor roles with volunteers from the Active Reserve component. If not enough volunteers apply for the positions by the end of February, the service will begin assigning Active Reserve Marines to them.
Read Next: Troops Will Start Getting Economic Hardship Bonuses This Month, Though Only $20 on Average
Special duty assignments, or SDAs, are jobs that fall outside of a Marine’s primary duty. As all the services face recruiting woes, recruiter duty has proven to be a critical job for the Corps, one that it has commonly found difficult to fill.
“Historically, recruiting duty has been the most challenging special duty assignment (SDA) billet to fill — with drill instructor duty being the least difficult,” 1st Lt. Ryan Tobin, a spokesperson for the Corps’ Manpower and Reserve Affairs, told Military.com on Thursday. “As SDA assignments are critical to recruiting,…
