For Master Sgt. Jesse Tremer, recruiting hasn’t just been an occupation for the past 15 years – it’s been a way of life.
“I always tell anyone who puts an application in that recruiting is a lifestyle – it’s not a job – because you’re doing it 24/7,” said Tremer, 403rd Wing air reserve technician recruiter.
This particular lifestyle wasn’t initially on Tremer’s radar when he was younger. He said he grew up in the small town of Brenton, Alabama, and after high school he started working on an oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico as a roustabout, performing a variety of tasks to help service and maintain the drilling equipment.
“I was gone six months out of the year, working two weeks on and two weeks off, and I realized that wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, so I went and saw the Air Force recruiter in Pensacola, Florida, and made the decision to join. So from the time I enlisted to the time I shipped off for training took less than 30 days,” said Tremer.
His first duty assignment in 1999 was at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, working as a combat ammunition system, systems administrator, which he did for three years.
Tremer said he kept in contact with his recruiter, with whom he had a good relationship, so when he decided he wanted to come back to the East Coast, Tremer reached out to him to see what avenues he could explore to make that happen.
“I was in a critical field, so the only way I could leave would be to do a special duty assignment, so I volunteered for recruiting after talking to my previous recruiter,” said Tremer. He said that when he was accepted as a recruiter, his first assignment involved working in the same office where he had been enlisted.
Tremer excelled at recruiting, winning the Master Recruiter Award for his top performance in enlisting new Airmen to the Air Force in 2004. Since he began his life as a recruiter, he worked for the active duty, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve. He hit the 10-year mark for recruiting with the Reserve in November 2017.
This October, Tremer embarked on a new leg of his Air Force recruiting career at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, becoming an air reserve technician recruiter for the Air Force Reserve. ARTs are Air Force reservists who serve in a dual status for the Department of Defense, performing their reserve jobs fulltime as civil service employees.
Tremer said the ART recruiting program, which began Oct. 1, 2017, is a new initiative that will be a completely different experience from recruiting traditional reservists. This program began in response to the Air Force Reserve-wide demand for ART maintenance personnel.
“My main purpose is to fill the ART maintenance vacancies we have currently,” said Tremer. “So my primary focal points will be helping individuals write their resumes to qualify through USAJOBS, keeping track with the Air Force Personnel Center, and assisting the hiring managers here in building the request for personnel actions.”
Chief Master Sgt. Christopher Linthicum, 403rd Maintenance Squadron maintenance superintendent, said that currently it can take as long as six months from the time an RPA is submitted until the time an ART maintainer is hired. He said with Tremer helping the maintenance squadrons with finding qualified individuals and assisting them with their applications, this should streamline the process for hiring ART maintainers, which would be very helpful for those people.
That’s one aspect of being a recruiter that Tremer likes – helping people.
For this new recruiting position, Tremer said he’s also looking forward to the challenge that goes along with it.
“Here, I see an obtainable goal where I can see positions that need to be filled, and so my goal is to fill those vacancies,” said Tremer. “I think it’s a unique challenge, and it’s one that I think will be very rewarding.”