Leveraging Connections For Coast Guard Recruiting Awareness

By Chris Juall, Flotilla 84, Sarasota

Late in 2022, I was watching a live stream on YouTube of NACON in Orlando. While watching Admiral Fagan give her presentation, I heard her say that the Coast Guard hadn’t filled a bus to Cape May in almost two years. That shocked me. But it also motivated me.

In late January, I sat down for an interview with a Go Coast Guard Tampa Bay recruiter. The interview aimed to expand recruiting awareness for the Coast Guard Active Duty and Reserves. Why was it advantageous for me to do this? Because of my access to an incredible marketing channel and the likelihood that I could help the Coast Guard with recruiting.

In addition to my social media pages, my affiliation with a highly popular Instagram account called “The Qualified Captain” allows me to promote the Coast Guard and the Auxiliary to many people. My primary role with the page is to promote recreational boating safety as a non-Auxiliarist. However, I also promote the Auxiliary from time to time.

For those who don’t know, “The Qualified Captain” (TQC) showcases endless boating mishaps and foolishness that will leave you speechless. And the sad thing (or the good thing for us as boating safety educators) is there’s no shortage of content!

A couple of years ago, I approached the site’s founder, Aaron Stasiak, to try and help turn a negative into a positive and use the boating “incidents” as learning tools. Today, we’re making a significant impact, so TQC has received several boating safety awards. The most recent comes from the SeaTow Foundation.

As of this article, “The Qualified Captain” has over 990,000 followers and is the most influential boating page on the planet. Comparatively, the U.S. Coast Guard IG page (“USCG”) has 750,000 followers, the Coast Guard recruiting IG page (“GoCoastGuard”) has 110,000 followers, and the Auxiliary (“uscgaux”) has 10,000 followers.

Because of this, I organized an interview with the local recruiting office in my area. I selected OS1 Angie Stephenson as my subject expert. OS1 Stephenson is a recruiter whom I met at a previous recruiting event with Coast Guard Station Cortez. I thought her knowledge and personality would be great for an interview so I scheduled it.

The interview took place overlooking the boat basin at Sector St. Petersburg, and I enlisted the help of fellow (and trusted) Auxiliarist George Papabeis to handle the filming. The result was great. In my opinion, the interview turned out well and also received lots of praise during the initial reviews.

So far, the video has been seen over 200,000 times and has generated a lot of engagement and interest. I encourage all my fellow Auxilarists to “think outside the box” and do the same. I hope to make a difference and help the Coast Guard (and Auxiliary) increase their recruiting numbers. To watch my recruiting video, please visit the following YouTube page: https:// youtu.be/Y4XuCFFvmms

(The link to the video is also in Anthony Novellino, District Directorate Chief-L article on page 17 of this newsletter.)

To learn more about “The Qualified Captain,” visit the following Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/thequalifiedcaptain/ Ω