TOLEDO, Ohio (Aug. 14, 2023) – “What do I want to be when I grow up?” It’s a question we’ve all asked ourselves at some point in our lives. For Electronics Technician 1st Class Heavenly McDonaldmoore, it was a question she found an answer to with a little help from a friend.

“I graduated in 2010 and then didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” McDonaldmoore said. “I worked at a gas station and then my friend and I decided that we were going to join the Navy together.”

Hailing from Allentown, Pennsylvania, the notion of enlisting in the Navy was initially unfamiliar to her. However, the allure of global travel and the knowledge that a friend shared her interest prompted her to arrange a meeting with a recruiter.

“I didn’t know anything about the Navy. There’s no Navy influence where I’m from,” McDonaldmoore said. “I just wanted to try something new for a little bit.”

It turned out that McDonaldmoore scored high on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and she was offered the job of Electronics Technician. While her friend ultimately didn’t join the Navy, McDonaldmoore decided to press on.

Over the next decade, she found herself studying electronics for the Navy, traveling the world aboard two aircraft carriers, and starting a family. In late 2020, she reported to Navy Talent Acquisition Group (NTAG) Heartland eager to start another adventure in the Navy.

“I thought it was going to be really fun,” McDonaldmoore said. “After a couple months here, I was like, ‘oh man, this is not what I thought it was going be like.’ I really thought that people just walk through the door and it’s that easy.”

It wasn’t long before McDonaldmoore recognized that people don’t just walk into the recruiting station as she had a decade earlier. She soon learned that the job, especially in an area where there isn’t much of a Navy presence, required a lot more legwork than she initially thought.

“It’s crazy to me that I didn’t know that we were generating our own market,” McDonaldmoore said. “You’re kind of your own publicist, you’re doing your own marketing, you’re also the one that’s doing the phone powering and telemarketing to these kids, and you’re going to their high schools.”

Although she had no issues going to schools and talking to kids, she found limited success in doing so.

“I can start a conversation with students, but will it lead them to want to join the Navy by the end of it? Probably not,” McDonaldmoore said. “Nine, maybe ten times out of ten, they’re just going to be like, ‘what a weirdo,’ because people don’t do that anymore.”

She soon found that through persistence, and the use of social media, she was finding the job of recruiting to be much easier.

“I think that I probably use social media more than other recruiters,” McDonaldmoore said. “I think the biggest thing is not necessarily to be good at it, it’s just to be really persistent. I sent so many messages to people on Facebook during my first couple of months that it blocked me from messaging people for like two weeks because they thought I was spam, but it did work.”

McDonaldmoore believes that the world has changed significantly in recent years and that “a lot of the old school recruiting methods,” don’t work as well with the newer generation. She finds many young people are more comfortable being approached in the digital world.

“Most kids aren’t at the mall anymore, but a lot of them are going to be on social media,” McDonaldmoore said.

McDonaldmoore has proven her recruiting ability and was recognized as NTAG Heartland’s Sailor of the Quarter. She will leave recruiting at the end of the year to start another adventure, this time aboard a destroyer.

Navy Recruiting Command consists of a command headquarters, two Navy Recruiting Regions, and 26 Navy Talent Acquisition Groups that serve more than 815 recruiting stations across the world. Their combined goal is to attract the highest quality candidates to assure the ongoing success of America’s Navy.