And back on the show with me today is my special guest. He's familiar to many people that he's got a new title and you can correct me if I'm wrong here. Technical Sergeant of the Air Force Terry Smith, correct? Correct.
You just got a promotion recently, buddy. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you.
Talk to me about the promotion. What did you do? Now what do you do? I'm still an enlisted recruiter, so I'm doing the same job.
Okay. Every once in a while I get thrown into a leadership position, now management position to cover for my flight chief if he's gone. So I'll get my job and a little bit of his job at the same time. But how long now have you been in the Air Force?
Do you tell me we're going on eight years now? Almost eight years. Eight years. And I see how far you've advanced in eight years.
I've made six ranks before my eight-year mark. So that's moving pretty good. And actually found out I made this rank before I hit my seven-year mark. So that's impressive.
Congratulations again. Thank you. Yeah. And it went through that out there too.
Obviously to congratulate you, but also let people know, you know, if they're out there thinking of joining the Air Force of how far you can go. I mean, see how far you can advance. A lot of careers things you do. Sometimes it's like you hit the ceiling and you can't go anymore.
But look how much you've advanced through the years here. And if anybody's out there, I want to first give a phone number. If anybody's listening and they want to maybe talk to you, maybe they're interested more in joining the Air Force or talking to you to see what it is you guys do. How can they get in touch with you?
My cell number is 304-2661115. Perfect. They can call you well, maybe unless it's, you know, don't maybe not two o'clock in the morning, but drink normal hours, right? It is a cell number.
You have a little one at home. So, you know, right. I prefer if something's waking me up, it's him, not my cell phone. So anytime between eight and eight, I usually answer that phone.
Perfect. So we know schools out now for the summer, but you know, before school, I know we had talked last time. You spoke to a lot of kids at area schools. How did that go over?
It went really well. I'm one recruiter for a very large area. So I don't see all the students as much as I'd like to. But when I'm there, it's a lot of fun.
I actually get to talk to the people who I'm potentially putting in the Air Force after they graduate. So what areas do you cover? All the way up to Toronto, Ohio, down to Tyler County, out to Barnesville, and then over to the Pennsylvania border. Perfect.
So you do have a lot of ground to cover. It's about 3,200 square miles total. So why join the Air Force? Anybody's out there listening?
This is a pitch it to me. Why join the Air Force? Let's say if I could, if I was thinking about why would you encourage me to join? That's different for everybody.
There's so many benefits to the Air Force. So it really depends what somebody's looking for. I mean, your people right now just graduating high school, it depends what they want to do with their future. So if they're looking at going to school, maybe they don't want to have to come out of college with debt.
That's a great way to come in and get that experience. For me, I was a commercial fisherman before. So it wasn't really about the education. It wasn't about the money.
I was making good money. For me, it was a lifestyle. I wanted to come in. I wanted more time to spend with my family.
My wife and I planned on having kids in the future. I wanted time to spend with my future children. So that's why I joined the Air Force. But for everybody, it's different.
And I like you pointed that out. You need to talk about your wife and having a family because it doesn't mean you have to give all that up. I mean, sure you're a bit like everything else. You're busy.
And there are certain times when it takes precedent over the other. But you're still able to do it and have a family and live a life. Exactly. And like I said, that's the reason I joined the Air Force.
You get more time off in the Air Force and you're probably going to get with any civilian career. We're looking at 30 days vacation with pay a year. We get federal holidays off. If our unit does well, our commander authorizes three and four day weekends to reward us for it.
So we do have a lot of downtime. We work hard when we're working, but we have a lot of downtime as well. We said three and four day weekends. Sign me up because I know I'm all about.
There's long taking a long weekends. Give that phone number again, Terry. 304-266-1115. And I think last time when you came in here, it was your supervisor with you.
Refresh my memory of her name. Master Sergeant Talia Walters. There we go. Very, very, very, I enjoyed her visit as well.
We got to get her back in here sometime too. We talked off air. I thought maybe I had the wrong impression. I thought anybody that contacted you and said, Hey, I want to be in the Air Force.
Great. We're signing you up. It's actually not real easy to get into. It is actually fairly difficult.
If someone applying for college, you know, college usually cares about two things. They want to know if you have the intelligence to actually go to the school and they want to know if you got the money to pay them. The Air Force looks at a lot more than that. You have to pass the aptitude test so you need a little bit of knowledge.
Most people graduating high school should have that knowledge as long as they pay a little bit of attention in high school. There's medical qualifications. We look at tattoos. We look at a lot of things.
And if somebody's been in a lot of trouble and has quite a bad rap sheet, that'll probably keep you out too. It can. It depends on what the law violations are. It depends how long ago they were too.
So if someone did something a long time in the past, they've learned from it. They're a different person now. We look at that and we can try to do waivers for some of that stuff. But not always.
It depends on what the law violation was. In what age range is accepted into the Air Force? 17 to 39. I can still live on 30.
I don't qualify because first I can't spell. You know that from listening to one of our morning shows. I promised I wouldn't bring it out since you brought it up. I might have to ask you if you worked.
But if somebody like me wouldn't qualify because I'm a diabetic, right? That's accurate. That automatically and I'm fine with discussing that. I've got diabetes high blood pressure so that takes me out already.
Plus I probably run a couple flights of stairs. I'm out of shape. We can work on the physical training. We can put that in shape real quick.
Don't out there as I'm running. But diabetes high blood pressure things like that automatically take you out. Right. And it does depend.
Obviously I'm not the doctor. So normally with a medical situation like that I would get all the medical documents submitted to our doctor to review. And he would make that determination. It's always possible maybe somebody if they're a diabetic.
I always say a healthy diabetic if you will. I don't know if that makes sense. But maybe it's always possible that it doesn't have any other problems. It's just something that you can manage with a pill daily.
Well the diabetic I would tell you the diabetic is one I don't think would ever get approved. But a lot of other medical conditions that someone might think disqualify them not necessarily. Right. And just give you guys a call and don't think that you're automatically out of the game.
Right. Best bet. Just call me and we'll go over it and I'll let you know. So anybody lately how far you came from where you live where North Dakota.
I was stationed in North Dakota for a while. I'm actually from Oregon. Okay. So even if somebody wants a chance to travel and see different parts of the country the world here's your chance to.
Right. I mean because it's not your average desk job where you're stuck in the same place eight hours a day looking at the same walls. We can definitely say that. Right.
Right. I've been all over the country. I've only been stationed in two places. I've been permanently stationed in my not North Dakota and here in Wheeling West Virginia.
But I've had the opportunity to take short trips all over the place. I've been out of the country. I've been to Guam. I've been to Diego Garcia.
Wow. And I was in a career field that didn't travel a lot. So you do have a lot of opportunities to see some pretty neat things. My not North Dakota is pretty cold isn't it?
Especially. I mean obviously in the winter time. I hear it's colder than here. In the winter it gets very cold.
It's negative up there majority of the time in the winter. But it also gets pretty hot in the summer. You're looking at 80 to 100 degrees during the summer. And Guam's pretty warm isn't it?
Guam is very warm. If you like the warm weather there's the place to be. Right. It's a tropical island.
So it's hard to be. Anybody out there again listening out there got people graduating from high school. Maybe there's parents listening up listening to the show. They're not sure what their son or daughter wants to do.
Maybe consider the Air Force. It doesn't sometimes I think mom and dad get a little scared if they hear that. You guys take good care of them. We do.
So the Air Force a lot of times we get grouped in with a lot of career fields that are not necessarily the Air Force. So we're not the ones on the front lines doing all the work. We do have some of those guys. We have some special forces positions.
But that's not the majority of what we do. Myself I was an aircraft maintainer. So even if I deployed that's what I'm doing. I'm fixing an aircraft making sure they can get in the air and complete the mission.
And now you got to like to fly too right? No definitely not. So you don't have to like to fly. Only 5% of the Air Force are pilots.
The rest of us do a lot of other things. See I hear that in the name Air Force. I think automatically I think you're in the air all the time. That's why I wouldn't qualify because I couldn't take a test for common sense.
Well you know that's funny because when people find out you're in the Air Force that's usually the first question you get is are you a pilot? No I'm not a pilot. I fix the airplanes. So you don't have to fly the plane.
You don't necessarily have to be in a combat position. We have a lot of career fields. And it just depends on the person what they're interested in. And obviously you get all the proper training.
How was training for that to be able to fix to maintain airplanes aircraft? I worked on the electronics. So my training was rather extensive. Basic training is the same for everyone right now.
It's at 7.5 weeks. And then you go to your tech school after that. So someone looking for that job experience. It's a great opportunity to get in there and actually learn the job.
So you don't just come out of college with a degree and know experience behind it. But my training all together including basic training in tech school was almost a year long. Wow. So again I'm thinking as we're talking with you here about the Air Force.
If somebody looking for something to be fulfilled, what a great experience opportunities they'd have with the Air Force. It is. It's a great opportunity. It's a great opportunity.
Motions. You can make you continue to make you even more money if you like to make money and work hard. The progress. That's one of the things that keeps me in.
Aside from the benefits that my family received from it, you've always got an opportunity to move into a different position. To make rank. To just keep that self-progression going. I think it's important that people don't just remain stagnant.
Because you're not bettering yourself either. And that's important to the Air Force. We do want to make sure our people have an opportunity to better themselves. Sure.
And again give us a phone number if anybody's interested in talking with you. 304-266-1115. And call you up. You're just a nice guy to talk to.
So they got quite not just not 2 o'clock in the morning. Exactly. Please not 2 o'clock in the morning. Start to wind down here any final thoughts anything you want to add about the Air Force.
Because I know you're in your busy season right now. Hopefully we get to see you some more. And I'm glad while you're being promoted that you haven't walked in yet and said well I'm moving. Because I keep asking you about that.
It's like hopefully you're with us a couple more years. I will. I'll be here a couple more years. So one thing to add to students out there who are just graduating.
Think about the opportunities. Think about what you really want to do with your future. And give me a call. And I'll discuss with you on whether the Air Force has a way to help you reach those goals.
Because whether like I said whether it's going to college and gaining that degree. Whether you just want to go to a trade school and get your experience. You have an opportunity to do both. Most businesses out there are looking for more than just a piece of paper that says you have the book knowledge.
Or just the experience that says you've done the job. They want those two things combined. And the Air Force is a good way to get that done. And just because somebody calls you up doesn't mean that they're enlisting.
You own them then so to speak. It's good to inquire about. So mom and dad they don't have to worry if so and so son or daughter calls you up. It's like all now.
They're definitely going now. It's good to inquire. Right. And I encourage the parents to come in with their kids.
Because you know the parents they are an influencer on what their children decide. Whether they realize it or not. They do influence those decisions. So I like to have them in with the student.
Or even with someone who's graduated already. They want to come in and talk to me. I like to have them come in just to discuss what the opportunities are. And that's all that first appointment is.
We sit down. We talk about what the opportunities are. What would be the potential avenues for this applicant. And then they can make a decision at that point on their own.
No one's going to pressure them to go one way or the other. Great. And I know on Facebook you guys have Facebook page. Social media is good to search the Air Force and find out information.
And give that number again. 304-266-1115. And in the website too. They want to log on to Air Force.com.
There's a lot of good information on there. Great. So anybody who's out there question give you a call and you'll be able to help them out. Perfect.
Well I appreciate it. I have to say technical sergeant Terry Smith Air Force. I appreciate you buddy for everything that you do. And keeping in touch with us here in come back.
Many more times. Hey I appreciate it Paul. It's always a pleasure to come in here and talk to you. And it's too bad for out of time.
I don't have time to quiz you on those spelling words there. Yeah we'll try that next time. How's that sound? Sounds good.
Thanks buddy.