Recruiting ‘best leadership opportunity in the Air Force’ Published Sept. 22, 2014 By Annette Crawford Air Force Recruiting Service Public Affairs JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas -- Growing up as a military brat, the last thing Mike Romero the college student had in mind was joining the Air Force. A chance discussion with one of his roommates led him to discover he didn't need an aeronautical engineering degree to fly, so on the first day of his junior year he visited the ROTC detachment at Central Washington University and asked, "How do I sign up?" Now, after a 25-year career in special operations and recruiting, Col. Mike Romero looks back and asks, "Where did the time go?" The vice commander of Air Force Recruiting Service retires from active duty Sept. 25. "I don't think I've had a bad experience, even though there have been tough experiences," he said of his time in recruiting. "I will always remember this opportunity." His initial assignment as commander of the 345th Recruiting Squadron was eye-opening. "I turned down the first opportunity to compete for a recruiting command but, luckily, received another opportunity the next year and accepted it without hesitation. I knew nothing about recruiting. I didn't even know recruiting fell under AETC," he admitted. "I went into it about as cold as anyone could get, but it just turned out to be a blessing." Romero said the assignment ended up being "the most fulfilling leadership opportunity of any command" he would ever have. "You come into recruiting as an O-5, you've probably never been part of recruiting and you may have never talked to a recruiter before. How do you lead? How do you motivate? How do you inspire? That's really what the job of a recruiting commander is," Romero said. "It's not necessarily about getting into the weeds and numbers. You get that eventually but what our recruiters and our Airmen out in the field are really looking for from their commander is to inspire them when they're by themselves, to get them to understand how critical they are to our mission," he continued. "If you can get them to understand that, they'll do anything for you. You have to be motivated to do your job and you need to know your squadron commander has your back." As his time at the 345th came to close, Romero thought he would return to Air Force Special Operations Command or perhaps an assignment in Washington, D.C. But AFRS leadership had other ideas. "I got a call from Col. Mike Brice, who was then the vice commander, and he asked me if I wanted to come up to the headquarters. That meant a lot to me," he said. Brice, who retired in 2011, was commander of the 369th Recruiting Group when he first met Romero. "My assessment of him early on was that he was a strong leader - smart, confident and capable. He had worked hard to understand the recruiting business and fully understood the strengths and weaknesses his squadron faced in meeting mission production," Brice said. "Colonel Romero trusted his people but always validated what was being said and used sound, logical judgment in making decisions." Brice, who is now the deputy director of the Manpower and Personnel Directorate at Headquarters U.S. Pacific Command, said he knew Romero innately understood and embraced a culture of training and compliance since he was a highly qualified and respected aviator. "In my view as the AFRS vice commander, these key traits - strong leadership, committed to training and compliance - were exactly what we needed in our AFRS Inspector General at the time. Recent inspection reports highlighted training and compliance as an ongoing issue across the command. Mike Romero was exactly the right man to correct that," Brice said. "I am honored to have served with Colonel Mike Romero and proud of all the contributions he made to the overall success of the AFRS mission," Brice said. "In my view, he was always good to work with and good to work for. That's not always as easy as it sounds at the senior level during dynamic and trying times." A master navigator with more than 3,900 flying hours, Romero spent the majority of his career in special operations before coming to recruiting in 2008. He began his flying career in the C-141B and then transitioned to the MC-130H Combat Talon II. He considers his four-month deployment as commander of the 16th Expeditionary Special Operations Squadron the best experience of his career outside of recruiting. "It was my first time as a commander and what an opportunity," Romero said. "To be able to command a combat unit - flying every night, finding the enemy, and resupplying our forces on the ground. It was an eye opener, and we got the mission done each and every night. But dealing with the nonoperational part of it, whether it was security violations, or working out problems with personnel if something went wrong at home and you had to get them back in time - those were the real challenges. When you're in the ops world, you just don't deal with that kind of stuff." As Romero reflects on his six years in AFRS, he speaks enthusiastically of the future of Air Force recruiting. "I'm most proud of the opportunity to be able to bring that perspective from the field to a headquarters, to be able to share what's important to our recruiters. For the most part, the support functions - plans, resources, personnel - the vast majority have never been recruiters. So the opportunity to ensure they understand what they're doing and the decisions we make - and the effect of those decisions on a strip mall in the middle of Missouri - is very important," he said. "Recruiting command provides the best leadership opportunity in the Air Force. I have no doubt about that. If you want to become a better leader and set yourself up for later in your career, recruiting service is definitely something you ought to look at," Romero said. "Getting to throw out pitches at major league baseball games, doing a DEP swear-in in front of 75,000 people, getting to be on the starting line for NHRA and NASCAR - no one else gets to do that. The fact that we continue to produce the finest Airmen in the world tells me that we've done it right."