Navigating Current and Emerging Army Recruiting Challenges

Recruiting is the foundation of the U.S. Army's ability to sustain its overall force levels, but recruiting has become very challenging. The author draws on a large body of research on military recruiting and examines tools and resources-including recruiters and recruiting management, selection and eligibility criteria, advertising, bonuses, and pay-that can help the Army meet this challenge. The author suggests that the Army could meet these challenges by taking advantage of recently developed tools to inform recruiting activities, exploring opportunities to improve recruiter productivity, exploiting opportunities to better target the Army's outreach and recruiting resources in different market segments, considering adjustments to recruiter selection policy, redesigning recruiter incentive plans to increase recruiter productivity, and coordinating recruiting and retention resource decisions. This report is one of a series synthesizing several years of research about a common topic. The intent is to provide the Army's most senior leadership with an integrated view of recent years of Army-sponsored research, research that might not have achieved its full potential impact because it was presented to the Army as a series of independent research topics and findings. By looking at and identifying key unifying themes and recommendations, Army leadership can gain better visibility on some key issue areas and will have an additional source of information to inform key policy decisions and planning guidance.