After failing to reach its end-strength target of 452,000 soldiers, the US Army declared this week that it will implement “sweeping changes” to its recruitment program.
At a recent news gathering at the Pentagon, it was announced that the Army is going to make a number of important changes to how it recruits in order to get more yearly contracts. The suggestions for recruiting came from a “detailed study of Army recruitment over the past 25 years.”
The branch’s plan includes “focusing on a bigger part of the youth labor market and building a specially trained talent acquisition workforce to start a capability for experimentation as well as learning.”
In addition, the Army will try out a number of different ways to hire people and create two new jobs: an enlisted talent acquisition expert and a warrant officer. Furthermore, the Army’s recruitment effort will be “consolidated as well as re-aligned as a projected three-star command.”
Randy George, who is Chief of Staff of the Army, said that the Army will need to “empower our leadership.”
According to George, “these changes show that recruiting has become one of the absolute most important jobs in the Army.”
The Army and most of the other U.S. military forces have been having a hard time meeting their end-strength goals because they are having a hard time finding new members. According to the Army, it only reached its target of 452,000 active-duty soldiers when it pulled participants from the Delayed Entrance Program.
The Delayed Entry Program is a group of trainees, most of whom are still in high school, who decided to join the military but not right away.
The Army now has fewer full-time soldiers than it has had since 1940, according to the Military Times.
Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said, “The competitiveness for talented Americans has become fierce, and it is very different from what it was 50 or even 20 years ago. Knowing that reality is important for coming up with new ways to do things that will make our job more appealing to young Americans.”
The Army wants to change how it looks for students by hiring people who aren’t just high school grads. It wants one-third of its new soldiers to have done more than high school by 2028.
“Today’s high school seniors make up more than half of our yearly contracts, but they only make up 15 to 20 percent of the bigger pool of prospects we could hire,” Wormuth said. “This implies that we have to recruit Americans in college and from the job market as well as from the high school market.”
Wormuth and George pointed out that the Army is having trouble meeting its end-strength goals, but it has beaten its retention goals.
“That means that most Army members love their jobs. That is the message we want every young American to get: the US Army is a real place where you can be everything you can be,” they said.
