Services reaching their Fiscal Year 2024 goals can be attributed, in part, to getting more recruiters into communities, recruiting chiefs told reporters Wednesday.
All five services met their recruiting goals in the past fiscal year, including the Navy, which had failed to hit its target for the prior two years. In briefing reporters, the recruiting chiefs said propensity among young Americans continues to remain low.
However, the propensity to join on an individual level, such as when a recruiter interacts with a student, is growing, Katie Helland, director of Military Accession Policy, said during the Wednesday press briefing. Recruiters had difficulty getting into communities following the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the United States in early 2020, Helland said.
Now, the recruiters can get back into communities and make connections with people, Helland said.
The Navy made sure to fill its recruiting billets for FY 2024, which is one of the reasons the sea service made its goal, Rear Adm. Jim Waters, Navy Recruiting commander, said, adding that other services also bulked up their recruiting commands.
Recruiters go out to career fairs and schools, as well as connect with potential recruits on social media, with the goal of making an individual connection that will encourage someone to enlist, he said.
The lack of veterans and family members serving hurts the services, Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis, the commanding general for the Army’s recruiting command. When Davis was coming up in the service, there were more veterans, which meant there were more people who could share their experience in the service, encouraging others to serve.
The same applies for family members who served, Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, Air Force Recruiting Services commander, said. Family members who served often encouraged their children to also join the services.
That puts more onus on recruiters to be the person who brings knowledge about serving, Amrhein said.
Beyond filling recruiting billets, the Navy found they had several roadblocks preventing them from meeting goals, such as delays in the medical waiver process or people being stuck in the process due to an inability to sign their name in cursive, USNI News previously reported.
The Navy and the Army both pointed to their success with their future sailor/soldier prep courses bringing in recruits who needed some additional physical or academic help. Waters and other Navy recruiting leaders have said the program helped the service meet recruiting goals, while also saying that those who graduate often do better than those who go straight to boot camp, USNI News previously reported.
The Marine Corps, which also did not offer enlistment bonuses, does not have a course. What they use instead is the delayed entry program, said Maj. Gen. William Bowers, commanding general for Marine Corps Recruiting Command. The delayed entry program, which is the pool of people who enlist but are not sent to boot camp right away is used by all the services.
For the Marines, it also acts a bit like the future sailor prep course, where Marines work with their recruiters to make sure they are physically and academically prepared for boot camp. It is also its own recruiting tool, Bowers said. About 25 percent of the service’s contracts come from a referral from someone in the delayed entry program.
“We like to replace propensity with inspired so if only 9 percent of the population is propensed, 91 percent is waiting to be inspired. What a golden opportunity,” Bowers said. “So this is the value of our delayed entry program.”
