Improving the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Recruiting

The military services under shelter of the draft had 3 years to design and organize resources to recruit an All-Volunteer Force (AVF). Although all services except the Air Force encountered initial problems recruiting in a nondraft environment, the Department of Defense (DOD) has essentially met the services' strength goals without any appreciable drop in quality in fiscal year 1974, the first full year of operation under the AVF concept. Recruiting successes were even better in fiscal year 1975, but were probably helped by depressed economic conditions.

No central focus for monitoring quality control, recruiter malpractice, and fraudulent enlistment exists. As a result, many unqualified recruits slip through the enlistment process, fail training, and receive early discharges. Many of these problems are difficult, if not impossible, to detect during preenlistment screening. All services recognize the damage such practices can cause and have worked hard to prevent them. The principle thrusts of their efforts have been after the fact, such as identifying those instances that occur and attempting to relate them back to the recruiter. Inefficiencies caused by distorted workload standards, monthly enlistment quota systems, varying service-imposed paperwork requirements, and double contract processing of individuals who delay entry into the military also wasted valuable time and increased examining station costs.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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