Military Recruiting

More Innovative Approaches Needed Gao ID: NSIAD-95-22 December 22, 1994

The military has overstated its future recruiting challenges--the number of eligible high-school graduates is actually expected to grow steadily in coming years--and current recruiting operations are plagued by inefficiencies, with half the network of 6,000 recruiting offices supplying just 13.5 percent of enlistees. Moreover, the military services plan to add more recruiters even though fewer recruits are needed to support the smaller military force resulting from downsizing. Although many studies have suggested ways to consolidate or eliminate layers of management to cut costs, the services have been reluctant to change existing organizational structures.

GAO found that: (1) although the military services have requested additional funds to meet future recruiting challenges, the services may have overstated the potential challenges; (2) although the recruitment market is expected to grow steadily until 2000, the percentage of the market that DOD needs to meet its personnel requirements is expected to decrease; (3) DOD and the services believe that future recruiting could become more difficult; (4) between 1989 and 1992, the attrition rate for new recruits ranged between 29 and 39 percent; (5) the services have been reluctant to change existing recruitment methods and implement several proposals that would restructure recruiting organizations, eliminate recruiting management layers, and consolidate recruiting organizations or functional areas; (6) the services have consistently rejected the option of merging recruiting operations because of the unique nature of each service; (7) although the services have had limited success in reducing attrition rates, these efforts have not resulted in DOD-wide initiatives; (8) increasing the number of recruiters at this time may not be cost-effective; and (9) recent technological advances have reduced the need for many of the recruitment offices.

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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