The Army is putting more accountability measures in place to ensure that good recruiters are not pulling the weight for an entire recruiting station and that “ineffective” ones are reassigned to make sure local offices are helping with service-wide recruitment goals, according to a policy memo obtained by Task & Purpose.
In 2025, Army recruiters will continue to have to sign at least 11 contracts each year but those soldiers will be held to a new 75% contribution rate standard which is calculated by dividing the number of recruiters who met standards at the end of a quarter by the total number of recruiters, according to the Oct. 24 memo, which was confirmed by officials with Army Recruiting Command.
The intent behind the policy is to hold all of the recruiters at a given station accountable, the service said.
“The contribution rate metric will provide helpful insight into situations in which only a small proportion of recruiters assigned to a recruiting station, for example, are producing the entire assigned number of contracts in a given month for their station,” Madison Bonzo, a spokesperson for USAREC told Task & Purpose. “In turn, this information will better equip leaders to develop the management and mentorship talents of their recruiting station commanders.”
The new policy also calls for more check-ins throughout the year to assess the efficiency of recruiters and give commanders more opportunities to counsel and train those who are falling behind their contract goals — meaning how many new soldiers they have to enlist in the force. The policy memo includes quarterly brigade-level assessments and monthly after-action counseling sessions for recruiters with station commanders and for station commanders with their respective company commands.
Recruiters who are not “on track” to meet the minimum number of new-soldier contracts after three months worth of counseling and retraining may be deemed “ineffective” and released from their duties with the Army recruiting command, the memo states. According to Army regulations, depending on the case, soldiers who are released from recruiting duties may either go back to their original assignments or work with Human Resources Command to reclassify their military occupational specialty.
“This process is non-punitive and non-adverse. Each situation is different, and we do not want soldiers to fail in their careers,” Bonzo said.
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To determine whether a recruiter is “on track,” to meet their contract goals, battalion commanders will assess if they can “reasonably meet the standard” by the end of the recruiting year.
“For example, a production recruiter who has only produced six contracts by June may not reasonably be able to produce five contracts in the remaining three months of the [Recruiting Year] and is therefore not ‘on track,’” according to the memo.
Recruiter incentives
The new USAREC policy, signed by commander Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis, also encourages commanders to recommend new incentives for “production” recruiters — those who meet with potential soldiers face to face, determine eligibility, counsel them, and prepare and process enlistment applications.
Commanders can also develop their own ways of highlighting good recruiters with local awards and recognition or by giving them time off, Bonzo said.
In January 2023, the Army announced a temporary program for recruiters to earn bonuses if they enlisted applicants who met enlistment criteria for their Future Soldiers’ Armed Forces Qualification Test. The incentive is still in place and will run until Dec. 31, 2024.
To get more soldiers interested in volunteering for recruiter gigs, in 2023, the Army began offering immediate promotion to staff sergeant for soldiers who enroll in the recruiter course by February 2024 and a one-time lump sum payment of $5,000. More than 900 soldiers have been promoted to staff sergeant under the program, according to the Army.
As part of recruiter incentives, the Army command also has the authority to promote up to 150 qualified sergeants and staff sergeants to the next grade and another program allows officials to promote eligible sergeants and staff sergeants who enlist and ship 24 recruits to basic combat training in a 12-month period.
The Army is also continuing its Soldier Referral Program, a little more than 20 months old, where junior enlisted soldiers can get promoted by referring people to their local recruiting stations. Since its inception, the program has had nearly 77,000 referrals with a rate of 6.5% leading to enlistments or just over 5,000 contracts.
Army recruitment overhaul
The recruiter policy updates come after Army officials announced in September that the service exceeded its fiscal year 2024 goal for enlisted soldiers with just over 55,300 recruits which was a rebound after two years of misses. The Army was able to meet its 2024 goal with older recruits who increased the average enlistment age to 22 years and 4 months and those who needed extra training. About 13,200 trainees — roughly one of every four recruits went through the Future Soldier Prep Course, a 90-day program before boot camp that helps recruits meet academic and physical fitness enlistment standards.
The policy calling for more accountability across the Army’s recruiting enterprise follows a slew of changes announced by Secretary Christine Wormuth in October 2023. The overhaul included consolidating USAREC to a three-star command to report directly to Wormuth’s office and the Army chief of staff and expanding the commander’s tenure from two to four years.
The Army also created two new military occupational specialties focused on recruiting which were modeled off of corporate recruiters in the private sector. The 420T Talent Acquisition Technicians will work behind the scenes crunching data and analyzing markets to generate better leads and create marketing strategies for local labor markets. Then there’s the 42T Talent Acquisition Specialist field, which will include former 79R recruiters who reclassify into the new job. They will study and implement corporate recruiting practices like branding techniques, digital prospecting, and leveraging social media.