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ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the US Army's successive recruiting crises, identifying their consistent patterns and the efforts to resolve them, and makes three provocative arguments. First, there is a long-standing institutional tension between recruiting personnel for the combat arms and technical and administrative specialists. Second, many of today's talent management problems were first identified in a 1907 General Staff report and reiterated in subsequent studies. Third, the Army has pursued innovative recruitment strategies, but much of their success depended on factors outside the service's control. The essay concludes with four history-based recruiting lessons and an affirmation that the 2019 Army People Strategy recognizes the need for the Army to revise its talent management approach.
Keywords: recruitment, US Army history, personnel policy, talent management, Army People Strategy
Last year, the US Army missed its enlistment goals by 25 percent, prompting concerns that the service might shrink to 445,000 by the end of this year. The shortfalls are particularly serious in combat arms, most notably armor and infantry. Retired Lieutenant General David W. Barno, no alarmist, warned, "The all-volunteer force may finally have reached its breaking point."1 The causes and consequences of this "recruiting crisis" have prompted vigorous and often vitriolic debate. Some pundits have accused the Army of excessive "wokeness" and others of excessive masculinity. But Army leadership recognizes that the recruitment crisis will not be resolved by partisan accusations or bumper-sticker solutions. It also accepts that dropping standards, a solution too often attempted in the past, is unacceptable if the service is to retain its qualitative superiority. The 2019 Army People Strategy makes this point in clear and unambiguousterms: "Human capabilities such as resiliency, critical thinking, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to accept prudent risk and adjust rapidly all define our profession."2
Today, as always, the Army's recruitment strategy must balance the often conflicting demands imposed by the immediate necessity of filling the most pressing vacancies, identifying those individuals with the potential for a military career, and predicting the service's future personnel needs. It also has to resolve the perennial dilemma-going back over 200 years- that once the Army has met its immediate needs, the majority of volunteers (and draftees) try to avoid assignment to the combat arms. Finding the correct solutions to...