Moderator: Before we dive into your questions, but first here are today’s ground rules. This event is not embargoed. Everything will be treated as on the record. Please identify yourself and your news organization prior to asking your question. One question, one follow-up. We’re a little tight on time, so we appreciate everybody getting through that as quickly as we can if possible.
Ensure your phones are muted unless you are asking a question. And finally, we will have approximately 30 minutes for this engagement, so while we might not be able to get into everyone’s questions, if we’ve run out of time, or if you’re not called on, please email your questions directly to me, and we can provide those responses as quickly as possible.
And with that, I will hand this over to Major General Davis for his opening remarks.
MG Johnny Davis: Well, thanks, sir, and good morning, everyone. It’s good to have you here. I just have about a minute or so, just some quick remarks to really highlight the successes of these wonderful recruiters across the United States Army. So, again, good morning and thanks for joining us today to discuss recruiting for Fiscal Year 24. I also want to thank Brigadier General Walkawicz and Ms. Holbrook for being my teammates on this call to highlight their respective organizations’ efforts to support Army recruiting, especially like through the Future Soldier Prep Course and our recruiting transformation. Both were instrumental to our success this year.
As Secretary Wormuth announced this morning, I’m proud to say the U.S. Army Recruiting Command exceeded our Fiscal Year 2024 recruiting mission, achieving over 55,000 new soldiers for Fiscal Year 24 and placing approximately 11,000 soldiers in the Delayed Entry Program for Fiscal Year 25. Again, providing our Army and our recruiters a nice breathing room and a head start as we enter Fiscal Year 25. This year we introduced so many new initiatives to attract qualified candidates and streamline the overall enlistment process.
Bottom line up front, we invested in recruiting workforce training at the Recruiting and Retention College and added two weeks to the Army Recruiting Course. We also invested in the quality of life of our recruiters. We continue to leverage the Soldier Referral Program, which is now at over 75,000 referrals, leading to almost 5,000 enlistments and counting.
And this is really about a 17-month-old program, so it’s going very well. We created a new Warrant Officer MOS, graduated the first cohort, and they’re already in the brigades and battalions across Recruiting Command and selected the second to begin their training. We have also selected the first wave of 42 Tangos, our new enlisted Talent Acquisition Specialists MOS, who are now training with industry, and they are training with Amazon, Wells Fargo, Boot Camp Digital, and University of Louisville, to name a few.
To transform prospecting, we expanded to recruiting beyond the high school market, increased usage of digital job boards, and established a GoRecruit mobile app based on recruiter feedback. The Army also served over 60 medical providers to select medical entrance processing stations across the country, increasing enlistments through those MEPS by 25% for regular Army and Army Reserve components. Through partnership with our teammates at Army Enterprise Marketing Office, USAREC has continued to synchronize marketing and advertising efforts to better understand and connect with prospects across the country.
Army senior leaders continuously support our efforts. Last year, Secretary of the Army Wormuth announced a sweeping transformation of Army recruiting to help us better reach our goals now and innovate to support future operations. I can go on and on about the momentum we experienced this year, but I cannot end without acknowledging the hardworking recruiters across this entire command in every zip code.
From the Big Apple to Watertown, Wisconsin, and every community in between, our recruiters truly crushed it. Proud of everything they’ve accomplished this year, I mean, just a key data point, 43% improvement in recruiter productivity, increases in every zip code in terms of enlistments, and they are just doing so very well. But this fiscal year is not over, though.
Our recruiters are still working hard to close out fiscal year 24 and set us up for a successful fiscal year 25 recruiting year. Excited to see what we can accomplish this year. Again, thanks again for your time.
I’ll turn it over to Brigadier General Jenn Wachowicz and then Ms. Angie Holbrook for their opening comments. Again, be all you can be, and thanks.
BG Jenn Walkawicz: All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Major General Davis, and good morning, everyone. I’m Brigadier General Jenn Walkawicz. I am the G-357 for U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, and I’m here today to discuss how TRADOC supports the Army’s recruiting efforts. Most of you know at TRADOC our mission is to train, educate, and develop the Army to ensure our soldiers are prepared to deter, fight, and win our nation’s wars.
One of our key initiatives is the Future Soldier Prep Course, which helps recruits overcome academic and fitness barriers. Since its inception just over two years ago, over 28,000 recruits from all components, regular Army, National Guard, and Reserve, have graduated from the Future Soldier Prep Course with a graduation rate over 90%. FSPC allows us to unlock those individuals’ potential without sacrificing quality.
The success of this program has significantly boosted our recruiting momentum. Looking ahead, TRADOC is going to continue to support programs like Future Soldier Prep Course to build quality recruits that are ready to serve in our all-volunteer force. And I thank you, and I look forward to your questions today. And I’ll be followed by Ms. Holbrook.
Angie Holbrook: Good morning, everyone. This is Angie Holbrook. I am a Department of the Army civilian, but I’m also a soldier for life, and I work at Headquarters DA responsible for the Army’s accession policy and incentives program.
As you guys know, recruiting America’s Army is a team sport, and our policies and transformation initiatives have significantly contributed to our recruiting success this year by focusing on opening the aperture and piquing the interest of those wishing to serve. We have implemented innovative strategies to expand our reach and attract a diverse pool of talented individuals. By promoting our mission and values and leveraging modern recruitment tools, we have successfully engaged potential applicants who are passionate about making a difference and a positive impact.
This approach has not only increased the number of applicants but also improved the quality and talent of our workforce, ensuring we have the right people to achieve our country’s national security objectives. Thank you very much.
Moderator: Thank you all. And with that, we will get into our questions. We’ll start off with Patty Nieberg from Task and Purpose, and just up in the pipe after that will be Steve from Military.com.
So, Patty, go ahead.
Patty Nieberg: Hi. Good morning. Thank you guys for doing this. Talking about the Future Soldier Prep Course, obviously, you mentioned some pretty high numbers. I’m wondering what you think since it seems like almost a fourth from 2024 came from the program. What does that say about the recruiting environment and just about the population that you’re looking for? A lot of them aren’t meeting kind of the standards, so they’re going through this course.
MG JD: Jenn, did you want to touch on that one?
BG JW: Yeah, absolutely. So I can start first. So just about the Future Soldier Prep Course, we have had some incredible success. So in FY24 alone, it’s been about 16,000 from all three of our components that have joined the Army by graduating Future Soldier Prep Course. And what this is allowing us to do is to increase the opportunity to serve without sacrificing quality. And those individuals, for whatever reason, just needed that additional time, whether academically or from a fitness perspective, to meet our standards.
And those who don’t meet the standards do not matriculate into the initial military training. They never make it to basic or one-station unit training if they don’t meet the standards. So I’ll defer to General Davis about the overall demographics and what his recruiters are seeing in the force.
But what I can assure everyone of is that when they come to us, even that 25% that joined this year through Future Soldier Prep Course, they are meeting the standards and they are entering basic training only after meeting those standards. And quite honestly, one of the data points we track very closely is they are also performing, once they’re in basic training, better than, and they’re staying and retaining at a greater rate than those who just join and directly go to basic training.
MG JD: And if I can add, and thanks, Jenn, you know, based on the feedback from these wonderful recruiters, you know, they see, you know, many, many applicants each and every week. And as they visit the high schools or community colleges and colleges, you know, based on where they are both from an academic and physical, if they’re close, now they’re opening the door for this continued investment. So the environment for us has really helped us expand that market for those that were close.
And that’s, again, from the feedback from the recruiters, the desire to serve is there, and that’s what’s really helping these recruiters. And I’ll tell you, that’s been a jolt of adrenaline to this wonderful recruiting force, to see that we’re really investing in this group. And the 90% graduation rate speaks for itself.
This is transformational. And I just wanted to highlight, again, thanks, Jenn, for your comments.
PN: And if I could ask a quick follow-up, is there anything you can highlight from the Recruit Innovation Cell that you’ve seen worked really well?
MG JD: Yep. One of the--so the Recruit Innovation--thanks, great question, and we’re just building the Innovation Cell now. But one of the initiatives that we jumped right into is really how we prospect and connect with the youth of America.
And one of the experiments that we’re working on right now is Recruit 360, and we’re testing it across five different cities in the U.S., but usually essentially helping--I think we partnered with Deloitte and their expertise with artificial intelligence to help us look at applicant pools in these particular cities to figure out, from an AI perspective, if there are traits or things that would--let’s say I’m a football player or I like a number of different sports or I’m a runner, they will help us with that in terms of looking at that applicant pool. So when our recruiters talk to them, they can talk to them given that background information.
Instead of what we’ve been doing in the past is really taking a high school list and cold-calling, you know, 200 or 300 high school seniors. That is what we have to get away from. We have to expand. And from an innovation perspective, that’s been going on for about two months, and there’s a lot of wonderful things that are happening. And the recruiters are now providing feedback to even make it better, but they love it. They now love an ability to understand their market based off of the use of AI, and that was one of the first innovation initiatives that we pursued.
PN: Thank you.
Moderator: Thank you, sir. Now over to Steve at Military.com, and after that, it will be to Sam.
Steve: Hey, all. Appreciate you taking the time. General Davis, I’m looking at the numbers. So you guys recruited 55,300 people this year, at least that’s the data I got. Prep Course has graduated about 13,000. If you subtract that, you guys recruited 42,000 people this year. Does that suggest you guys are actually in a worse recruiting spot than you were in 2022 when the slump started where you guys recruited 44,000?
MG JD: No, I don’t think so. By the numbers, 55,000 compared to where we were two years ago, that’s a large difference. And what we’ve really done is, and I think it’s a total Army effort that allowed us to reach more in the market in addition to synchronizing marketing and advertising at the recruiter level.
So all of those things, how we prospect, how we process, all of those, because I think we have 15,000 in the pipeline, so that’s very healthy for where we are, but we’re getting more through the pipeline. And, of course, Future Soldier Prep Course was in place in fiscal year 23 as well. So I would tell you we’re doing a lot better, and I think based on what we’re seeing, we will continue to improve in terms of the volume of applicants. But, I mean, great question.
Steve: Yeah, and my follow-up would be, I mean, isn’t this, I mean, you guys are doing some effort, AMA’s done some stuff, but isn’t this really a story on the Army meeting people where they’re at? Because you’ve got the Prep Course, that has made up your entire surplus of extra soldiers you’ve gotten since 2022, and then you--you--you’ve sent some extra people to MEPS to kind of clear up that muck. Genesis has really created a lot of gridlock there.
So isn’t this--you guys are moving pieces at MEPS, you guys have the Prep Corps, is that kind of where we’re at with recruiting? We’re just kind of meeting young Americans where they are, whether that’s health issues or academic issues?
MG JD: Yeah, when we look at our market and the feedback from our recruiters, you’re right, we are meeting the population where they are, but we’re expanding that population to those that want to serve. Whether it’s a physical or academic, we saw that we had so many wonderful applicants close to meeting the standard that we said, you know what, let’s start investing. So have we seen an increase in that?
Absolutely, and the 90-plus percent success rate proves that taking this step to invest in our citizens out there where they are and with their desire to serve I think has yielded some great improvements in terms of our enlistment numbers. But the point is we are expanding to all those who yearn to serve, and there’s nothing worse than somebody who wants to serve and they’re right there, but the Army took that step and said, you know what, let’s invest in you and get you there, and it’s proven success. So we want this to continue to expand as the applicant pool expands as well.
Steve: Awesome, thank you.
MG JD: Yeah, thanks, sir.
Moderator: All right, now we’ll go over to Sam Skove and then it will be Todd after that.
Sam Skove: Hey, I was just wondering if there are certain specialties the Army is still struggling to recruit into and if any of those challenges represent a change over past years. Thanks.
MG JD: I can answer, but, you know, we have Angie Holbrook at Headquarters DA who tracks a lot of those numbers. I know we’re doing very well across our top 16 MOSs, a lot better than we were last year. But, Angie, anything you want to add to that?
AH: Absolutely, sir. So as you noted, we do have some specialties, and as the Army formation changes, and I’m sure many of you on this call are familiar with Army 2030 and the way that we’re growing some of our emerging technical skills that we need. Those are the MOSs that we put on our critical list because we’re growing those MOSs.
You’ve got some MOSs like our 11 X-ray, our infantryman. Those are always going to be high demand. They represent about 22% of the contracts that we write every year. But with our critical skills, we incentivize those skills more on the ones that are critically short or ones that we are growing. So if that helps, that’s how we approach it.
SS: Yeah, and could you just give perhaps an example of one of those that are either critically short or targeted for growth?
AH: Absolutely. So air defense, we’ll just use that as an example. That’s one of our growth MOSs when it comes to Army 2030. And so certainly by growing it, we need not only the amount that we were currently getting but an increase of them. So we’ve incentivized those MOSs, say, over others in order to entice behavior to choose those MOSs.
SS: Thank you.
MG JD: And if I could add, just to give you data, now, of course, the year is not over, so this number will grow. But based on what Angie just talked about and those critical MOSs, we enlisted 6,000. Our recruiters enlisted 6,000 more in those particular MOSs compared to last year.
So the total number, we won’t know until really early next week. But I’ll tell you, where we focus is where the Army needs these applicants in these critical MOSs, and we have shown that with the, again, 6,000-plus more enlistments.
Moderator: All right. Thank you, sir. Over to Todd South at Army Times, and then after that, we will go over to Alan.
Todd South: Good morning, all. Congratulations. I know it’s good news, so thank you for sharing this and some of the details. I wanted to push forward a bit. A lot of these initiatives are relatively new. As you mentioned, the Recruit 360 is two months old. The warrant officers really just came into the force in under a year ago, and there’s other initiatives going on that you’ve mentioned publicly. What is the growth, the just general overall kind of growth projection for those efforts? To put that in layman’s terms, did it take all those efforts to reach where we are now, and will those efforts yield more recruits or more contacts in the future to continue to grow, or is this like everything all hands on deck is getting us to where we are right now?
MG JD: Sir, that’s a great question. And we--there is positive momentum that it took us a year to get all of these initiatives. And I will tell you, it’s a total whole of Army. So there are so many different initiatives based on how we process, so that’s really the medical surge to help get more superstars through the medical pipeline. So we’re seeing growth there. The GoRecruit mobile app for our recruiters to connect, organizational training.
We totally revamped training. We included sales training. We brought the families in to be part of the assignment process, and these new recruiters and their families are hitting the ground and are now producing super. I mean, it’s really fantastic what we’re seeing on the ground with the new recruiters. We look at talent management. That’s the recruiter warrant officers and the 42 Tangos, the enlisted.
We look at our facilities. So we have facilities in places that have been there for 10 to 20 years, and now we’re asking ourselves, should that recruiter station be moved to another location? And we moved about 40 of them.
So markets, we totally relooked the markets. We improved our high school access, our post-high school market, and then all the different policies that you saw, the secretary support us with soldier referral program, the Future Soldier Prep Course, the recruiter performance incentives, the meritorious promotions. All of these things, I think, are keeping the recruiter force very optimistic, and we’re seeing continued growth month over month.
Do I know where it’s going to end? I don’t want it to end, but I will tell you, I think all of those things come together. I can’t put my finger on one, but I will tell you all of these different changes, have they fully matured yet? I don’t think so, and I think we’re going to see some very more positive gains moving forward. But that’s a great question.
TS: Thank you. Just as a follow-up, General, and whoever else would like to respond, I know at the AUSA event earlier this week there was mention of the increased age of the new recruits. There’s already, I believe, I think it was average age of 22, which you guys have been adapting to that market. How much of looking beyond the traditional 17 to 20-year-olds is helping get those numbers? I guess could you just go a little bit deeper on the kind of older recruits coming in now, non-traditional?
MG JD: Yeah, so that’s a great--and we’re seeing an increase in the enlistment age, and because of that data it’s really--and, again, that goes back to the Secretary’s transformational, okay, we need to expand our market more than just the high school and look at the some college market and even the labor force, because if our average enlistment age is now 22 years and four months and it’s going up, so that tells us something.
Hey, they are--these wonderful applicants are either going on to school or joining the job force, and then at some point in time that calling hits them and they want to pursue potential service, and we now have to be able to understand where they are across America because I can go to a high school, but I don’t know if an applicant, let’s say, who’s working at somewhere in the private sector, that’s what we’re trying to figure out how to connect with them. Digital job boards, all these different things that are trying to provide more informed data is what we’re really trying to pursue, and I’ll tell you, this has been something that we’re really working on.
That enlistment age only tells us, hey, there’s another market that we’re not really fully in. We’re in the high school market. That is growing, but we really want this labor market to really grow for those who are older.
And again, it’s all about the value proposition. If we understand, you know, for a high schooler, of course, you have the GI Bill, you know, we have for college grads, college loan repayment, but now what is it when we look at that labor market? And that’s, you know, what the Secretary is also looking at in terms of, hey, what’s the GI Bill 3.0, what does the future look like now that we’re looking at an older population?
But that’s a great question, and we are really, you know, putting our heads together, both us, TRADOC, and then, of course, headquarters DA, Jenn and Angie, to really figure out how do we connect and bring more of these superstars in.
Moderator: Thank you, sir, and we are getting a little close on our time here, so we’re going to go over to Ellen from Synopsys for probably what will be our last question.
Ellen: Thank you so much for squeezing me in. There have been a lot of complaints about the new MHS Genesis electronic health record system kicking out a lot of potential recruits and the need to reform the medical waiver system. What have you all done? I assume you worked with the Defense Health Agency on this, but what materially have you done? Do you have numbers showing increased waiver applications and so on?
MG JD: Well, I can start, and Angie wants to add in, but as the Secretary said, MHS Genesis is here to stay, and, you know, in the end, we know more. And, yes, has the number of waivers increased because we know more? Yes, but what we’re trying to do is, based on knowing more for our service, is what are the additional steps that we’re doing to help in terms of medical providers to get more through the medical assistance pipeline?
And so, in addition to that, we’re also looking at conditions that may be disqualifying that, hey, do we need to relook these? So the top four are, of course, for us, behavioral health, orthopedic, pulmonary, and eyes. So to give you an example, we had about, you know, for eyes, let’s say astigmatism, if we’re approving those waivers now that we know more, 98% of the time, why are we going through the waiver process? As the waiver authority, and me and my other service commanders, why don’t we just pull that to our level and really prevent an applicant from waiting 30 days? So MHS Genesis has allowed us to see where we need to focus in terms of waivers, who’s caught up in the pipeline, and how we can move them quicker because we know more. Angie, did you want to add anything?
AH: I would just say that, just like you said, sir, it’s a joint effort with our service partners, our other services, as we come together with OSD and we look at these conditions on a reoccurring basis quarterly and say, hey, what are we seeing here? And maybe this is something that we can get with the doctors and figure out a better way of looking at the individual’s condition. So we have several conditions that we’ve been able to lessen the threshold, say, on a childhood illness or injury that might have disqualified them previously but now does not. So it’s a joint effort.
MG JD: And then just two key data points. You know, we yielded approximately about 300 additional enlistments per week based on knowing more and then looking at the waiver process compared to the same period last year. And then the surge of the MEPS completed 6,000 more physicals in 24. Now, we’re not done, so that number is going to be higher. While processing days for our applicants decreased. So all of those are good things that we’re learning from MHS Genesis.
Ellen: I’m sorry, how many more physicals were done because you have more medical people at MEPS?
MG JD: About, well, you’re talking number of personnel, 60 personnel, 6,000 more physicals in fiscal year 24, but I think that’s going to be, and that’s only at 33 of the top, the top 33 of 65 MEPS. So it’s not even all the MEPS, but 6,000 more physicals.
Ellen: Thank you.
Moderator: All right. Thank you, everybody. I will turn it back over to our panelists here for any closing comments, and we appreciate everyone attending today.
Sir, over to you.
MG JD: Teammates, again, thanks for your time this morning. And, again, there’s so many great things happening, and we couldn’t wait to share. And with the Secretary’s announcement, now we are able to really, you know, deliver on all of the transformational efforts and all of the great work by our recruiters.
It’s these recruiters on the ground in all the zip codes who have really seen this investment by our Army and them, and they are, again, they are just crushing it out there and yielding so much more in terms of the value proposition for our applicants. And that’s why we’re seeing this wonderful success. It’s all on these young recruiters all across America.
So I’ll stop right there. Jenn, over to you. And thanks.
BG JW: Sir, thank you. Major General Davis and his team have done an incredible job maintaining momentum throughout this year. And here at TRADOC, we are in full support of the Army’s Successions Mission.
We will continue to deliver Future Soldier Prep Course that allows our potential recruits to overcome any academic and physical fitness barriers to service that they have because if they are willing to serve, we want to provide them that opportunity. And we are confident that those recruits are going to perform successfully and meet or exceed the standards expected of every soldier. So, again, thank you for this time.
And over to Ms. Holbrook.
AH: Hey, guys. Yes, thank you for letting us do a little ball-spiking. We know the game’s not over. We’ve still got some time on the clock, a couple more shift days before the end of the fiscal year. But we are going into 25 strong. And, you know, our job at the department level is just to clear the path so that General Davis’s recruiters can do what they do, amazing work.
We’re in a war for talent, and it takes all hands on deck to do that. Thank you.
Moderator: Thank you all. And, again, if you weren’t able to get your questions in today, feel free to shoot them over to myself afterwards. I will be following up.
Thank you.
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