The Army selected 25 NCOs to qualify in the newest military occupational specialty, or MOS, as the service’s newest recruiting experts.
The first class who will qualify in the 42T MOS for Talent Acquisition Specialists, attended a signing ceremony at Fort Knox surrounded by representatives of major corporations they plan to work with, including Amazon, Deloitte, Wells Fargo.
The group is the first cohort of enlisted soldiers selected under the Army-wide push to develop a permanent recruitment workforce after several years of declining recruit numbers. While the entire class comes from traditional recruiting slots in the Army, their new role, the Army said, will focus on learning how the private sector attracts new talent, and bringing those lessons to the force.
“Back in the day, the fence was pretty tall from what was happening on the Army bases,” said Zenon Zacharj, faculty and staff development chief for the Army Recruiting and Retention College. “We’re pulling that fence line down a little bit to see how corporate America operates so we start learning some of those best practices.”
Army officials said they believe the private sector has recruitment and talent acquisition methods that the military is “just not privy to yet” but they’re hoping to learn about it through these new 42T soldiers. Sgt. Maj. Alan Myers of the Army’s G-1 directorate focused on personnel management and retainment said this could include branding techniques, digital prospecting, social media use, and onboarding processes.
“We’re tasked to complete what the 42T workforce is going to look like, which is why we’re going to train with industry to develop or to gather as much information as possible,” said Sfc. Reychell Zuniga Otoya, one of the 42T selectees. She expects that the 42T selectees will study private companies’ recruitment practices, who hire thousands every year without a legion of recruiters like the Army relies on to make face-to-face contact with prospective hires.
In fall 2023, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced a transformation to the service’s recruitment efforts after several years of missed recruitment goals. The overhaul includes the creation of new positions to help “modernize” the service’s recruitment methods like the 42T and 420T the new warrant officer positions.
“The current recruiting workforce is a little over 8,000 personnel right in total,” said Col. Christine Rice, who’s in charge of the Army recruiting workforce redesign. “Our goal is that that number is less and it’s more efficient. We won’t know what that number is for years while we experiment.”
The Army currently has three types of recruiters: ‘Department of the Army selected recruiters’ are assigned as recruiters as a special duty; Volunteer Recruiters who sign up for the duty; and full-time recruiters who, after a tour as a special duty, train and qualify in the recruiting MOS 79R.
Over the next two to three years, the Army will give 79R soldiers “an opportunity to assess and reclassify” into the new 42T MOS, Rice said.
Right now, their focus is to get 42T selectees “enough reps and sets in training to take them from like a high school level degree to a master’s level degree so when they hit that recruiting force, when they actually hit the streets and they’re out there recruiting, they are far way more ahead of the farm recruiting force that’s out there,” Rice said.
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Part of the planned recruitment overhaul also includes changes to the way that the service picks which soldiers will take on the task of recruiting thousands to the military’s largest branch.
“The current recruiter selection process up to this point is focused on eligibility criteria commonly seen for Army nominative positions with suitability screening, but it does not focus on how someone’s knowledge, skills and abilities may best fit into a specific occupation,” Rice said.
The Army first put out a call for applications among 79R soldiers. Recruitment leadership did a technical review of the 113 applications they received and created an initial order of merit list. Applicants were then given attribute-based assessments and a second list was created with soldiers with the most desirable recruiter personality traits. A final interview was conducted by an Army operational psychologist.
The final selection panel narrowed it down to 25 NCOs – 18 active duty soldiers and seven National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers. These soldiers are now going to train alongside their private industry partner from now until December. After training with industry, they will do follow-on training before they’re officially awarded the 42T MOS in the Spring, officials said.
“The difference between 79R and 42T isn’t very clear right now. But given the time, the 25 of us selectees, we’re going to make that difference very apparent,” said Sfc. Christopher Olavarria. “We’re going to be the growth within this organization.”
While the future of 42T soldiers is still being written, Rice said there’s going to be a lot of adaptation and experimentation over the next few years to get to a place where recruiters are more “focused on the customer experience” which means meeting potential Army recruits where they are instead of the traditional method of getting them into a recruit station.
“How would we become more mobile and adaptable to meeting the demands of the customer? Versus having them come into the recruiting station,” Rice said. “Can we do things more virtually? Can we actually go out and engage the population on their terms?”