The U.S. Army is widening its online approach to recruiting new enlisted members and civilian personnel by going beyond some of the traditional government job sites, an official from the service branch said this week.
Those efforts come as the Army failed to reach its recruitment goals for the 2023 year.
Yvette Bourcicot, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, discussed how the service branch is “expanding their footprint” to target larger swaths of potential employees during an online webinar hosted by Federal News Network on Jan 17.
“We’re doing things besides just posting on USA Jobs,” she said.
“We have revamped goarmy.com which is the same place you go in order to get recruited for the military or the Guard Reserve,” Bourcicot said. “We have a civilian tab on there, so if people are saying … ‘maybe serving in uniform doesn’t sound like the right fit for me’, we’re letting them know that their civilian opportunities out there also.”
Bourcicot explained that the Army also is finding new candidates by locating them where they already are on job boards – including boards that the military has not traditionally utilized.
“So instead of just USA Jobs … they can go to LinkedIn,” she said. “And we are taking advantage of going to places where the people are, we are posting our jobs on LinkedIn and [other] job platforms in order to reach out to that cohort” that may not visit more traditional military portals.
The Army also is making efforts to keep candidates well informed about their job applications as they go through the process, including through recently started Army civilian career management activities.
“One of the things that we’re doing is giving some structure to having those touch points with candidates so that we keep them warm, we make sure that they know that they’re valued and that we’re interested in considering them, and we’re at the very least sending automated notices,” said Bourcicot.
