Army Recruiters in Miami Will Pass Off Paperwork Duties as Service Tests New Strategy to Boost Enlistment

Lieutenant Colonel (O5) Adam Kirschling administers the oath of enlistment to 10 Army Soldiers and 4 Airmen at the Chickashaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on June 7, 2024. (U.S. Army photo by Captain (O3) Erick Schneider-Cuevas)

Posted: November 12, 2024 --- Military.com | By Steve Beynon

Published November 11, 2024, at 3:25pm ET

The Army is set to launch a pilot program in January at 2 recruiting stations in the Miami area designed to cut through the red tape bogging down military recruitment. Recruiters there will concentrate exclusively on pitching the benefits of military service, leaving the paperwork and administrative tasks to other support staff. The dramatic change in processing new applicants aims to lighten the overwhelming load recruiters face, making the path to enlistment faster and more efficient.

The service is also eyeing expansion of the pilot program to other locations in the spring as it grapples with an unprecedented recruiting crisis in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recruiters are caught between the dual challenges of marketing military service to young Americans and navigating a maze of bureaucratic red tape that can bog down the enlistment process.

"When you're ready to buy a car, you have a different guy who you have fill out the paperwork on the finances and the person who is a salesperson and engaging with the public," Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said. The service is starting the pilot in an area with a strong track record. For the past decade, the South has proven to be the top recruiting engine -- contributing nearly 28% of the Army's new recruits every year since 2013. Miami, in particular, has been especially fruitful, internal data shows.

The Midwest, by contrast, presents a tougher recruiting landscape, bringing in a comparatively modest 15% of annual enlistments over the same period -- a persistent challenge for the Army's recruitment efforts. It's unclear whether those doing the administrative tasks will also be recruiters and, if so, how the credit for enlistment quotas will be divided. Those administrative tasks include collecting essential documents from applicants, such as high school diplomas and other personal records, as well as running criminal background checks.

However, the real bottleneck comes from processing medical waivers, a step notorious for creating gridlock in the recruitment pipeline. The waivers can delay the enlistment process for months, often leading frustrated applicants to abandon their plans to join the force entirely. The Army and other services have surged medical personnel into Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS), to speed up processing applicants. 

The Army recruited 55,300 new active-duty troops in fiscal 2024, ending a streak of missed recruitment targets since 2022 and narrowly surpassing its goal of 55,000 by September. The success was largely credited to the Future Soldier Preparatory Courses -- a program designed to boost applicants who would have otherwise been disqualified from service due to academic or fitness shortfalls, getting them ready for basic training and military life. 

Those courses brought in nearly 25% of new recruits in 2024 who would have otherwise been turned away and not allowed to join the Army. The Army has an even more ambitious goal in 2025 to bring in 61,000 active-duty soldiers and service leaders are moving into the New Year confident they’ll hit those numbers, mostly due to the success of the prep courses. "Based on what we're seeing, we will continue to improve in terms of the volume of applicants," Major General (O8, 2-Star) Johnny Davis, who oversees Army recruiting efforts, told reporters.