The Army is looking at the “totality” of the nation’s labor market for talented people who can become soldiers and help the service meet its recruiting goals, a senior Army officer said.

In testimony before the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, deputy Army chief of staff for personnel, G-1, said the Army’s overhaul of who it recruits, how it recruits and who is doing the recruiting is part of a “significant” transformation of the service’s recruiting enterprise.

“When we talk about who we recruit, we look at the totality of the United States’ labor market,” Stitt said at the April 17 hearing. He explained that 80% of high schoolers go on to college, university or a two-year school. “Let’s move beyond just having a conversation with a potential applicant who’s in high school,” he said.

To better reach potential recruits, Stitt said, the Army is “upskilling and re-skilling the recruiting workforce to not only engage high schoolers but engage those who are attending college but may not have completed, and then also engaging others that are in the workforce today but may be looking for other options.”

He pointed out that recruiters are engaging more broadly on platforms such as job boards, social media and employment market sites to include Glassdoor, Indeed and LinkedIn. Additionally, the Army is collecting and analyzing data from homespun pilots and innovative initiatives at recruiting sites across the country, and applying any lessons learned or best practices, he said.

Stitt told panel members that the Army also is “moving away from a borrowed military manpower situation” in which unit cohesion and readiness are disrupted when an infantry NCO, for example, is tapped to temporarily serve as a recruiter.

Instead, the Army is “creating a professionalized workforce across the nation that can start to thin the lines and send those other noncommissioned officers back to do their jobs across the force and enhance our readiness,” he said.

The Army has missed its recruiting goals for the past two years. Stitt said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the service will meet this year’s goal of 55,000 new recruits and 5,000 people in the delayed entry pool.

His statement echoed that of Army Secretary Christine Wormuth who, in testimony before the full House Armed Service Committee on April 16, said the Army is on pace to meet this year’s goal.

“While I don’t want to be overconfident because we have six more months in the fiscal year, if we continue to perform as we have, there’s an excellent chance we’ll meet our recruiting goal this year,” Wormuth told the committee.