Close your eyes and visualize a typical American fifth-grade classroom. Do you see the kids? What are they doing? What are they studying? All are so full of potential. A few of these boys and girls will be our soldiers in Army 2020. Now, mentally enter a high school classroom or walk onto a sports practice field. Here you see the NCOs of Army 2020, those men and women who will be the fifth-graders’ leaders: their recruiters, drill sergeants and platoon sergeants.The hard realities in societal and demographic trends reveal that too many young Americans who wish to serve in our ranks are disqualified in early adulthood and, under current policies, cannot join the Army. Of those fifth-graders, more than a few will want to join our ranks but will not be able to, although they will have many strong qualifications. If the Army does not adapt our approach to recruiting, we constrain ourselves with increasingly ineffective polices and approaches as we continue to compete for the ever shrinking pool of qualified but increasingly unwilling young adults.Uncritically holding to past methods of recruiting volunteers in view of stark, changing reality doesn’t make sense. Most with whom we talk agree that reviewing how we recruit for the future total force is timely. We must adapt our talent acquisition paradigm. In “The Army We Need; the Army We Can Have” (February), we described the diverging paths the Army and society are taking. Here we recommend real and viable choices that, if employed, will better enable our total force to effectively recruit today’s fifth-graders when they become seniors in high school and build the Army of 2020 and beyond into the force America requires.To accomplish this strategic end, we recommend three related initiatives, all of which require change inside the Army: regain unity of effort in talent acquisition across the total force, reform how we train and educate Army recruiters, and recapitalize human talent research.Together these lines of effort represent recruiting for Army 2020. The quality of the future force rests on the Army’s ability to successfully attract and acquire the highly talented soldiers we will need. First, however, the Army must look internally and adapt how we recruit across the total force.Unity of EffortThe first initiative for total force recruiting is to recommit across components to support and enable the all-volunteer Army. U.S. Army Recruiting Command, Cadet Command, the U.S. Military Academy and the National Guard acquire the Army’s talent. Every soldier will join the Army through one of our recruiters. Nevertheless, with the disestablishment of the U.S. Army Accessions Command in 2012, and with the very real organizational and resource challenges the Army faces for the expected future, the Army’s talent acquisition success is wholly dependent on cooperative and unified effort across a constellation of organizations. The Army’s talent acquisition team—focusing on our recruiters—depends on the unified and effective support of all of these organizations to build the force, one person at a time, every day.This requirement for unified effort extends beyond the Army to include the joint arena. U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command, the organization that processes every service’s enlisted recruits, depends on the Army’s fiscal and information support. The Joint Advertising, Market Research & Studies group provides our best independent, deep look at the recruiting environment. Both are under increasing budget scrutiny yet fulfill unique and irreplaceable functions as we raise the all-volunteer Army.Just as a combined arms team multiplies combat power through synchronized operations, so must the total force combine efforts to acquire the talent we need. Current budget pressures could threaten the organizational and professional recruiting ties. Our organizations are forced to prioritize resources and efforts in line with other elements of their mission. If we don’t coordinate effectively, we face the real risk of one organization cutting a vital supporting element of the total force’s recruiting effort without fully understanding or mitigating the negative effect among the rest.We should undertake an immediate review of the organizational, functional and fiscal linkages the Army established upon the inactivation of Accessions Command. Coming up on two years, the current constructs have had sufficient time to prove their effectiveness in enabling the total force recruiting effort. This review, being led by the Army G-1 and supported by U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and other members of the Army staff, will do a great deal to not only gain unity of effort but also align missions and equities more efficiently. Ideally, it will result in a campaign plan for Army talent acquisition.Training: Center of ExcellenceToday the total force—active duty, Reserve and National Guard—conducts decentralized and semi-independent recruiting training and operations. Currently, the Army trains its recruiters at different locations across the country using varied curriculula. Besides creating and perpetuating uneven standards across the recruiting force, as an enterprise the Army is expending unnecessary resources. A recent Army-level review found uneven teaching of recruiting standards, further reinforcing the need for adaptation. By centralizing talent acquisition education and training, we can both gain efficiencies and most uniformly inculcate professional recruiting methods and ethos across the Army.Physically colocating recruiter training is the first clear step. In this configuration, the total Army can easily gain efficiencies and reinforce consistent standards; there is no downside. Study already has begun on a total force talent acquisition center of excellence. Such a colocated “recruiting university” would enable the Regular Army, Army Reserve and National Guard to educate and train cooperatively. As an element of TRADOC’s Army University system, the Army’s talent acquisition efforts would be linked directly to TRADOC’s talent development and training initiatives, better supporting all components.Re-empower Talent Acquisition ResearchAs the Army enters an era requiring significant adaptation, research in the human dimension will become more important. The behavioral sciences, among other relevant disciplines, can help us better identify and recruit those most suitable to serve in future complex operating environments.In 2020 and beyond, soldiers will have to be not only smart, teachable and trainable, but also resilient, adaptable and team-oriented. We want them to be aligned with the Army’s values. Most importantly, we want fighters who are committed to winning and accomplishing the mission. In essence, the high-quality soldier of 2020 will be an even higher-quality soldier than those we are recruiting today.The Army of 2020, however, requires soldiers with qualities for which we have no accepted assessment tools. While we test mental aptitude through the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and equate earning a high school degree to possessing the determination to be a soldier, our Army lacks tools to identify those who are resilient, adaptable and aligned with Army values. Some tools, such as the Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System (TAPAS), which assesses a person’s will and drive to succeed, are in review now and have potential to aid in recruiting. We need other tools like TAPAS to identify those who will be excellent soldiers in tomorrow’s Army but would be missed using current methods.A recruiting university would prove an important partner with the Army G-1, TRADOC and other important talent partners in combining vision, force and personnel requirements with military and civilian research into actionable policies and practices. The key is to establish an organization in which talent acquisition research is transferred to training and educating recruiters. A revitalized, robust commitment to talent acquisition research, largely coordinated at a recruiting university, would best blend the teaching and research components of higher education for the total force.Converting research such as TAPAS into actionable talent acquisition tools necessitates early policy adaptation by senior Army leadership and effective integration with the recruiting team. A recruiting center of excellence is the logical agency to carry this mantle. Research will become more important in developing valid tools to identify, recruit and integrate those soldiers most qualified and suitable for the Army of 2020.To be effective, our total force talent acquisition training must be guided by research showing us how to best compete for future talent. Researchers must find ways to fill recognized gaps in the execution of the Army’s human capital strategy at the tactical level: at recruiting stations, in our communities, at military entrance processing stations. Research coordinated—and in some cases conducted—at an Army recruiting university could readily translate talent research results to reality and enable all Army components to identify and most effectively recruit the talent we require.*  *  *Continuing current practices in light of societal trends and demographic realities will not enable the Army to acquire the high-quality talent we need in the future. There is little debate here, and our first article captured this reality. Former techniques were successful in the context of their employment. The context has changed and is changing. We must also change.The first step is to change internally, and our three proposals here are important starting points: gain unity of effort across the total force, centralize and improve quality of recruiter training, and recharter talent acquisition research. These three initiatives reinforce each other, are investments in our common future, and form a wedge against the uncertainty we face as an Army by investing in our recruiters through training and focused support to their operations. These are achievable inside our own organization.