How Can the Military Compete with College and Civilian Jobs?
The armed forces face many challenges in recruiting new service members today. The number of recruits they need is rising, and the services find themselves competing more strenuously with the civilian sector for high-quality individuals than they did in the past. At the same time, wages for skilled workers have risen while unemployment rates have dropped. As the financial return of a post-secondary education has grown, increasing numbers of recent high school graduates have chosen to enter college. In the push to recruit, the military services need to know which recruiting tactics have proven to be the most effective and which new ones they should consider. RAND Researcher Rebecca Kilburn described previous and ongoing efforts that RAND has undertaken to address these and other recruiting challenges at the Pentagon on July 20, 2000. Recent RAND projects that Dr.
