Leveraging Big Data Analytics to Improve Military Recruiting

"The authors identified ways that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the services might be able to further deploy data-driven outreach and recruiting strategies in their outreach and recruiting processes. Their report summarizes information collected from stakeholders, subject-matter experts (SMEs), and the literature. The authors convened an advisory group of representatives from the services' recruiting operations divisions and marketing programs. The advisory group shared information on strategies, practices, policies, databases, algorithms, and tools. The authors also identified and convened a group of DoD Privacy Program and personally identifiable information SMEs to discuss the DoD Privacy Program, including related restrictions on data-enabled outreach and recruiting. Additionally, they conducted focus groups with military recruiters concerning recruiting practices and challenges at the local level and reviewed business and academic literature describing use of data-enabled practices in marketing and recruiting. The authors discuss barriers that must be overcome and provide actions that DoD can take toward enhancing use of data-enabled recruiting practices; these include evaluating the efficacy and efficiency of such practices" -- Publisher's web site.