Research for Recruiting Costs

We examined the impact of changing recruit quality and recruiting resources on the first term performance of Navy sailors. We identified two key performance measures: completion of enlistment and promotion rates. We found that education, Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores, and time in the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) affected these performance outcomes. We constructed scenarios to examine how changing these factors would affect first term performance, based on the Navy’s recent history on recruit quality and DEP policy. We found that changing recruit quality had a small impact on completion rates, but a much larger effect on job performance, as measured by promotion rates. When we examined DEP policy, we found that changes in DEP time produced larger changes in first term performance than recruit quality. We compared three alternatives for absorbing a shortfall in recruiting resources: decreasing the size of the DEP, lowering AFQT standards, and enlisting more non-graduates with high AFQT scores. We found that recruiting more high AFQT non-graduates would have the smallest long-term impact on performance.