View from Canberra: Calling Gen-Y away from Facebook | ADM May 08

1 May 2008

Recruiting the troublesome Gen Y cohort to a life in Defence has been media fodder for the last year or two.

But Defence Force Recruiting is starting to make inroads with new strategies that appeal to the next generation of warfighters.

By A Special Correspondent

A certain mythology has developed in some quarters that the reason defence can't recruit all the personnel it needs is because the caring, environmentally conscious, Facebook-enamoured youth of 2008 are unwilling to be cannon fodder in an organisation intent on dispatching the nation's young away to die in George W. Bush's illegal wars.

So it can come as a bit of a surprise to those of this view that defence and the army in particular have no problem at all attracting young men willing to be riflemen.

Last year the target of 700 positions was 76 per cent over-subscribed.

That means almost twice a many teens are willing to sign on as grunt soldiers than there are positions for them.

So why not take the lot since the long term objective is to grow defence to 57,000 by 2016?

As it stands the principal limitation is in the training pipeline and recruiting can always seek to find a place for the rest, either in future intakes or in other streams.

On the face of it, defence recruiting is actually doing fairly well but this remains a major challenge.

As at early April, defence had recruited 6,142 fulltime newcomers, 280 more than for the same period last year.

Assuming that rate of enlistment continues until end of financial year, defence should easily make its target of 7,200.

But then again it may not because only twice in the last 40 years has defence actually met its recruiting targets and that was in 1991 and 1992 at the height of Labor's Force Structure Review when the ADF was downsizing and targets were 2,100 and 2,700 respectively.

Most encouraging, general entry reserve enlistments were at 112 per cent of the year to date target.

The gap year program, designed to give a school leaver a year-long taste of military life, has proved a winner with 1,500 applying for 700 spots.

There will be more places next year.

The big question is just how many will want to stay on at the end of their year.

Defence has no idea but it expects a lot.

A female touch
One significant development from this program was the number of interested young women.

The highest ever recruiting intake of females for the entire defence force occurred in 2006-07 when they comprised just 17.8 per cent of all recruits.

But 53 of the 100 doing the gap year with navy are females as are a quarter of the 500 going to army and a third of the 100 heading for RAAF.

This suggests female recruiting can be boosted fairly readily with the correct approach, of which the try-before-you-buy gap year hits the mark.

This has all been the product of much deep thought with a female recruitment strategy adopted last year.

This has thrown up some intriguing insights into current state of youth culture.

A proportion of female candidates don't reach the defence fitness standard and in this era of everyone-wins-a-prize education, this can be the first time some have ever been unequivocally told they have ever failed at anything - a stunning and disheartening smack in the chops.

Defence has had to adopt a "there-there, it'll be alright, here's how we can help you through" approach with a pilot fitness improvement program.

In one other area, it appears defence could do some work for potentially useful gains.

A total of 153 males with experience in foreign defence forces joined the ADF in 2006-07 but just three females.

These are all quality already trained people with desirable skills but defence has to tread a little carefully lest it be seen to be poaching from friendly defence forces which can just as easily poach back.

The fundamental shortfall remains in those with special skills including medics, engineers and tradesmen and it's here there's serious competition.

The defence minister has recently commented on mining companies lurking outside West Australian navy bases seeking to buy up specialist techs by offering six figure salaries.

There's not a great deal defence can do to compete with this big money, although there's a trend for some of those enticed away to eventually come back, having made their money and experienced life on the other side.

Something similar appears to have occurred with some special forces soldiers lured into highly paid but risky private security jobs in Iraq.

Defence Force Recruiting (DFR) has invested serious cash in researching the employment tastes of the Generation Y demographic (aged 16-24) and director-general Brigadier Simon Gould reckons no-one does it better.

Out and about
"We are there in the Gen Y space and what we are providing is excellent.

"We are in schools every day of the week, at least 60 of them, which no other employer is doing to that extent," he said.

"We have a structured gap year program which has been highly successful and I suspect it will only become more successful as it become more refined.

"We promote leadership and teamwork with an ADF badge and we have 25,000 cadets running around," he said.

"If anyone else can beat that, I am happy to take advice to improve on our Gen Y stuff."

Brigadier Gould even talks the talk.

Here's his take on the spectacularly successful DFR website, frequently the first point of contact for someone interested in a defence job.

"What other employer has got games on their websites to drag people in, particularly Gen Y. Defence Jobs 2.0 is the hottest website for Australians looking for a job.

"It's big, it's bright, it makes noises."

DFR realises this could be a fleeting lead in what remains a highly competitive business.

The gap year program is a prime example.

"I know we have got a competitive advantage here but we won't keep that competitive advantage beyond perhaps the Christmas after next because other employers will just have to do it," Brigadier Gould said.

So who's the main competition?

The mining companies are often mentioned but they are really only after the most highly skilled.

However every other employer is also after the same bright young men and women as defence, with the advantage that they don't demand particular levels of health, physical and psychological fitness and education.

So the major competitors on numbers are actually sectors - retail and hospitality, followed by IT and communications, logistics and mid-level management.