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Amid a staffing crisis in the Armed Forces, Army recruiters are using artificial intelligence to speed up recruitment.
Outsourcing company Capita uses artificial intelligence software to process the medical records potential applicants provide when applying.
The development comes after the Defense Ministry admitted that the Army had failed to meet recruitment targets at all its training centers over the past five years.
Capita carries out recruitment work on behalf of the Army under a £1.4bn contract which has been repeatedly criticized by Parliament for leaving the army short of personnel ready to start basic training.
“Face-to-face contact and interaction with active duty personnel will always be at the heart of Army recruitment, but through the use of artificial intelligence technology, some parts of the process are faster, simpler and more efficient,” a Capita spokesperson said.
“We’re deploying these tools to streamline hiring, get people into basic training faster, and help prevent candidates from dropping out.”
The company said its recruiters had to sift through up to 100 pages of medical records, which it said could require “up to an hour” of manual review.
Hope it saves time
Capita confirmed that the entire recruitment process from application to approval currently takes five months. But I hope that new technology can save some time.
Last summer, Capita developed its own artificial intelligence software that its medical professionals use to scan and summarize these records.
A Capita spokesman said this could reduce the time needed to process the medical records of potential recruits by almost a third.
CNN contacted the Department of Defense for comment.
News that artificial intelligence is being used in defense recruitment comes after Capita executives admitted they would “probably” hit just 70 per cent of this year’s Army recruitment target.
Capita Public Service chief executive Richard Holroyd told the House of Commons defense committee in January that his company had been instructed to recruit 9,813 new staff.
“We could end up with 70 per cent of that,” Holroyd told MPs, meaning Capita is expected to fall nearly a third short of its target number of recruits.
Missed target
Army recruitment has been plagued by problems with the Capita contract, which was first signed in 2018.
Earlier this month, the Department of Defense admitted that all of its basic training centers were falling short of targets.
Harrogate Army Basic College, Catterick Infantry Training Centre, Pirbright Army Training Center and Winchester Army Training Regiment were due to start recruiting 44,111 new recruits.
However, only 35,638 started their course, with the typical dropout rate due to injury or voluntary withdrawal being between 20% and 30%.
Staffing shortages could leave frontline troops struggling with manpower shortages, and Defense Secretary Grant Shapps will be forced to “rule out” a resumption of the draft if current shortages persist.
A recent parliamentary report by the Defense Select Committee titled “Ready for War” said the armed forces were facing a recruitment and retention crisis.
The report said the Army was operating at 130 per cent capacity, the Royal Navy had too many missions and not enough ships, while the RAF’s number of combat flights had doubled in the past 12 months.
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