Pentagon Pilot Cuts Army Civilian Hiring Time From 161 Days to 47
Official Michael Cogar says an AI-driven pilot combines hiring steps and aims to make job offers within 30 days
By AXY Government Desk ·
Key points
- A Pentagon pilot cut the Army's average civilian hiring time from 161 days to 47, according to Michael Cogar, who oversees the department's civilian personnel policies.
- The pilot combines AI tools and consolidated steps, cutting pre-posting work from 40 days to six and selection from 18 days to four.
- The Pentagon's goal is to make a firm job offer within 30 days of a job being posted, and the Army's 47-day average is still above that target.
- Cogar did not say how many people were hired through the pilot or how its results could be scaled across the military.
- The department has overhauled 11 direct-hire authority policies and has paid more than $1 billion in bonuses to over 90,000 employees it describes as top performers.
A Pentagon pilot program has cut the Army's average civilian hiring time from 161 days to 47, a senior Defense Department official said, and the department now wants to use similar methods across its wider workforce. The official, Michael Cogar, said the pilot uses artificial intelligence and combines several steps in the recruiting process.
Cogar oversees the Defense Department's civilian personnel policies. He described the results Oct. 14 at the annual conference of the Association of the U.S. Army in Washington. The 47-day figure is an Army average. The remarks did not break the result down by job type, occupation or installation, and Cogar did not say how many people were hired through the pilot.
The department is trying to rebuild a civilian workforce that shrank last year. Speeding up hiring is one way to fill the gaps left behind, and Cogar's remarks suggest the Pentagon sees the pilot as a model it can copy. For people who want federal jobs, or who already work in defense offices waiting on new colleagues, the time it takes to fill a position is a practical problem, not an abstract one.
How federal hiring got so slow
To understand why 161 days is a problem, it helps to know how a federal job gets filled. An agency first decides it needs a position and writes a job announcement describing the duties and qualifications. The announcement is posted, usually on the government's USAJOBS job site. Then human resources staff screen applications, check who meets the minimum requirements, and rank the candidates. Veterans' preference rules add another layer, and background and security checks can take additional time before an offer is made. A manager then picks someone, and the offer and paperwork follow.
Each of those steps is designed for a reason. Rules about fairness, merit and veterans' preference are not optional, and they are a large part of why federal hiring can feel slower than private employment. But when every step waits for the one before it, and staff move information by hand between separate systems, days add up quickly.
Time-to-hire is the common term officials use for how long it takes to fill a vacancy. The exact starting and ending points can differ from one agency to another, and the remarks did not spell out how the Army counted its days. That matters when comparing figures across offices, so readers should treat the 161-day and 47-day numbers as the Army's own measure as described by Cogar.
What the pilot changed
The pilot is run by the Army's Civilian Human Resources Agency, its Military Entrance Processing Command and the Defense Logistics Agency. According to Cogar, the group used automation to streamline each step of the hiring process, rather than trying to speed up one step at a time. Cogar said AI analysis tools and new workflows helped cut the time spent on tasks before a job is posted from 40 days to six. The selection phase, when managers choose from the candidates, fell from 18 days to four.
Together, those two stages account for 48 days of the overall reduction, according to the figures Cogar gave. The remaining steps, such as the time between an offer and an employee's first day, were not described in the remarks, so the full gap between 161 and 47 cannot be traced to specific stages from the information available.
For the people doing the work, the change is practical. Cogar said HR specialists used to spend eight hours a day sifting through disconnected databases and filling out templates by hand. Now, he said, they can use AI to generate job announcements, vet resumes and present a slate of candidates to a hiring manager.
"The HR professional ceases to be a data-entry clerk," Cogar said. "They become an elite talent scout, a strategic advisor to the brigade commander and an active manager of the candidate experience."
That description points to a shift in what the job involves. Instead of spending most of a day moving data between systems, a specialist would spend more time talking with managers and candidates. Whether that holds up across the department will depend on training, access to the tools and how well the systems work with the databases already in use.
Why hiring speed matters for national security
For a government employer, a slow hiring process is more than an office inconvenience. Many civilian jobs in the Defense Department require technical skills that private companies also want, and strong candidates often have several offers at once. When a government job stays open for months, the applicant may accept another position before the government can make an offer.
Cogar put the stakes in direct terms. "When a command takes 180 days, or in our overseas theater, 300 days, to hire an artificial intelligence specialist, a cyber operations engineer or an organic industrial-based machinist, we do not simply just lose a qualified candidate to the private sector," he said. "We lose our operational edge."
The three jobs he named cover very different needs. Artificial intelligence and cyber specialists are in demand across government and industry, and the pool of people with those skills is competitive. Organic industrial base workers are different. The organic industrial base is the network of government-owned depots and plants that maintain and repair military equipment. Machinists and other skilled trades there often take years to train, so a vacancy can slow repairs for equipment that the military depends on.
For the public, the effects are less visible but still real. Delays in filling defense jobs can slow how quickly equipment is repaired, how well networks are protected and how fast new projects move forward. Those effects rarely make headlines, but they build up when many positions stay empty at once.
The 30-day goal and the gap that remains
Pentagon leaders are aiming to extend a firm job offer to an applicant within 30 days of a job being posted. Cogar said the AI-driven time-to-hire pilot is showing that the goal is possible.
The Army's 47-day average is still well above that target. The pilot's figure covers the average across the Army, not only the fastest hires, so reaching 30 days would require more cuts to the time between posting and offer. The remarks did not describe what those further changes would be or how long they would take.
Speed gains in hiring can come with trade-offs. Faster screening can mean less time to review applications closely, and a process built around standard templates can produce less consistent decisions across offices. Cogar did not address those concerns in the remarks reported. Any wider rollout would need to show that the quality of hires and the fairness of the process hold up as the timeline gets shorter.
Rewriting the hiring rules
The hiring pilot is one part of a larger effort. Pentagon policymakers are rewriting and simplifying the department's hiring authorities so that leaders at the service and agency level can tailor them to their own needs. Cogar said the goal is to prevent the national security risks that come up when military jobs sit empty.
Hiring authorities are the legal and policy tools that let agencies bring people into government. Some are broad, and others are narrow and designed for particular situations. Direct-hire authority is one of the narrow tools. It allows agencies to fill vacancies in critical fields more quickly, with some of the standard steps used for most federal jobs set aside, when the government has been granted that authority for a specific position or occupation.
Cogar said the Pentagon has overhauled 11 direct-hire authority policies. The changes are meant to give agencies a faster route for hard-to-fill roles. The remarks did not list which fields those policies cover or how many positions they affect.
The approach has a clear logic. A single set of rules that treats every job the same can slow hiring for specialists and entry-level roles alike. Letting local leaders adjust the rules could match the process to the job. The tradeoff is that the department will need to track results across many offices to see whether the changes work evenly and whether any office is using the flexibility in ways that create new problems.
Bonuses and the workforce rebuild
The hiring push comes as the department works to rebuild its civilian workforce after cuts last year, according to Cogar's remarks. Hiring faster is one way to fill gaps. Keeping the people already in place is another.
The Defense Department has also paid more than $1 billion in bonuses, averaging $13,000 per person, to more than 90,000 employees it describes as top performers. Those figures show how much money is being directed toward current staff at the same time the department is trying to bring new people in. The averages are consistent with the total: 90,000 people at about $13,000 each comes to roughly $1.17 billion.
Taken together, the bonuses and the hiring changes point to the same challenge: keeping strong workers while replacing those who left. Whether the combination works will depend on how many new hires actually arrive and how long they stay. A fast hiring process that brings in people who leave soon after would not solve the underlying problem.
What to watch next
The most important numbers are missing from the public remarks. Cogar did not say how many people were hired through the pilot, and he did not say how the results could be scaled across the military. Without those figures, it is hard to know whether a 47-day average reflects a lasting change or a result from a smaller group of positions.
Several signals will show whether the approach is working. The first is the number of completed hires through the pilot. The second is whether time-to-hire for jobs outside the pilot also falls. The third is whether the 30-day offer goal moves closer over time. Readers should also watch whether the revised direct-hire policies lead to more filled positions in critical fields, and whether the people hired under them stay in their jobs.
For federal workers and job seekers, the practical question is simple. If the changes spread, applicants could hear back sooner and get offers before rival employers do. If they do not, the department could still face the same gaps it is trying to close, and the military units waiting on specialists and skilled trades would keep waiting.
Questions and answers
How much did the Pentagon cut Army civilian hiring time?
Michael Cogar said a pilot program cut the Army's average civilian hiring time from 161 days to 47. He said the pilot uses AI tools and combines several steps in the recruiting process.
What is the Pentagon's goal for hiring civilians?
Pentagon leaders are aiming to extend a firm job offer to an applicant within 30 days of a job being posted. Cogar said the AI-driven pilot is showing that goal is possible, though the Army average is still 47 days.
Who is running the Army hiring pilot?
The pilot is run by the Army's Civilian Human Resources Agency, its Military Entrance Processing Command and the Defense Logistics Agency.
What is still unknown about the hiring pilot?
Cogar did not say how many people were hired through the pilot or how the results could be scaled across the military.
Topics: Pentagon, Army civilian hiring, Michael Cogar, Defense Department workforce, AI in government hiring, Direct-hire authority, Defense Logistics Agency
Sources: Federal News Network
https://axynewsglobal.com/article/pentagon-pilot-cuts-army-civilian-hiring-time-from-161-days-to-47