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Genesis killing military recruiting
A year after Genesis was first used by the military, leaders are acknowledging that the new system has hindered recruiting.
Multiple recruiters on the ground, from different services and locations, are more blunt in their assessments. They say Genesis has ended an applicant’s ability to gloss over or knowingly ignore minor medical issues, such as past use of ADHD meds or inhalers, before signing up.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A Military Times investigation found that new system and old medical records has slowed the pipeline of recruits the services desperately need, further compounding the recruiting crisis:<a href="https://t.co/7DzTm9KSXI">https://t.co/7DzTm9KSXI</a></p>— ArmyTimes (@ArmyTimes) <a href="https://twitter.com/ArmyTimes/status/1645460403500068864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 10, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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However, in recent decades, such practices have become less common. Nonetheless, fudging medical histories has still been a key step on many troops’ path from applicant to recruit, according to a group of active-duty military recruiters who spoke with Military Times.
One recruiter said that “what it takes to get in the Army is, quite frankly, a lot of fraud and perjury.”
Although this criminal practice has largely ceased since the military introduced its new medical records system, Military Health System Genesis, in 2022. This platform, which flags past and present health issues, allows processing stations to review applicants’ civilian medical records, including hospital visits and prescriptions, thereby making it more difficult to hide minor medical issues such as past use of ADHD medication or inhalers before signing up.
In the process, those recruiters say, it has turned the military’s stream of applicants into a trickle and made a recruiter’s already-difficult job even harder. “Nobody says it out loud in the wrong company, but the whole DoD knows that before Genesis we were able to put people through with a lot of different things, within reason, because whatever that applicant decides to disclose is whatever that applicant decides to disclose,” a Marine Corps recruiter told Military Times. “Now that Genesis exists, we can no longer hide things.”
The recruiting crisis has evoked concern among leadership and on Capitol Hill. The Army missed its fiscal 2022 goal by 15,000 soldiers, and the other branches, except for the smaller Space Force, barely made quota or had to pull extensively from their pools of delayed-entry applicants. Officials told lawmakers this month that they expect the shortfalls to worsen this fiscal year. Political leaders and partisan pundits blame today’s recruiting crisis on everything from so-called “woke” diversity training to kids these days being too fat and lazy to cut it. Military brass have blamed an under-educated public, a roaring civilian jobs market and bad perceptions of service fueled by negative headlines.
