Who We work with | Aim High
Engaging a new kind of recruit with the Air Force
Overview
The Air Force Recruiting Services (AFRS) came to Aviture needing an avenue to engage a wider audience and attract non-traditional recruits.
While the initial ask was for three separate applications, Aviture found synergies within the data that led to a single public-facing application that’s part recruitment tool, part career guide, and part social network. This is the Aim High app, a “sister” app to AirForce.com.
Most people do not realize that the Air Force provides career opportunities in diverse fields, from arts and humanities to special warfare. Aim High connects users to this information and builds a network of qualified candidates. In fact, the app also allows users to send referrals to their friends, which further amplifies the Air Force’s reach. This has significantly increased public exposure to Air Force opportunities while widening recruiters’ networks.
The social aspect of the app allows users to share their journey with friends and family – whether in the consideration phase, awaiting training, or going through Basic Military Training or Officer Training School.
The challenge
The Air Force Recruiting Service needed a way to engage non-traditional recruits, expose a larger audience to career opportunities within the Air Force, and arm recruiters with better networking tools.
The solution
Aviture created a feature-rich mobile application to draw in non-traditional recruits, open communication channels for recruiters, and provide a rich, “social media-like” platform to connect candidates with their families and friends.
The outcome
A significant increase in civilian exposure to the opportunities the Air Force provides, a more efficient line of communication for recruiters, and an increase in quality candidates for the Air Force.
Our vision was to make every Airman a recruiter, and it’s pretty amazing that we were able to capture the majority of that vision with the MVP. We have about 700,000 Airmen, and they are not always familiar with how to get someone in touch with a recruiter. Now, with Aim High, we’ve made it easy for them to do that.
Chief Master Sergeant O’Donley
United States Air Force Recruiting Services
Core capabilities demonstrated
CONSULTING
& ASSESSMENT
CUSTOM
DEVELOPMENT
USER
ENGAGEMENT
SYSTEM
INTEGRATION
CLOUD/HYBRID
INTEGRATIONS
The challenge
The United States Air Force wanted an application that would inspire and engage the nation, capture leads, and assess fitment in order to “grow” the Total Force. The biggest challenge with this goal was engaging non-traditional recruits – 17-21-year-olds not interested in joining the Air Force but looking for technical careers, similar to those the Air Force offered.
Most non-traditional recruits aren’t even aware of these opportunities and never engage the Air Force. Currently in the U.S., there are 4.4 million eligible to join the military, but only 465K are likely to express interest.
Aviture knew gaining authority to operate could be a significant hindrance in agile development for the military. In order to create a truly impactful solution, Aviture needed to anticipate potential roadblocks and quickly gain the trust of the AFRS team.
The solution
The Air Force Recruiting Service had a multitude of ideas for engaging non-traditional recruits, but they needed help coalescing these ideas into an actionable vision. Aviture worked closely with AFRS to narrow those ideas into a single application that would attract non-traditional recruits and gather data that would aid recruiters in their efforts to reach qualified candidates.
Since we were targeting individuals who were not actively seeking to join the Air Force, we knew we needed to create an intuitive and accessible application; one in which the information could be absorbed easily and that had built-in ways to grow the user base.
We rapidly produced an MVP and put it in the hands of targeted users, as well as current recruiters and AFRS team members. The benefits of this process were twofold: we were able to develop an application that met targeted user needs and gained authority to operate more easily.
The outcome
The final product is a feature-rich mobile application that effectively educates the 4.4 million eligible recruits of the career opportunities the Air Force offers, thereby generating excitement and increasing propensity to join.
The “social-like” feature of the app allows military training candidates to share photos and connect with friends and family throughout their training. This exposes non-traditional recruits, such as friends of current candidates, to a positive and more-informed image of the Air Force.
Features also allow users to self-register, which gives us the necessary data to create networking lists. These networking lists are immensely useful for recruiters and continue to help widen their network.
Just how intuitive and effective is Aim High at spreading awareness? During development, Aviture tested a feature allowing users to share a download link for Aim High. The distribution list for the test had 25 members. From these, we garnered more than 250 downloads in 30 days.
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