Ask almost any public-sector hiring manager where time-to-hire goes, and you will hear about applicant volume, slow candidates, or a tight labor market. A new Defense Department pilot points somewhere else.

According to Federal News Network, Michael Cogar, who oversees DoD's civilian personnel policies, said a pilot cut the Army's average civilian hiring time from 161 days to 47. He spoke on October 14 at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference in Washington.

The details matter more than the headline. Work done before a job was posted fell from 40 days to six. The selection phase fell from 18 days to four. Those are the stages most agencies treat as fixed overhead, and they turned out to hold a large share of the delay.

What the pilot changed

The pilot was run by the Army's Civilian Human Resources Agency, Military Entrance Processing Command, and the Defense Logistics Agency. Per Cogar's remarks as reported by Federal News Network:

  • Steps were consolidated. The pilot paired automation with new workflows across each step of the hiring process.
  • AI took on the repetitive drafting and sorting. Instead of spending eight hours a day working across disconnected databases and filling out templates by hand, HR specialists could use AI to generate job announcements, vet resumes, and present a slate of candidates.
  • The goal is a firm offer within 30 days of posting. Cogar said the pilot shows that target is possible.

"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."

There are limits to what we know. Cogar did not say how many people were hired through the pilot or how the results would scale across the military. Treat 47 days as a reported pilot result, not a department-wide benchmark.

Policy alone did not move the number

DoD has also rewritten 11 direct-hire authority policies and delegated some direct-hire decisions to service secretaries and agency directors. But Cogar was clear that rules are only half of it.

"We can write the most forward-leaning policy in the world, but if an operational requirement sits in a queue for 45 days waiting for a position description and another 30 days for a resume routing, policy means nothing," he said.

That problem reaches far beyond the Pentagon. State agencies, counties, universities, and hospital systems all hire through handoffs: a position request, a drafted description, routed resumes, a panel, a decision. Each handoff is a queue. When the queue lives in email, nobody can see where a requisition is stuck.

A scenario public-sector HR will recognize

Consider a county IT department that needs a network security engineer. The hiring manager sends a request in March. The position description goes back and forth by email for three weeks. The posting goes live in April. Applications arrive in a shared inbox, and a coordinator forwards batches to the panel when she has time.

The panel finally meets in late May. The top candidate, who applied the first week, accepted a private-sector offer two weeks earlier. The county starts over.

Fixing that needs no more applicants or budget. The time went to waiting between steps nobody tracked.

Where to look in your own process

The pilot's numbers suggest a practical order of operations for any agency or enterprise TA team:

  • Measure the pre-posting phase. Track the days from requisition request to live posting. If you only start the clock at posting, you are missing the stage that shrank most in this pilot.
  • Find the handoffs. List every point where a requisition or a resume waits for someone else. Each one should have an owner and a visible status.
  • Shorten selection. Selection fell from 18 days to four in the pilot. Look at how long finished panels wait for a decision and a tentative offer.
  • Keep people on the decisions. Use automation for drafting, routing, and scheduling, and keep evaluation and selection with your HR staff and hiring officials.

Where Pereless fits

You cannot shorten a stage you cannot see. Pereless puts every requisition, applicant, and handoff in one workflow, so your team knows where each hire is waiting.

Pereless Systems is an enterprise recruiting suite for large employers and the public sector. It brings job posting, applicant tracking, interview scheduling, career pages, onboarding, and recruiting analytics into one place, with integrations into the rest of your HR stack. Instead of resumes routed by email and status kept in spreadsheets, your team works from a shared pipeline, and recruiting analytics help show how long each stage is taking.

Pereless does not set hiring policy, use federal hiring authorities on your behalf, or guarantee any time-to-hire result. Your HR policy staff and hiring officials own those decisions. What Pereless gives them is a clear view of the process they run.

FAQ

How much did the Army pilot cut hiring time?

According to DoD civilian personnel official Michael Cogar, as reported by Federal News Network, average Army civilian hiring time fell from 161 days to 47 in the pilot.

Which stages improved the most?

Cogar said pre-posting work fell from 40 days to six, and the selection phase fell from 18 days to four.

How many people were hired through the pilot?

That was not disclosed. Cogar did not say how many hires the pilot made or how it would scale.

What is DoD's time-to-hire goal?

DoD leaders are aiming to extend a firm job offer within 30 days of a job's posting.

Does Pereless use AI to make hiring decisions?

No. Pereless keeps job posting, applicant tracking, scheduling, onboarding, and recruiting analytics in one workflow. Your HR staff and hiring officials make the decisions.

Your hiring delays are probably hiding between steps

The Army pilot found most of its lost time before posting and at selection. Talk with us about putting every requisition, applicant, and handoff in one workflow, so your team can see where each hire is waiting and fix it.