DoD has announced the winner of a national case study competition it held to acquire marketing strategies on how best to recruit native speakers of in-demand foreign languages such as Farsi and Urdu.
DoD, which hires about 80,000 civilians a year, said the competition was part of a wider effort to bring on a younger and more culturally diverse civilian workforce.
The winning team out of the 260 that applied was from the University of Illinois at Chicago. According to DoD, their proposal included a prototype recruiting pitch they posted on YouTube.
The teams were required to develop a comprehensive recruiting strategy focused on identifying citizens who speak a foreign language and possess critical skills necessary to fulfill a variety of DoD civilian positions, DoD said.
The first runner-up was the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the second runner-up was Cascade College, located in Portland, Oregon.
DoD said elements of all the case studies presented could be used in a large-scale national recruiting program, which will be implemented in 2008-2009.
