Recruiting is hard. These YouTubers may have cracked the code

The next frontier in military recruitment isn’t a high school hallway or a grocery store entrance. It’s YouTube.

For years, Air Force officials have bemoaned the growing number of Americans who are too overweight for military service, have a criminal record, or are simply uninterested in enlisting. Recruiters are struggling to hit the service’s goal for new airmen in what they call the toughest year since 1999.

What’s more, initiatives to build a force that reflects the U.S., with more women, people of color and other minorities, aren’t bearing fruit as quickly as leaders would like.

But airmen who have amassed followings on YouTube, America’s most popular social media platform, told Air Force Times that even after the coronavirus pandemic temporarily shut down in-person recruitment, the military still doesn’t understand what it needs to do to meet Generation Z and Millennials where they are: online.

“They’re always like, ‘Oh, [operational security], we don’t want you to post anything,’” said Capt. Veronica Collins, a medical officer at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, with nearly 10,000 subscribers and more than 1 million views on her YouTube channel.

“Social media is how we get the attention and the recruitment and the diversity,” she said. “They need to break away from that tradition.”

Official Air Force ads portray people who are airmen; YouTubers show airmen who are people.