Navy looking to expand AI-enabled pilot for talent management
The Navy has launched a pilot project that uses artificial intelligence capabilities to recommend jobs for sailors, and the service is aiming to expand that effort to a larger pool of personnel, according to a senior official.
Part of the Navy’s ongoing modernization push includes improving talent management.
“If you don’t get the talent right, the technology doesn’t matter,” Ben Kohlmann, assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs, said Tuesday at the Workday Federal Forum, produced by FedScoop.
During his military career, Kohlmann was part of the Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell and the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, among other assignments. He also served as an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot and flew combat missions over Afghanistan, according to his Navy bio and LinkedIn profile. In December, he was sworn into his current job as a senior Navy civilian official.
The sea service has a huge workforce, including more than 200,000 enlisted sailors.
“Up to this point, we’re manually trying to place them [in billets] across the board. So imagine 200,000 people are shifting every three years. It’s very hard to have a high-touch, bespoke experience,” Kohlmann said.
However, junior service members and civilians in Millington, Tennessee — where the Navy has its Human Resources Center of Excellence, Navy Personnel Command, Navy Recruiting Command, and Navy Manpower Analysis Center — have been empowered to develop new apps, he noted.
“One of the apps they created was a matching platform for what they believe sailors want, kind of psychographic profiles … integrated with what their career prospects are. And then, instead of having to reach out directly to these sailors, AI sends them a list of 10 jobs that we think would be best suited for their new billet. Now, the sailor doesn’t have to opt into that job, but now they … know that there’s a higher touchpoint value to what they want to be engaged in,” he said.
“We’ve seen this 40% increase in the number of sailors who have decided to stay for their second term than we have previously outside of this, because that high touchpoint makes these sailors realize the Navy does care about them, the Navy does have a career path in mind for them. You know, they can mix and match two different people on different coasts with different priorities,” he added.
On the sidelines of Tuesday’s conference, Kohlmann told DefenseScoop that the initiative is currently a pilot project.
“The initial email is sent out, 10 roles are given to them [as suggestions], and it’s based on whatever the AI is seeing from their career path, what their preferences are. And then after that they can have the more high-touch experience, and in the app they’re able to put in their preferences and move forward from there,” he said. “This is, again, the self-generated kind of edge innovation that’s happening with new tools. And … there’s an enterprise view to bring this together, and we want to create the space and creativity to let these emergent realities come out.”
Kohlmann told DefenseScoop that “a couple thousand” personnel have taken part in the pilot thus far, and the service is looking to further scale it.
“I think the goal is to expand it once we kind of validate the efficacy. I mean, the numbers are very clear when it’s happening. It’s just a matter of putting it throughout the force,” he said.
