The Defense Department wants to cut its civilian hiring timeline to 30 days by introducing generative AI into the process.
The Defense Department is looking to slash its monthslong civilian hiring process to just 30 days — an ambitious goal the Pentagon has chased for years — with the help of artificial intelligence.
It’s a steep drop from the 80-day goal the department set for 2025 and 2026, and about three times faster than the average hire in 2024. Hitting that pace would help DoD fill critical vacancies and put it on par with the private sector as it competes for talent.
Michael Cogar, who oversees Pentagon civilian personnel policy, is targeting the 30-day deadline through the department’s Contact-to-Contract initiative, which began as a pilot program in 2023. He described the plan in a recent presentation to the Army’s Civilian Human Resources Agency.
Contact-to-Contract aims to shorten the time it takes to move someone from notice of referral to formal job offer by abbreviating steps like background checks, drug testing and other aspects of onboarding. DoD formalized the program’s guidance for use across the department in 2024, when hiring averaged 92 days.
The Trump administration has sought to integrate AI into a host of combat and back-office operations across the Defense Department to reduce manual labor and improve reaction time. But it’s unclear how DoD might use AI to fast-track hires or what products it would rely upon.
Generative AI will “smash traditional bottlenecks” in the vetting process, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs said in a recent LinkedIn post.
“In today’s strategic environment, slow hiring timelines are no longer just bureaucratic delays,” the office wrote. “They are national security risks.”
The goal is part of a three-pronged approach to speed up the defense hiring process, the office wrote. Cogar’s team plans to end “self-imposed, risk-averse” policies that can slow hiring, while “adhering strictly” to the baseline legal requirements candidates must meet that are set by Congress and the Office of Personnel Management.
The office also pledges to outsource routine administrative tasks to AI so human resources specialists can instead become “high-value strategic advisors.”
Many defense agencies are rebuilding their civilian corps after losing more than 78,000 employees — about 10% of its civilian workforce — as part of the Trump administration’s push to cut federal jobs last year.
In June 2025, the federally funded think tank Rand Corp. argued AI could make hiring more efficient by screening resumes, matching candidates to roles that fit their skills, and flagging what types of jobs DoD will need to backfill next.
Rand’s researchers warned that defense agencies lacked a strategy for adding AI into their civilian workforce management. It would take “significant effort” to clean and standardize DoD’s trove of personnel data before AI tools could be widely deployed.
“Data privacy and security concerns, particularly for personally identifiable information, require careful management,” they added, noting that AI tools must also comply with federal equal employment laws.
AI has reshaped private-sector hiring as firms use it to write job descriptions, sift through resumes and social media accounts, and even conduct interviews. While the technology can narrow down applicants more quickly than a hiring manager, it can also be a poor judge of future performance and may inadvertently discriminate against candidates.
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