New army recruitment campaign in Britain

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Faced with an increasingly competitive jobs market and frequent bad publicity over pay and conditions, the army is getting ever more sophisticated and corporate in its approach to recruitment.

Re-branded as one-army recruitment, the latest drive will, for the first time, combine recruiting to both the regular and territorial army. Efforts will also be made to attract more women and ethnic minorities by making recruitment, as one officer put it, more customer-focused.

Potential recruits will be encouraged to use an online tool to test their motivational profile and will be enticed by statistics claiming more than one thousand different jobs in the army across one hundred and forty different trades.

The army insists the drive is not a sign of desperation and that recruitment has been encouraging, with another increase in new soldiers last year, though overall, the armed forces remain undermanned.

Rob Watson, BBC News