From clicks to candidates: How Station10 with Capita transformed British Army recruitment with data and personalisation

The British Army's recruitment journey extended far beyond the website, spanning more than 180 days from first engagement to the start of training. With data spread across multiple systems and offline processes, there was no single view of the candidate journey and little visibility into why people dropped out. 

• Delivered a full Adobe Experience Platform implementation in six months (similar projects typically take 12–18 months)
• Created the Army's first end-to-end Single Candidate View
• Reduced low-quality registrations by 23%
• Generated 4,000+ additional candidate completions
• Saved more than £200,000 in advertising spend through audience suppression
• Improved completion rates by 6% at the recruitment journey's largest historical drop-off point

When Station10 by SQLI began working with the British Army, only one in twelve candidates entering the recruitment journey ultimately reached training. The recruitment process generated vast amounts of data across digital and offline channels, but without a single view of the candidate journey there was little visibility into where people dropped out or what influenced candidates to progress. 

As a result, optimisation was limited. Teams could improve individual web pages and campaigns, but they couldn't answer the questions that mattered most: Why were candidates leaving the process? Which channels attracted the strongest recruits, not just the highest volume of applications? And where would intervention have the greatest impact? 

This was never simply an Adobe implementation. It was the creation of a new operating model that brought together data, experimentation and recruitment into a single, continuous process. 

The first priority was creating visibility. 

Working in two-week sprint cycles, Station10 by SQLI implemented Adobe Real-Time CDP, Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Journey Optimizer, integrating secure Army systems while maintaining strict security and governance standards. The result was the Army's first end-to-end Single Candidate View, connecting behaviour from the first advert interaction through to the start of military training. 

A programme of this complexity would typically take between 12 and 18 months. 

It was delivered in six. 

The findings challenged conventional thinking. Candidates who engaged with all BIPA content were 6.5 times more likely to pass their first face-to-face interview than those who did not. Rather than focusing on generating more applications, the programme shifted towards improving candidate quality throughout the recruitment journey. 
 

That single insight changed the direction of every subsequent experiment. 

Instead of treating optimisation as a marketing activity, the programme embedded experimentation across the recruitment operation. 

Cross-functional teams of analysts, developers, marketers, data engineers and recruitment specialists worked together to test hypotheses, measure outcomes and refine the recruitment journey in two-week sprint cycles. 

Questions became evidence. Assumptions became experiments. Optimisation became part of day-to-day decision-making rather than an occasional project. 

The programme delivered improvements across every stage of the recruitment journey. 

Setting clearer expectations for candidates arriving from external job boards reduced low-quality registrations by 23%without reducing overall candidate yield. 

Testing the timing of communications across email, SMS and WhatsApp identified a window in which candidate engagement was significantly higher. These interventions generated more than 4,000 additional candidate completions above the expected baseline. 
The programme also improved operational efficiency. By using first-party behavioural data to suppress candidates who had already entered the recruitment process from advertising audiences, the Army saved more than £200,000 in media spend while improving audience targeting. 

The team's insight extended beyond digital channels. Analysis identified the Online Medical Questionnaire as the recruitment journey's single largest point of abandonment. Simplifying key elements of the questionnaire, while maintaining compliance requirements, increased completion rates by 6%. This was possible because the Single Candidate View connected online behaviour with downstream operational outcomes for the first time. 

The programme delivered measurable improvements in recruitment performance, media efficiency and candidate engagement. 

More importantly, it changed how recruitment decisions are made. 

Instead of relying on disconnected reports or anecdotal evidence, the Army can now see the entire recruitment journey, understand which behaviours predict success and intervene before candidates leave the process. 

That capability extends well beyond digital optimisation. 

It has fundamentally changed how recruitment performance is measured and improved.