The IDF officially opened a hotline for new recruits on Monday. The hotline is part of an ongoing attempt to ease the enlistment process. The hotline was the brainchild of Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who initiated the project as Deputy Chief of Staff.
The goal of the hotline is to address recruits' problems and concerns without requiring the recruits to travel or wait to meet IDF personnel face to face, officers explained. Recruits will be able to use the hotline to change their personal profile, request a meeting, change the dates of meetings, or register to try out for a particular type of service.
The phone lines will be staffed by soldiers who have undergone a special five-week course to prepare them for their new task. The soldiers will have access to each recruit's profile, allowing them to see which steps in the enlistment process have been completed and which remain.
While the hotline officially opened on Monday, it was operational for several weeks beforehand, and dealt with thousands of calls each day, in addition to requests made online or via fax. It opened with 45 phone lines. Officials said the average recruit was put on hold for two minutes, and expressed hope that the waiting time would be reduced as more phone lines and staff are added to the call center.
The IDF's 2008 statistics show a need for additional phone and Internet assistance: approximately one million people contacted recruitment offices by phone in 2008, and websites got up to two million hits each month.