Why Most Recruits Don’t Make It to the Contract — and What Khartia Did About It

In 2024, the Ukrainian National Guard brigade Khartia turned to Lanka.CX with a request: help understand what happens to motivated recruits who drop out of the enlistment process — and improve recruitment conversion.

At first glance, things seemed to be working well: strong call center, solid communication from recruiters, smooth navigation of military bureaucracy, and a high approval rate for desired positions. But it still wasn’t enough.

The Challenge

The question was easy to ask, but hard to answer:Why do motivated candidates not make it to the finish line?

Is the issue in communication, in the process itself, or in barriers invisible to the organization?

Our Approach

Consultants Liza Pidopryhora and Nataliia Fursa designed a service design project that combined several key components:

• Building a detailed service blueprint of the current recruitment journey.

• Conducting in-depth interviews with two key groups:

  • Active servicemen from Khartia;

  • Applicants who had submitted forms but didn’t sign the contract.

• Mapping service gaps and drop-off points using insights from the blueprint.

• Co-creating ideas and solutions together with Khartia’s recruitment and marketing teams.

A special thanks goes to our volunteer researchers — their contribution was invaluable.

Three Decision-Making Scenarios

The analysis revealed three distinct behavioral patterns among candidates:

• Seeking a WIN-WIN: Those planning ahead and looking for a position where their skills will be truly useful.

• Choosing the cool and adequate: Those who act fast but want clarity, modernity, and a publicly trusted unit.

• Following friends: Those who rely on existing relationships and prefer serving alongside people they know.

Each scenario has different motivations, pain points, and deal-breakers.

Insights & Results

We co-hosted a remote ideation workshop with Khartia’s team, generating over 100 ideas. These were later clustered and prioritized, based on urgency and impact.

Through research, we uncovered multiple reasons why candidates drop off — many of which are familiar to anyone working in human-centered design: lack of feedback, unclear expectations, limited information, low trust in key stages, or fear of the unknown.

Khartia has already begun implementing recommendations — from new communication touchpoints to better process visibility and candidate support.

All actions aim to reduce anxiety and return a sense of control to the recruit.

We are not publishing the full content of the research at this time, as it could be used by the enemy. This research uncovered things that actually work — and are already being implemented in Khartia’s recruitment processes. That’s why all findings remain confidential — at least until victory.

In the meantime, Lanka.CX and Khartia are preparing a closed-door session in Kyiv for representatives of other brigades working in recruitment.The goal is to share results, approaches, and reflections — and to co-create better solutions together.

Conclusion

The experience with Khartia revealed this: even highly motivated candidates can disappear into the “grey zones” of the process — not because they don’t want to serve, but because of a lack of clarity, support, and trust.

Together with the team, we mapped those zones to understand where the service was failing — and which small steps could shift the whole picture.When every step is transparent, and people don’t get lost in a fog of uncertainty — recruitment stops feeling like a funnel and starts working like a journey.

To truly see where people get lost in a recruitment process, you need an external lens — and the internal courage to look at your own system critically.

The Khartia team was ready for that.And the Lanka.CX consultants brought tools to help make the complex manageable.