What does recruited mean?
Recruited is the past tense and past participle of recruit. It means that someone has persuaded people to join a military force, organization, political movement, or other collective effort. In employment contexts, it often means to hire someone, especially when an organization actively seeks candidates for a role. The verb is also used more broadly when a business, campaign, or public figure attracts customers, supporters, students, or audience members. “The club recruited new players” can therefore mean either signing them to its team or attracting people to attend its matches, while “a publisher recruited an author” normally means securing the author for a book or contract. Recruited is widely used in British and American English and often carries a practical or institutional tone. It may suggest either willing enlistment, as with volunteers, or deliberate selection, as with highly qualified employees.
verbTo enlist people in a military, political, or organizational cause, or to hire someone to perform a job. It can also mean to attract customers, supporters, or members of an audience.
- To enlist people in a military or other organized cause.
- To hire or appoint someone for a job or role.
- To attract a person or group as a customer, supporter, member, or audience.
"The charity recruited volunteers to help distribute food during the winter."
"The organization recruited more than two hundred volunteers during the campaign."
"The streaming service recruited a famous actor for its new series."
From the Latin root for “new,” the word originally referred to newly enlisted soldiers—people gathered into a fresh force.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does recruited come from?
The verb comes through French from Medieval Latin recruta, a form of recurrere, meaning “to run back” or “to bring back.” The original military sense referred to gathering fresh troops, and the word developed the broader modern sense of enrolling or hiring people for a purpose. English later formed the related noun recruitment and the agent noun recruiter.
Related word forms
How recruited is actually used
The word is common in professional, institutional, and promotional contexts. In British English, “recruit” can be pronounced /rɪˈkruːt/ in military and organizational settings and /ˈrekruːt/ when referring to a newly enlisted soldier; the former pronunciation is standard in the United States for the verb.
Easily confused with recruited
Recruited means to enlist or hire people, whereas recited means to say a poem or other passage aloud from memory.