Officer assignment in the U.S. Army

In a recent post I discussed the NAS report on the military labor force, focusing on the new Talent Marketplaces, and some of the difficulties they are facing in the Air Force, and (more briefly) in the Army.  

The Modern War Institute at West Point has a related article, published last month, on the implementation of these labor market clearinghouses in the Army, by Major Kyle Greenberg, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Crow  and Colonel Carl Wojtaszek. (They all have Ph.D.s in economics, and are associated with the Army's Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis (OEMA).)

Winning In The Marketplace: How Officers And Units Can Get The Most Out Of The Army Talent Alignment Process 

by Kyle Greenberg, Mark Crow and Carl Wojtaszek 

"Not too many years ago, if the Army had wanted you to have an opinion about your next assignment, it would have issued you one with your duffel bag. The same had been true for units, as well. Leaders at every level largely left it to the Army to fill their formations with individuals based not on talent, but on having the right rank, branch, and availability date. In 2019, this changed when the Army introduced a market into its assignment system.

...

"Officers can greatly influence their chances of receiving the jobs they prefer in the market. Most importantly, moving officers should build their resumes in AIM 2.0. If officers are the engine of the marketplace, then the information they share on their AIM 2.0 resumes is the fuel that keeps it humming along smoothly. Complete and informative resumes allow units to better identify officers with backgrounds or experiences that are a particularly good fit for a specific job or type of work. Surprisingly, though, only 60 percent of officers in last fall’s marketplace took the time to describe their talents within the AIM 2.0 resumes. Choosing not to do so is a missed opportunity as officers with resumes benefited significantly, receiving 40 percent more #1 votes from units than officers without detailed resumes.

...

"moving officers should interview with units they are interested in joining. In a survey given to all units at the end of last year’s marketplace, 35 percent said that interviews were the most important factor in determining how to rank officers in the market. Even though AIM 2.0 is online, the marketplace is designed to facilitate person-to-person interaction, albeit predominately via phone or video conference. Moving officers who reach out to unit POCs and schedule interviews early in the marketplace have better chances of finding the jobs they want than officers who wait for units to contact them.

"A third way an officer can maximize the benefit of ATAP is to submit truthful preferences to the assignment market. While this is not immediately obvious, it becomes clearer once an officer understands how they are paired to jobs after the marketplace closes. The Army uses a deferred acceptance algorithm to match officers to jobs. While that might sound complicated, it is a relatively straightforward process—but one that works best when officers and units submit truthful preferences. ... "officers cannot achieve a better outcome by misreporting their actual preferences, or “gaming the system.” In fact, officers often hurt themselves when they do this. The design is intentional and allows officers to list “reach assignments” without penalty. So, go ahead and reach for that dream job knowing your chances of success in the market will not be diminished. (You can learn more about deferred acceptance algorithms at here or here.)

"There is substantial evidence that officers did not understand this point in the 2019 market. Post-marketplace surveys revealed that 31 percent of officers admitted that they did not place their true first preference #1 in the marketplace. Furthermore, roughly 75 percent admitted that at least some of their preferences were not truthful.

...

"Just like officers benefit if they truthfully preference as many jobs as possible, units benefit by ranking as many officers as possible. Units that rank all of the officers they are interested in will do better than units that only consider officers who rank their jobs #1. 

...

"A second suggestion for units is to put your best foot forward and professionalize your hiring processes. Many officers in last year’s market found little more than boilerplate job descriptions and had difficultly contacting units and scheduling interviews.

...

"Finally, there are several changes the Army should implement to make the marketplace more effective for both officers and units. First, the Army should better educate the force on how officers pair to units. 

...

"Second, the Army should limit the number of “signals” officers can send to units to indicate their interest. During last year’s marketplace, officers adjusted their preferences multiple times to signal interest to different units at different times. This resulted in an unlimited number of signals for officers to use and generated substantial problems. It also frustrated many units who could no longer be certain which officers were genuinely interested in them and which officers were likely to change their preferences immediately after a phone call or interview.

"The Army should give every officer a specific number of “market coins” to be sent to units of their choosing independent of their preference list. This would help units learn which officers are interested in their jobs without requiring officers to repeatedly change their preferences. The method of using signals to quickly identify interested participants has a proven record of making other matching markets more efficient.

************

In an email, Major Greenberg elaborates:

"The Army determines officer assignments through the Army Talent Alignment Process, which is implemented through an online portal known as the Assignment Interactive Module, Version 2.0. Within AIM2, officers can rank jobs they are eligible for and units can rank officers who are eligible for their unit’s jobs. Units are not able to observe an officer’s exact preference for their jobs, but they are able to observe if an officer ranked one of their jobs among the officer’s top 10% of all possible choices.  Likewise, officers cannot observe the exact rankings units give them, but they are notified if a unit ranked them at all. Officers and units are free to interact and adjust their preferences at all times while the marketplace is open. The marketplace closes at a pre-announced time, at which time both officer and unit preferences “lock.” After the marketplace closes, officers are matched to jobs according to a deferred acceptance algorithm (this is still a relatively new phenomenon, as the Army just started testing the DAA last year).

"One of the problems we are noticing is that a large number of officers are not being truthful with their preferences. It appears that units will frequently press officers to rank one of their jobs as their number one choice, and will often make their ranking for officers conditional on the officer’s ranking for one of the unit’s jobs. Army officers can always respond to these requests with cheap talk, but most dislike doing this: maybe because integrity is critical to our profession, or maybe because officers feel there is a reasonable chance they will one day have to work with the unit representative who is interviewing them.  To make the marketplace more safe for officers, OEMA advocates for removing all signals that are a function of officer preferences, but replacing them with a limited number of signals that officers can send to units, completely separate from preferences."

*************

Here's my earlier post:

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

The labor market that is the military: a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine   

"To summarize, the Talent Marketplace has to also become an information marketplace that allows position owners and Airmen to make appropriate information available to each other in order to develop informed, accurate preferences."