Army Secretary Mark Esper addresses the Talent Management Task Force he created to overhaul the cumbersome, centralized military personnel bureaucracy.

How should Army officers pursue desired future assignments under the new talent management system, the Army’s Assignment Interactive Module (AIM) 2.0? This article provides an overview of AIM 2.0 and makes recommendations for officers preparing for the reassignment process.

Officers identified to move in the summer of 2019 recently completed the process of requesting new assignments from the Army’s Human Resources Command (HRC). The process for individual officers is almost always opaque, with the officer’s branch manager at HRC occupying a powerful role, charged with doing what is simultaneously best for the Army, unit, and officer. Recent initiatives are pushing the Army, much like the rest of the Department of Defense, to implement personnel policies that emphasize talent management, where vacancies are matched to the particular skills of the employee filling that duty position. Decades of industrial-age personnel policy, required by law in the 1980 Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA), combined with a generational shift in the All-Volunteer Force during the ongoing Global War on Terror resulted in various analysts warning about the risks of “brain drain” and “bleeding talent.”

AIM 2.0, the Army’s latest talent management initiative, seems to be inching the DoD’s largest workforce closer to some of these recommendations. AIM 2.0 is the Army’s bridging solution towards a future talent management concept embodied by the proposed functions of the Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army (IPPS-A). This system is supposed to ensure that career managers are making informed assignment decisions and also creates a market to better match officer talent with organizational requirements.

By using the AIM 2.0 marketplace, the Army attempts to establish a labor market, but the term “market” is somewhat of a misnomer. A labor market refers to the supply and demand for units of labor. In our situation, employees (field grade officers) provide the supply and employers (gaining organizations) provide the demand. Each officer “enters the market” on a specific date and views the “market demand,” which is the list of jobs available to that specific officer. Officers are expected to provide feedback on the market (list of preferences) according to rules set by their assignment manager at HRC. The implicit goal for the online “marketplace” is to match officers’ and organizations’ top preferences with the needs of the Army.

While AIM 2.0 provides officers and organizations the opportunity to identify their preferences for each other through the system, HRC maintains a heavy regulatory grip on the actual function of assignments regardless of individual officers’ preferences. Despite the expressed preferences from each party, career managers still need to account for other factors such as Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) considerations, the Married Army Couples Program (MACP), and branch-specific restrictions such as the infantry’s vehicular/non-vehicular imperative. Though the open market provides officers with greater visibility on the wide range of possible jobs, the branch interventions distort the market-based approach.

Additionally, in this new “marketplace,” there is not a currency to limit or shape either individual or organizational preferences. Organizations and officers are free to request their preferences without imposed costs because there is not an instrumental differentiation between higher or lower utility for each officer or assignment. Because of the absence of basic pricing and lack of resource constraints, information is king.

Ultimately, under the new AIM 2.0 system, the assignment system functions similarly to before, with the only significant change being that officers have more information to consume and analyze before indicating preferences. There are still other centralized, and opaque, protocols which influence the final assignment decisions.

People Are Policy: Moving Towards a Better Talent Management System

Participating fully in the AIM 2.0 project represents an officer’s first opportunity to individually address the “brain drain” challenge. The Army seeks to effectively manage, develop, and acquire talent and has decided that this effort is a critical function to maintain a dominant fighting force. While there are a few things the Army can improve in AIM 2.0 to effectively manage talent and improve the user experience, officers should not abdicate their responsibilities within the current system.

AIM 2.0 facilitates self-identification of knowledge, skills, and behaviors (KSBs) and officers have the responsibility to communicate the value of unique KSBs gained through their operational and broadening assignment experiences. Officers who are unable to communicate their individual KSBs hamper the Army’s ability to inventory the KSBs resident in its 1+ million-person uniformed workforce. Such failures handicap strategies to manage the talent required to maintain the Army’s qualitative advantages over strategic competitors. In short, after years of vocal informal leaders speaking out about the Army’s ignorance of unique KSBs among its workforce, our leadership has listened and acted, but needs individual officers’ to help implement the necessary improvements.

The core strength of the AIM 2.0 “market” is that it provides officers with more information than ever about personnel requirements. Most field grade maneuver leaders in the market for a key developmental assignment can reasonably assume that at least one validated requirement is available at the post they most desire. This means there is always a chance, however small or large, to end up at a highly preferred location. Smaller career fields may have more restricted markets. With AIM 2.0, officers are armed with the information needed to make informed decisions, rather than just providing a blind set of preferences to HRC and hoping for a miracle.

Before AIM 2.0, the key engagement to achieve an officer’s preferred relocation was likely a career manager at HRC. Under AIM 2.0, career managers still maintain their dominance in the process, but organizations have access to more information about each officer and thus have the ability to make more refined decisions about their preferences. Because of the increased availability, and hopefully quality, of information throughout the reassignment process, officers need to participate decisively to make the system work for them. Below are a few tips which can help officers make the most out of AIM 2.0.

How to Land Your Desired Duty Location with AIM 2.0

1. Craft a Clear Communications Strategy: Officers need to craft an individual communications strategy which conveys their value to their preferred organizations. The Army loses when officers are unable to communicate their KSBs to units who may be in need of those specific skills. Officers who request an interview with their preferred organization, understand the organization’s mission, and can clearly articulate their value to the organization will put themselves ahead of their peers who fail to prepare.

Officers pursuing broadening assignments that divert from a typical career path such as fellowships, advanced civil schooling, or joint assignments need a communications strategy even more than those who hew to the traditional path. For example, Brigade Combat Teams sensibly flock to the Army’s CGSC to interview and fill their personnel requirements for Majors because CGSC is the largest supply of officers at that grade. To the authors’ knowledge, there is not an equivalent opportunity for officers in ILE-crediting programs away from Fort Leavenworth. This strategy is economical from an organization’s perspective, but it fails to account for the unique KSBs acquired by the external population that are relevant to specific organizational requirements. Officers in this special population, even more than most, must seek help, ask questions, equip themselves with information, and communicate with prospective organizations to convey their value and interest in serving in that unit.

2. Aggressively Pursue Interviews: Officers should request an interview with their preferred organizations. This is an officer’s first opportunity to highlight his or her value to prospective units. In some cases, like the CGSC model mentioned before, there is a structural mechanism already in place for officers to interview. However, this luxury is not readily available to many officers. For junior Majors seeking assignments following a non-Leavenworth ILE program, correcting for this opportunity cost is truly where an officer’s “network” matters the most. However, all officers seeking assignment must not be shy about reaching out to past mentors who may be able to facilitate introductions to organizational leaders or advocate on their behalf.

Officers who do not interview are missing the opportunity to influence the organization’s decision and thus fail to facilitate a potential “market match” between the organization and prospective officer. At highly desired locations, like Italy or Germany, the assignment decision may come down to organizational preference. If officers have not interviewed with that organization, they will likely not rank highly on the organization’s preferences.

3. Make Your AIM 2.0 Resumé Work for You: Officers must project their value to potential employers through the AIM 2.0 resumé. The resuméis designed to complement the Officer Record Brief (ORB) and help units better match talent with positions. Therefore, an AIM 2.0 resumé should be customized to fit the officer’s desired job requirements, much like a civilian resumé should be tailored to fit individual job applications. Additionally, the resumé provides a crowd-sourced product for Army personnel managers to gather data and make informed talent management decisions. Therefore, if officers want to market themselves, they must identify the needs of their desired organization and craft their AIM 2.0 resumés appropriately.

The typical KSBs expected of Majors transitioning into key developmental positions are easy to find in various places, to include DA Pamphlet 600-3. Using these resources, prospective field grade officers should highlight the work they have completed that separates them from their peers. These areas should account for the officer’s service as a junior officer and during his or her broadening assignments. Those officers who wish to take it a step further, should express in their resumé how the skills or knowledge they gained during their unique broadening assignments prepared them for the specific challenges they expect to face as a field grade officer in their desired organizations.

AIM-ing for an Optimistic Future in Army Talent Management

The Army is moving in the right direction to achieve an enterprise-level talent management solution using AIM 2.0, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Iterative improvements will close the gap between objective and reality, but there are some things that could be changed quickly to improve the experience and boost enthusiastic participation among officers.

For example, instead of seeing each individual validated personnel requirement, it would be simpler for the officers if identical opportunities were grouped by Brigade Combat Team or equivalent organization. In the authors’ experience, there were 83 different assignments in the market, but only 29 real options because of multiple indistinguishable opportunities in some organizations. In addition, locally moving officers should be projected as well, because a failure to do so distorts the information available in the “marketplace.” Adjusting the protocol to incorporate higher priority considerations, such as EFMP and MACP, prior to “market entry” would also improve the experience for each officer. Introducing a comprehensive and logical currency and pricing system to the market would solve some of these challenges, but perhaps adds some potential risks to organizational cohesion that might be unacceptable to Army leadership.

The AIM 2.0 system gives officers unprecedented access to assignment information and that is a distinctly positive development. However, officers have the responsibility to adequately market their experience to help the system make smart market matches. Officers also should continue to use their network and the AIM 2.0 resumé to appropriately market themselves. Future iterations of the AIM 2.0 system and IPPS-A should take into account user experience with the assignment protocol, not just the technical tool, to make rapid and welcome improvements en route to a truly talent-focused personnel management process.

Major Jarod A. Taylor currently serves as a General Wayne A. Downing Scholar at Yale University Jackson Institute for Global Affairs where he is pursuing a Master of Arts degree in Global Affairs with a concentration in International Security. Jarod has over ten years of military experience, serving in the 82d Airborne Division, the 3d Cavalry Regiment, and the NATO Allied Land Command. These views are his own and do not represent the United States Army or the Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @JarodATaylor.

Major Agustin M. Gonzalez currently serves as a General Wayne A. Downing Scholar at Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy where he is pursuing a Master of Public Policy degree with a concentration in National Security. Agustin has over thirteen years of military experience, serving in the 101st Airborne Division, the 82d Airborne Division, and the 75th Ranger Regiment. These views are his own and do not represent the United States Army or the Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter@amdg11b.