ALO vs Evaluator for interview?

[pv123]

4 years ago a candidate was interviewed/evaluated by their ALO. Now the instructions on kit say the ALO will NOT interview and only an "Evaluator" will be assigned a "virtual" interview from anywhere in the country. Really? Virtual interviews?!

 

[AFrpaso]

I can't give a full justification, but some comments:

The "Evaluators" are also ALOs. Any individual ALO will have a list of applicants that they mentor and a list of applicants that they evaluate. They are trained for both roles. My understanding is that in the past, when the ALOs fulfilled both mentorship and evaluation roles for the same applicant, there may have been issues with eval score inflation. Splitting the mentor and eval roles could help.

Some areas of the country see A LOT more applicants and conducting in-person interviews for those candidates became an extreme task for the local ALOs. Admissions pivoted to the virtual format so that interviews could be distributed across all active ALOs. My understanding is that the interviews are prescribed to be virtual to ensure a common environment across all applicants. We wouldn't want to introduce any sort of bias in the admissions process by having some applicants get in-person interviews while others get virtual.

Yes, in person would be preferred, but the manning simply isn't there.

 

[T-37IP]

They have two ALOs, a mentor ALO who is supposed to be their "mentor' (mileage varies considerably) who can help with the process, answer questions, etc and an ALO who will do their interview and write a report. Yep, the interviews are via zoom, and seem to work well. I am old school and believe in a good old fashion handshake and sit down, but this seems to work surprisingly well.

 

[AF22SIS]

This is not a recent change either; it was implemented in around 2017.