Careers in the Army with low deployment rates?

[Aglahad]

No, it won't. The big promotion discriminators are still much bigger things that the officer has more control over, specifically physical appearance, correctness of file, PME, and evaluations (far and away the most important is evals). Since the Army returned to a blocking system for everyone, that's your discriminator.

Frankly, most of the board will know what the "end of war" deployments meant...lots of FOB time and cleaning up. It's not like some of your peers were commanders in the surge and you were on the sidelines.

Makes sense, I just had my uniform tailored for my DA photo and have been working out incessantly because I have also heard that appearance means a lot for the boards. I also have CCC on deck soon...

As for evaluations, unfortunately our ratings schemes are so screwed up that when I was a PL my CO wasn't even my rater (actually it was one of MY soldiers) and my senior rater was someone who I literally had no contact with. Welcome to AMEDD. That's the only thing that makes me nervous, my 1059s and OMPF file are solid. How common is it for a soldier to contest an evaluation that doesn't even go off of your support form or just doesn't seem to recognize what you have done?

 

[scoutpilot]

Makes sense, I just had my uniform tailored for my DA photo and have been working out incessantly because I have also heard that appearance means a lot for the boards. I also have CCC on deck soon...

As for evaluations, unfortunately our ratings schemes are so screwed up that when I was a PL my CO wasn't even my rater (actually it was one of MY soldiers) and my senior rater was someone who I literally had no contact with. Welcome to AMEDD. That's the only thing that makes me nervous, my 1059s and OMPF file are solid. How common is it for a soldier to contest an evaluation that doesn't even go off of your support form or just doesn't seem to recognize what you have done?

Don't contest that. You're not gonna win. You only contest things that are egregiously wrong, like if you got a do no promote because your Brigade CO thought you were then one who lost the box of C4 when it was really your sister PL or something. You can't contest anything short of egregious **** successfully. You'll just make yourself a lot of enemies.

You're going to be promoted to captain. There is almost no cut. Make sure your HT/WT on your ORB matches your HT/WT on your last eval. Make sure your ORB is straight and your assignment list reads in plain english.

 

[MemberLG]

How common is it for a soldier to contest an evaluation that doesn't even go off of your support form or just doesn't seem to recognize what you have done?

It is what it is so I will share my senior rater philosophy (right or wrong).

Everyone is average until they prove otherwise. For officers that don't deserve an average OER (I.e. COM), I make my comments very plain and down play the potential - CPT X is a good officer, performs well, shows potential to be competitive with his peers.

With the current OER system, senior raters don't have write a bad OER to end someone's career.

Hard to argue against a COM rating whereas easier to argue against a below COM rating with no counseling statements.

 

[Aglahad]

Thanks for the advice gents!