 Alright, so coming up next, we have Chief Master Sergeant Kimmelie Vinson. She is the Chief of the Chiefs Group, Air Force Executive Talent Management Office. She also manages the Command Chief Master, excuse me, Command Chief Master Sergeant Screening Board Process and provides guidance to all senior leaders on the execution of Command Chief Hiran. She has held a variety of positions in the personnel career field and served four years as a first sergeant as well. So without further ado, please welcome Chief Vinson, your next speaker. Good afternoon. So I know some people got in a little delayed like me, so hopefully, like Chief Morris said, hopefully you guys are awake after the lunch you guys had. So I wanted to go over today quickly. I think I have about an hour with you guys to talk about Chiefs Group assignments, hopefully help answer some of the questions that you might have and clear up some of the misconceptions or rumors that are out there. And just real quickly before I begin, my Deputy Senior Master Sergeant Snowden is here also. She's up in the front with me. We'll be here today and through tomorrow. If you guys want to stop in and see us, ask questions, maybe if you have personal scenarios or situations that you have that you might not want to ask questions about later on or just maybe want some one-on-one time, we are available as well for that. So real quickly, I wanted to go over the staff that we have in the Chiefs Group. We are part of Air Force Talent Management Office, as they mentioned in the beginning, so we're part of the A1L office. We report directly to the Air Force A1 Lieutenant General Kelly and I also receive guidance and direction from the Chief Master in the Air Force. Listed below are our individuals in the Chiefs Group staff. And I like to list them down just so you can see really how small our office is, but with the scope and responsibility that the entire staff has. All the people that are listed up there, they take care of all of your assignments, all of your retirements, all of your exception of policy requests. To give you an example, for the 19 Bravo Assignment Cycle, which is the one that just closed out, these individuals up on the board are doing 434 assignments. A lot of it is done by hand matching. So if you'll see your AFC up there, that is your Assignment Senior NCO. So you are free to contact them, you're free to contact me, all of our information including our phone numbers and email addresses are on our SharePoint site and you can absolutely reach out to any one of us at any time. So the mission of the Chiefs Group is to manage Chiefs to meet Air Force needs. What we like to do first off, and our most important role is to make sure we have Chiefs in a valid Chief position. So if you are in a surplus, meaning that you are not in a valid Chief position, it is our goal and our responsibility to make sure that we put you in a valid Chief spot. Personal goals are considered, but really it's secondary to the mission. And really like I said, the mission is to put you in a valid spot. We also make assignment and development decisions, excuse me, and everything is accomplished in an equitable manner. I know that it's in a very small font, but I highlighted it in some of the areas that I thought I really wanted to make sure you understand. Us, along with the Colonel's Group and the General's Group, we handle all assignments based off of national interests or best interests of the Air Force. So when you're talking about waivers, exception of policies, or deviations from policies, it is our office that is the final decision authority when it comes to policy, not for law, but for policy. So very similar to when you were considered for assignments as a senior mass sergeant, you would go through AFPC DP3, which is the policy section. Everything stays within us, within the Chiefs Group. So if there is an exception of policy that needs to be considered, it'll come through to us. Talked about AFPC, so what makes this different? As I mentioned before, everybody that you saw on that first slide with the staff, we hand match assignments. Yes, there is a system that is involved. It's SLICUM, Senior Later Career Management System. That's where you volunteer for your assignment. That is a part of the process, but a lot of the things that we do, we do with hand matching. And at the end goal, like I said, is to make sure that Chiefs are in a valid position. All of the assignment selections are made first by assignment prioritization. What are you volunteering for? What is your one-through-end list that you're volunteering for? The second thing we look at is your career-filled managers' priority plans. Some career-filled vector individuals, but not everyone does that. But if they do, we also have to look at priority plans and how you're vectored. And then we also look at volunteer status. What also makes this different from AFPC, they have different tiers and levels of knowledge, and we are specific to one group. Obviously, this just makes up a portion of the group they're responsible for, the approximately 500 or so of you in the room, but we need to make sure that we take care of the Chiefs that are in the Air Force and take care of our senior leaders. We also need to make sure, too, that we have the right fit for the person into the position that they're going into. And then at the end of the day, we try to get to yes. As I mentioned on the previous slide, we handle all exception to policies, deviations, best interests of the Air Force requests. At the end of the day, we want to say yes. We want to make sure that it's the right fit for you, for the mission, and for your family. That's what we try to do every single time. So they talked a little bit about it in the beginning with some of our roles and responsibilities. Obviously we have our two assignment cycles and two out of cycle assignment cycles. We are the Retirement Waiver Authority. So for those of you when it comes time to retire, if you have an active duty service commitment or something that makes you ineligible to apply for retirement, all of your waivers will come to us for final approval. We take care of all the Command Chiefs selection board, the training course, and the vetting and the hiring process. We are a part of the Chief Orientation that we're having here. And I'm glad that it's one group instead of having it in nine different locations. This is great so we can get everybody together and hear the same brief. We take care of all nominative positions. I brief at every wing group commander course. And I take care of all senior leader development course selection. You have to excuse me, I caught a cold on the way down here. So I'm going to be getting some water in between. I'm an advisor on the Air Force Senior Enlisted Leader Council. And we take care of all promotion board panel selections and along with the Chief Grade Review. So I want to talk on the Chief Grade Review real quickly. When I go to the wing and group commanders courses, it actually brings up a lot of discussions. So if you're not aware, by annually, the Air Force as a whole racks and stacks from a one through endless of all the Chief Master Armed Positions in the Air Force. Every time we do this, we have over executed on the number of allowed Chief Master Sergeant Grades. So with my office along with the manpower agency and half A1M and the MAGCOMs, the CFMs, the MAGCOM Command Chiefs, we take a look at all of the Chief Grades that are in the Air Force. And at the end of the day, there are going to be some Chief Positions that fall below the cut line, which means they may be downgraded to Senior Master Sergeant position. But it's very important that if you're not aware of this process, you become smart about it. Your MAGCOM A1Ms, your manpower folks, they're already really deep into this year's cycle, the 2020 Chief Grade Review, but it's important that you know what your job is, you understand what your position description says. Because your position description that you're sitting in as a Chief is what the board looks at when they determine whether or not your position is going to remain a Chief Position or possibly fall below the cut line. So this year, as I mentioned, A1M is already deep into the process. They have their first suspense, which is one march for them to get all of the position descriptions uploaded into the manpower system. The manpower folks along with the AFSELC and Chief Master on the Air Force are going to meet on the 16th of April to look at some of the positions. And if we have to have a full board, it'll be in August. So this is just a very long cycle, but I want you guys to be aware that this happens. The colonels do the same thing, but it's a biannual review, so they'll do it again in 2022. Okay, so real quickly by the numbers, I talked about there's about 500 of you in the rooms. But the folks that you saw on the screen, they help over 3,000 active duty Chiefs. We have 181 Command Chief Positions, 33 Joint Positions. And as of about a week and a half ago, we had 11 Chiefs with an approved higher tenure extensions. So I really just wanted to make you aware of 3,000 is a large number, but it's not that large when you consider everything that has to be done. So as I mentioned before, we have two primary assignment cycles. So these states should look very familiar for you. How many of you guys had to volunteer for an assignment this cycle because you were notified that you were a surplus? All right, yeah, lots of hands. That's good. All right, so you guys are very familiar with this process, right? So what we're doing right now, you'll see the dates on the screen. So this is for the 19 Bravo cycle, which just closed out. So what the team is doing right now is by the 1st of March, anyone that volunteered for a SIP position or Commander Involvement Process Position, which means it is a, the commander has to decide who they want to interview. All of those names were sent to the MAGCOM A1s by the 1st of March. Those hiring authorities for the SIP positions have until the 8th of March to notify us who they wanted to select. And on the 1st of April, no sooner than the 1st of April, I'm going to foot stop, no sooner than the 1st of April, all assignments will be loaded. So we have these dates out there on our SharePoint site and some other locations also in Slickums that you can see these dates. And at the end of the slide, I'm going to go through a lot of the frequently asked questions, but probably the first question I always get is, what is my assignment going to be loaded? One April. One April assignments are going to be loaded, okay? So you see that once we get done with the 19 Bravo cycle, we were right into the 19 Bravo out of Cycle, Cycle, that's kind of where it's saying that twice, with the validations due in April and then we're going to match in May. So the team, the small team that you showed, that you saw from the screen is busy all year long doing assignments and matching assignments throughout the year. Okay? Okay. So as I mentioned in the beginning, a lot of the stuff that I'm going to talk about, you guys may have already seen the answers or know the answers to this. I got all the information out of the Chief Handbook. So hopefully when you guys all made Chief, you got an email from me. I worked with AFPC to get each one of you an email directly to help you answer some of the questions and also get you a link to the Chief Handbook. So everything that I'm going to talk about isn't the Chief Handbook. I also authorized to be streamed, so I think I'm being streamed right now. You guys can also go back and get this information if you didn't write it all down while I was briefing. So I'm going to go through some of the most common questions that we get, try to answer the questions, and then at the end, if there's something that I didn't answer, let me know. So first I'm going to talk about 365 deployments. If you volunteer for and get selected for a 365 deployment, we will not backfill your position. That is different from a PCS. So if you go on a 365 short tour PCS, we will backfill your position. But if you go on deployment, we will not backfill you. Second thing I talked about, Commander Evolvement Process Assignments. Those are the positions where you normally have to have Chief on for 12 months. If not, is there an exception to policy that's required? Those positions require unique skills or considerations of more than one AFSEs. So think of your group superintendent positions. Those are most of your CIP positions. CIP positions, however, are not by name requests. When we send a list of the hiring authority, we will give the hiring authority a minimum of three names for them to consider. Some jobs have a lot more volunteers than three names. I think this cycle, the most volunteers we had was 65 for the MSG superintendent at Spangdalam. So if anybody wanted to go to volunteer for that job, you were one of 65 names that we received volunteers for, right? 65, that's one job. So and as I mentioned, that's hand match. My folks have to go through that and review it. But for those CIP positions, as I mentioned, it's a minimum of three names. We try to give the hiring authority an average of 10 names. And I'm going to say average because it kind of ebbs and flows. So what they do is for all CIP positions, the assignment senior NCOs look at a couple things. They're going to look first to see who volunteered, who's eligible to for that job. Because we have people that volunteer for jobs, they meet absolutely no qualifications for. We have jobs last cycle that they required flying experience and people were volunteering that were a personalist or finance. So they obviously didn't meet the qualifications. So once they make sure that people are qualified for CIP positions, they're going to next look at who are mandatory movers, who has to move, who's got a deeros, who is a surplus. As I mentioned, we want to put chiefs in a valid position. So people that have to move, we want them to get a job, right? We want you to get a job. And then also we're going to look at to make sure, do they meet the qualifications for a CIP, meaning have they had chief on yet for 12 months? If they haven't, there's always an exception of policy where the hiring authority can request someone in particular that volunteer. But those are the things that we're going to look at. So once those names go to the commander or the hiring authority for the CIP positions, then they come back to us. But that's the basic premise of a CIP assignment. I get a lot of questions of why if I'm a local hire and I volunteered for a CIP was my name not forwarded. Couple reasons. Number one, there were probably more than 10 volunteers, which means you didn't make the initial list. Because honestly, if you were a hiring authority, you probably wouldn't want more than 10 names to consider. If you're interviewing someone for a position, 10 names is a lot to look through. And we really don't want to overwhelm individuals. Number two, if you were not vectored, even if you're a local hire, if you are not vectored by your CFM for a CIP position, then we will not forward your name. So really, those are the two reasons why people's names do not get forward for CIP positions. So the next thing to talk about is cross flow positions. So these are positions where they are opening up the aperture on AFCs that they will allow. And really, it's to move AFCs from an overage career field to a shortage career field. So a really good example, as I mentioned, they mentioned the beginning of them in Personnelis. So I'm a part of the 3F family. A lot of the 3F jobs, they have opened them up to anybody with a 3F AFC can apply for the job. This also goes for some of the maintenance AFCs. Sometimes they were cross flowed 2A5s, 2A3s, and 2A6s into different positions. And for the medical AFCs, they can cross flow as well. But you have in slickums, you can click a button that says, do I want to view our cross flow positions? And you'll say yes. And it'll show you all the positions as well when you're volunteering that allow cross flow. As I mentioned before, my team is going to look at to see if you're eligible. If the job does not say that a cross flow is eligible to apply for the position, and you apply for it and you don't meet the qualifications, then obviously we're not going to forward your name or mark you as eligible for that job. So please make sure you're looking at the job ad when you're volunteering for positions. It really should tell you all the information in there. I think I had a phone call this cycle, and the question was, it doesn't say that cross flows are accepted, but can I apply anyways? I always saw them, you can apply, but you're not going to get hired for the position. I've had people apply for 18 positions. They were probably only eligible for five. Second one from the bottom is nominative positions. Those were just talking about your COCOM, senior enlisted leaders, career field managers, and your half positions. And then the last thing I want to talk about on this slide is high school deferments, joint spouse assignments, and humanitarian assignments. We as a chief group, we do approve the exception of policies, but there are certain things we are not experts on. The first one will be humanitarian assignments. So for all of those things, high school deferments, joint spouse, and humanitarian assignments, you will request those assignments the same way that you did as a senior mass sergeant. You will go into virtual MPF, you will apply for those, one of those three assignments, and they will come up to us for final approval. There's nothing special that needs to be added. AFPC knows to forward the request to us. However, you still need to provide the same documentation. If you are applying for a high school deferment, you need to have the information from the guidance counselor. You need to have the form from Dears to verify that the high schooler is your dependent. If you're applying for humanitarian assignments, you need to have the information from the medical provider or from the individual to verify that you have a humanitarian condition or need. We are not doctors at the chief group. We don't have any sort of medical experience, so we rely on AFPC to let us know whether or not it is a valid humanitarian request, but it still comes up to us for final approval. So there's nothing different or nothing special when it talks about those three types of assignments. Okay, so I talk about some of the stuff about applying for assignments. Some of the questions I get from commanders is, I have a chief and they've been here for a long time. How do I move them? I mean, so there's a couple of reasons why people want, why they want to move a chief, right? First one is pretty easy. It could be because you've been on station for more than three years. Commander might get into place. You might be a squadron superintendent, group superintendent, and they're gonna say, hey look, this chief has been here for about five years. I think they're doing a great job, but I think they've probably been here too long. What do I need to do? They get ahold of us and they request what's called a fresh expertise request, fresh expertise move request. It comes up to us. Once we validate it, we will go ahead and mark you as a, I say mark, but we will update your record as being a surplus and a mandatory mover and then we will move you in the next assignment cycle. We really want, if you're a fresh expertise for you to volunteer for an assignment, if you don't volunteer for an assignment, we will find an assignment for you. It is not a bad thing to be marked as a fresh expertise and hopefully you have a discussion with the commander that is marking you as a fresh expertise and hopefully you just have some frank conversation about what is going on. But really it's just an opportunity for the commander to come in and go, hey look, this chief is doing a fantastic job, but I think it's time for them to move on to some other place. Okay, so now we're gonna talk about non-standard movement. Non-standard movement is different. A non-standard movement is a request that comes up to us after a chief has had either some sort of disciplinary actions or some administrative action against them. This is not a good thing, obviously. It's something that we work very closely with the MAGCOM Command Chiefs on. We do not approve any non-standard movement requests without concurrence of the MAGCOM Command Chief because honestly if you're a chief and you have some admin actions pending against you then they need to be aware of it. So we get those, we've had, since I've been there in October, I think I've had five of them already. So this happens. It's unfortunate when it happens, but it happens. So it's a way for us obviously to move an individual as well after they've had sort of admin actions. I will have a caveat though for the non-standard movement. These individuals don't normally remain in the same MAGCOM because we do not like to move individuals that had some sort of admin actions outside of that MAGCOM unless there's concurrence from the gaining MAGCOM. The last area I wanna talk about real quickly is the difference between a surplus and a must-mover. I talked about it quickly and asked who had to apply for an assignment. You are considered a surplus if there are too many chiefs on the installation and not enough valid positions. You are considered a must-mover if you have a DEROS or an assignment availability code that is expiring. So they both mean that you have to move but the reason why you have to move is just a little bit different. So some people get those two terms confused. Okay. So this is what I consider my top 10 list, right? These are the questions that since I've been in the seat, these are probably the most questions that I get asked. So I'm gonna explain them and hopefully answer your questions and hopefully we won't see these questions out on Facebook or something else because I have people going, hey, what is this? I see this out here on the chief spouse page. What's going on here? So I'm gonna go ahead and go through my top 10, top 10 frequently asked questions and answer your questions and I think I'll have time at the end as well to go through any questions that we have here in the auditorium. Okay. So the first question I get, I volunteered for an assignment, did I get it and when will I know? Well, I talked about it on the previous slide, right? When will the assignments be loaded? Right, so one April, you should get a notification that says, congratulations, you have an assignment. If you don't see something by the 2nd of April, then you didn't get an assignment. So there could be lots of reasons why, right? You could be in a career field where there's just too many chiefs in the career field and not enough positions. The three Delta community is a great example of that. I think that you guys are at about a 100, 15%, maybe 115% manned. If you are over man in a career field like that and we don't have anywhere to put you and you didn't volunteer for enough positions or maybe a distant lineup to where you volunteered for a SIP or some other cross flow position you didn't get selected, then you won't get an assignment. And that just means the next cycle, you'll be notified that you're a surplus again and then you'll volunteer. And then we will load an assignment when the next cycle comes through. So it's not a terrible thing, but the 1st of April is when all the assignments are gonna be loaded. If you call us on March 31st, we're gonna tell you that you have to wait till the 1st of April and that's when you're gonna get your assignment. However, if you volunteered for a SIP and you get selected for a SIP, the hiring authority will probably notify you that you got selected. So, but until the assignment is loaded, it is not firm, okay? So my folks, like I said in the 1st of April are gonna be loading 434 assignments. Can I apply for a cross flow assignment if my AFSC is not listed? Yes, but you won't get the assignment. So if you are a two alpha and the two alpha three and the assignment says cross flows are not accepted, you probably don't wanna apply for it because you're not gonna get the job. I got tagged as a surplus when my AFSC is not correct, how do I fix it? So this is a really good question. So we had about three people this cycle that had an issue like this. So they moved either in and out of a special duty, say they were a nine golf or eight F, they were a first sergeant and they were not looking at their records and looking at their AFSC or someone dork something up. So their control AFSC was not correct. If you remember, for us, personnel 101, we do assignments based off of your control AFSC. So we used your control AFSC to determine whether or not you're gonna be a surplus, whether or not you're, what percentage your AFSC is for manning, that's what we look at. So if your AFSC is not correct, then, and we actually mark you as a surplus, you need to let us know. But how do you fix it? You get with your FSS and have them update your AFSC. Okay, number four, how do I volunteer for an assignment? The same way that each one of you did this cycle, right, two slickums. Do you need to email us? No, you don't have to. Probably about two years ago you did. Back before we implemented slickums as the assignment, for the assignment cycles, we had everybody have to email their assignment senior NCO, but I'm glad we stopped that because we have so many people volunteering for so many jobs. It was just overwhelming for us. So if you apply through slickums, then we will get notification. All of us can go on there and see, yes, the MSG superintendent position at Spain Nalm has 65 volunteers and yes, your name is on there. So that's how you volunteer for an assignment. Number five, this is a really good one. I want to get to move to retire to PCS or do X. How do I get to yes? What I'm gonna tell you first off is be honest. We have people that like to call us and either give us a very short exception policy request. They beat around the bush. They don't give us the full answer. And until we start digging, either myself or senior master in snowing, we don't know what you're trying to ask for. One of the reasons why we put all of our names out there and our phone numbers and email addresses is because we want to talk to you and hear what's going on with your situation. But if you say I want to retire because my career field is over man and I have been the longest serving chief in my career field, so I should retire. Nope, you have an active duty service commitment that is not approved. Oh, but did I tell you about the situation, the medical situation with my daughter? Did I tell you about the issue that's going on right now with my in-laws? Did I tell you about this? Did I tell you about that? No, but we need to have that conversation. So tell me what you're trying to do. I will tell you if it will be approved. But remember, things that you're applying for and things that you're talking about, it needs to be if it's a best interest of the Air Force or hardship request. It needs to be something that is not unique to other individuals. It cannot be about your spouse's civilian employment. Absolutely understand that that is a huge issue. But that is not something that is not unique to other individuals. It cannot be about your children's schools. That is not something that is not unique. If you have a terminal illness in the family, if there is a severe medical condition, if there is something going on that is not unique to other individuals, please let us know. We need to have that conversation. I do not want to delve into HIPAA issues or any sort of privacy violations. But if you do not tell me the situation that you have going on at your home, then I cannot help you. So I'm gonna reiterate that and footstomp that that we need to have an honest conversation. I mean, you also need to have that honest conversation with your supervisors, with your command chiefs, and with your wing commanders. Because for every exception of policy requests that we require, it needs to be approved by your senior raider. We will not approve anything for an exception of policy without written concurrence from your senior raider. Okay. Number six. Why do I need to get a written exception of policy? Because we don't do bro hookups. I don't do anything because we used to be friends when I was an airman or because you know someone. Really, it goes back to what I said about number five, having the honest conversation. If your senior raider does not know what is going on with you, then that's probably a problem. We need to know written on paper, something that we can file, and that if there is ever an issue or a complaint or a request as to why something was approved, we have it written. I cannot just blindly make exception of policy approvals or do something because I feel like it's the right thing to do for that day because I may have known you 10 years ago. Okay, I need to have this written down on black and white. I feel that we're absolutely, like I said before, we try to get to yes, but I cannot do it based off of a phone call. I cannot do it based off of an email. I need to have something signed so that I can refer back to it because if it was anybody else, you would want to know as well that people are backing you up and they would sign their name to the request that you're asking. Number seven, I volunteered for a SIP position. Why wasn't my name forward to the hiring authority? As I mentioned before, SIP positions, we have a minimum of three names that will forward and we'll bought a maximum of about 10. So a couple of things I'm gonna reiterate again. If you weren't eligible for that job, if you didn't meet the requirements, if you weren't vectored for that position, if you are cross flow and the cross flow is not approved, those could be some of the reasons that your name was not forwarded for a SIP position. We will accept exception of policies for a SIP position. So what I've had this cycle is a lot of, I won't say a lot, probably about five or six individuals say, hey, this person is a local hire, why didn't I see their name as it come up on the SIP position request? We will accept exception of policies if people are local and they are the best person for that job. As I went back and I'll go back to slide two where I said that we do everything in the best interest of the Air Force and exception of policies, we will absolutely work with you for those requests. Number eight, why do chiefs in an overseas area have to complete 75% of their tour? Okay, who read the chief's handbook that when you got, oh, this is great. Okay, so there was a little blurb in there that we changed not that long ago. So when I came in the office, one of the first things that I saw was overseas assignments, we weren't getting enough volunteers. Seriously, like I'm talking really good assignments that I would want to go to, Kadina. We weren't getting enough volunteers, we were having some non-volunteer people. But I also realized too when I walked in that we were limiting chiefs to only two overseas assignments back to back. So that was a very manual process because my team was having to look through everything to see, okay, how many overseas tours have they completed, know what they've done too, maybe one is a senior mass sergeant, one is a chief, so they can't go to another chief assignment. And then they say, oh, got into the lights. Okay, and then they say, so we have people we have to non-volunteer for, who hit the lights back there? So we have people we have to non-volunteer people for, and then in addition they were having to limiting the amount of tours they could do back to back overseas as a chief. So I went in there, I had a discussion with the team, I had a discussion with A1P and I had a discussion with USAFE and PACAF and said, what can we do to make this better? First off, I wanna stop non-volunteering people to go on an overseas assignment. If people wanna go and volunteer to go overseas, whether or not they've had two overseas short tours back to back or five, if they're eligible and they wanna go, then we should let them go, okay? But at the same time, I cannot have chiefs in an overseas assignment leave quickly. Cause what was happening is people were getting to the overseas tour, maybe they volunteered, maybe they didn't, but they were volunteering for another assignment 12 months after they got there. And as you know, you can PCS as a chief after 12 months. But we were having too many chiefs volunteer after sitting in the overseas assignment for only 12 months. So as you know, this leads to a loss of continuity within the unit. We spent a lot of money to send people overseas. It normally takes a while for folks to get settled. There's a lot of extra stuff that has to happen in an overseas area. So how do we fix this issue? What can we do to at least make this better for the overseas locations and really try to help them out? So what we implemented was chiefs have to be in an overseas area and have to complete 75% of their tour before they can PCS. We are not doing that because we are not trying to punish the folks that are in an overseas area. I've gotten that question before. But what we're trying to do is build some stability overseas. When we take people out of the overseas area, there's so much that goes into it and you guys know this. You talk about medical clearances. You talk about everything that's involved to get folks overseas. If people are rotating out of there after 12 months, it is very hard to get people in there, especially if we don't have the volunteers that I need or that we need to get people into those overseas locations. So starting with this last cycle, you have to have 75% of your tour completed within the assignment window. So for this cycle, I'll give you an example. The report dates for this assignment cycle were July to December of 19. Sometime within this assignment window, you must have 75% of your overseas tour completed to volunteer for an assignment. To volunteer for an assignment. Doesn't mean that you won't get picked as a non-volunteer, but to volunteer. It really has to bring stability to the unit, to your family and to the overseas area. We do exception and policies. We will waive this if you're volunteering for a nominative or a SIP position, but we will only do that if you have concurrence from your MAGCOM command chief. If you don't have concurrence from your MAGCOM command chief and you haven't completed 75% of your tour and your overseas, don't volunteer for an assignment. Don't volunteer for an assignment because you will not get one. We will mark you as ineligible to move and you will have to compete for an assignment during the assignment cycle where you have completed 75% of your tour. I have been asked if we want to do something and change how we do the assignments for CONUS. As of right now, we haven't made any changes, but I will always up to more discussion. But really, this was a decision that was made between my office, USAFI and PACAF and really how do we keep chiefs stable in an overseas environment when we just don't have enough volunteers? So it is not to punish folks that are overseas. Really jealous of the folks that are at Kandina because I always wanted to go there. Okay. Number nine, my friend is not marked as a surplus. I use friend in air quotes. My friend is not marked as a surplus. Here's his name. He's my friend. Right? Why am I marked as a surplus? Okay, sir. Number one, I am not gonna talk to you about your friend's record. However, I will tell you that the folks in the office, they do a very good job of screening people. We do make mistakes. We are human, but I can guarantee you that it's probably, both of your records are probably correct. So trying to figure out why someone is marked as a surplus and why you're not or vice versa or how come he's more eligible to move and I'm not, what's going on? If your friend has a question, tell your friend to call us. Well, we'll gladly answer and pick up the phone and answer that question, but please don't call us and ask us why someone else got an assignment, but you feel like the two of you are equal and that the two of you guys should be considered equally. Just have your friend call us. I know that discussions are had and everyone knows about what everyone's short tour return date is and who's more eligible to go on an overseas short tour and the last time that someone got back, but you guys can have that discussion, but please don't call us and ask us why the other person was marked surplus and you're not. So I will caveat this discussion. A lot of times people are asking, why do we look at chiefs and chiefs selects the same when we talk about surplus status? Because once you become a chief select, you fall under our assignment rules. So we're gonna look at you as a chief, whether or not you're wearing chief or not, because that's how you get an assignment from us. So after every chief release, we look at the entire, we look at the installation, we see how many valid chief positions there are and how many chiefs and chiefs selects there are on the installation. The individuals with the longest time on station, those are gonna be marked as a surplus, whether or not you were a chief or a chief select. Okay? I see some heads going up and down so I think you guys are picking this up. Okay, number 10. Can I swap my assignment and surplus status? No. No, you can't. We are, like I said, we look at every single person's record individually. If you got picked as a non-volunteer for an assignment, it's for a reason or if you are marked as a surplus, it's for a reason because you've been there longer. I have done one exception of policy, one for surplus status. There were four days between the two people, four days difference between the data arrive station of the two individuals that they were considering. Four days, not four months, not four years or whatever. Four days. And there were some family issues and there were some other things that had to be considered. That is my one and only surplus swap that I've done so far. But other than that, we do not swap assignments. If you got non-volunteered for an assignment to go to base X and you call me up and you say, but my friend, chief so-and-so over here, really wants that assignment, can you swap with us? No. Number one, because I don't know if chief so-and-so really wants that assignment or if you're just calling me up and telling me that because you don't want to go. Because that could happen, right? I mean, if you got someplace fabulous like, I mean, Holloman, I was at Holloman for two years. So if you got someplace fabulous like there maybe pick a base that maybe you're just really not interested in going to, I don't know if your friend really wants to go on that assignment or if you just don't want to go. So I don't know, but no, we do not swap assignments. We do not swap surplus statuses. We do not swap anything to do with assignments. We just, we don't. So sorry. Okay. So now I'm gonna talk a little bit about chief development. As I mentioned, one of the things that we do is senior leader development within the office. So there are courses that we work with A1D. Excuse me, A1D. And we send chiefs to different courses throughout the United States. And your MAJHOM command chiefs takes care of selecting individuals to attend some of these development courses. All the courses that I have listed up there, that's not all of them, but it's the majority of them. You can see the entire list on our website and in the handbook as well. But if you go to these courses, you have to have two years of retainability upon graduation date to complete the course. I think obviously some of you already went to the senior enlisted legal orientation course here at Maxwell, but these are great courses. So if you have the opportunity to attend these development courses, please do so. Okay. So I went through that pretty quickly. I did that in 41 minutes. I think I have about 10 or 15 minutes to go through questions. But if I can help clarify something that I went through that maybe you just didn't understand. I think so too, because I know that every day in my email boxes is blowing up like 50 emails of, hey, when am I getting my assignment? One April. One April. Oh, the question right there, perfect. Hi, afternoon, chief. Good afternoon. I was Chief Thompson. I'm from Med Group of Red Scott. So our question, you said hiring authorities tend to get minimum of three. You try to keep it to around 10 candidates. So just because you get an email from Slickham saying that you were forwarded as a candidate doesn't guarantee you an interview. Is that a good assumption? Hiring authority, might you just look through them all and say, you know what? I'm just gonna interview these three. So that email from Slickham shouldn't make you feel any good. Well, no, it shouldn't make you feel good. No, we're all special, Chief Thompson. We're special, we're special. I know it shouldn't make you feel good, but that is correct. Because we tell the hiring authorities they have the option to do a records review when they determine if they wanna select individuals they can do an interview. A lot of people will do an interview, especially when you're talking about these large organizations. We talk about group superintendents. A lot of them will do an interview. But yes, you are special because your name was forwarded. Yes, so, but yes, that does not necessarily mean that you will get an interview. I had a Chief senior by Sergeant Chris Craig on the 82nd Convo Collider Superintendent out of Shepherd. So I was not involved in that job. It's a vectored KLP job about six months ago, made Chief and now I'm surplus. No other 3D Chiefs slots on base. Are there any special considerations taken for that type of thing? You know, we talk about stability in the units and things like that, but I've only been there six months and here we are possibly maybe not getting assignments since we are over manned and I talked to CFM. He says I'm way down on the list, but there's really no transparency or waiting for me to know that in the end. So I'm really just waiting until one April. But are there any considerations taken for that? Yes, because there's always an exception of policy. I will say that. If you're in a position that requires longer stability, I just worked with AFSOC on this. They had a Chief select that went into a very, very specialized position that required language skills. They're standing up a special ops school over in Europe. I have agreed to hold them over longer than this assignment cycle. But there's got to be a specialized or a specific reason why you will not move the cycle or why we need to keep you in that position longer. Are you shaking your head? That's not happening with you? Well, there's really no special skills. I mean, it was just a KLP. So we got one with that skills special and with no special skills. Really? No, I mean, really, it's just a senior master or superintendent. Got it, OK. So nothing special, but. Right. So for you, so for those that are in a surplus career field, what I recommend is really look at their cross flow positions that are advertised for the cycle. Go ahead and throw your name out there and see if it's, I don't know if maybe used to be a shirt before, or volunteer for an eight tango for an instructor, or look at the nine series or eight series positions. If you're in a surplus career field, look at those and see what is appealing to you and your family and volunteer for those. Don't limit yourself to just your own AFSC. Because if you're in a surplus, it's very difficult sometimes for us to find you an assignment. Yeah, well, there's definitely some jobs out there I wanted. But it's just kind of the whole not knowing piece of not knowing if I'm leaving or not. Right, so one thing I didn't talk about was when I talked about the dates. I said March 1st, we send the names out to the hiring authority. March 8th, we need to have all the answers back on whose RAC, their community of choice is one through whatever. We complete all of the CIP positions first. We get all those jobs hired first. And then we move on to the functional assignments next. So it's very important that the hiring authorities, when they get the list of names, that they stick to those positions. Because if not, it holds up the rest of the functional assignments. Because you have people that volunteer for CIP assignments. If they don't get the CIP assignments, then we have to find you a job in a functional assignment next. So that's really why it looks like it takes a long time from the 1st of March to the 1st of April, but it's not. It's about a week and a half for the CIPs, and then about a week and a half for the functional assignments. Yes, sir? Good afternoon. Senior Mayor Sergeant Harris coming out of Turkey. So you said this current one is for September of 19? July to December of 19. December, OK. So all of the jobs that I volunteered for and that I saw on there, the RNLTD was in the summer. However, my D-Ros isn't until October. So how does that work? And second part of the question, is the D-Ros or the surplus taken into consideration first? Yes, because you have a D-Ros, you're considered a must mover. So we're going to, like when I said, we forward the names of those individuals first. If you volunteered for a CIP or a special assignment, we'll forward your name first before those that don't have to move. What we are able to do is we can flex with some of the report dates. So if you have a September report date, sorry, so if you have a September D-Ros, we will adjust the RNLTD to match up with your D-Ros. Correct, yep, so you will finish your tour there, and if you volunteer for an assignment and you're matched to it, we will adjust the report date to match up with your D-Ros. So because we do everything internally within the office, we have the flexibility to do that. We work directly with the MagCom A1s. If we need to adjust the report dates, we make sure that we align both of those things. So if your D-Ros is within the assignment cycle window, we can flex and adjust things. So don't feel that you're limited to something just because you have a D-Ros, okay? We'll adjust as needed. Yes, ma'am. Hi, Senior Investors Nath from Mountain Home. Quick question with EFMP, if we do get selected for an assignment, and it comes back with a medical denial for the base, how does the processing work after that portion? So similar to when you were a Senior Mass Sergeant or for Humanitarian Assignment, if you get, it's found that they cannot support you and your family for the EFMP needs, AFPC will come to us and say, here are the locations that can be supported that can support you and your family. And then what we will do is look at the positions that are available at those locations and match you to one of those positions. If for some reason that those locations don't have any jobs available, we may have to wait until the next cycle to put you on assignment, but we're gonna go ahead and look and see what either, they can take you as in your AFSE or maybe cross-flow you. But that's where we work one-on-one with the EFMP folks and the medical folks over at AFPC, whether it's EFMP or Humanitarian, they'll let us know. So this last month we had a request that come in for a two-fox trot chief. He was requesting to go to McGuire because of his family issues, so we went and looked and we were luckily were able to find a valid 2F position for him at McGuire, but if we couldn't, we were also looking at bases nearby, we looked at Dover, we looked at Handscom, we looked to see what we could do to support him and his family. But just like AFPC did with that, we work one-on-one with the folks at AFPC to see how we can support your family. Same goes for Joint Spouse Assignments as well. For those of you that might be Joint Spouse, if your spouse is the rank of senior master under below or an officer, we work with AFPC to get you matched up for a Joint Spouse Assignment to make sure that it can be supported for both of you. Did I answer your question? All right, there you go. Frogging, do you want to talk about frogging? Okay, so Chief Godrell here in the front, she wants to talk about frogging a little bit. So frogging came out about a year and a half ago. A decision was made that if you're going into a position that required the rank of chief, we're talking especially for, and you're talking in a joint environment, the request needs to come up to us for frogging. We do not want to see you already in that position. You have to be moving, this has to be before you move into that position. And then the request goes up to Lieutenant General Kelly for final approval, the half A-1. And then he approves it, and then it comes down. It is not meant for a, you know, if a commander wants to hire you to be a group superintendent, it is meant for specific positions that requires the skill set and the rank of a chief master sergeant, and you are the right person for that job to go in there. Answer your question, okay. Do you have a question? Okay, good. 500 people, this is like four questions, this is crazy. Yes, ma'am. I needed OJT and the mic. Oh, there, it tells you how to do it. It does. Yes. Senior master sergeant, Gloria Wilson, I'm at the Pentagon. So my question is, when I read through the handbook, I thought the only exception to policy that was needed for the 12 months was 9G positions, but I saw on the slide that said all SIP positions. Is that new? No, no. But a lot of the 9G, well, the 9G positions are SIP positions, but they do that really because of the skills that are needed from the chiefs that are walking, that are gonna be taking those jobs. A lot of times, soon, you have to look at the ad as well. The ad will tell you if you have to have 12 months as a chief in order to apply for the position. But just like, I'm gonna repeat this over and over again. You may see something, but if you feel like you're the best person for that job, or if a hiring authority has reached out to you and said, hey, chief selects so-and-so, I have a SIP position that's opening up, I think you would be great for it. Why don't you go ahead and volunteer? Volunteer for the job. If the hiring authority really wants to interview you and possibly selects you for that job, they will get a hold of us and figure out how to do an exception to policy to get your name on the interview slate and possibly hire you. So that's another thing too. So if you have commanders out there, if you have group commanders that you've worked with before, we will do and work with these commanders one-on-one to do exception to policy so don't limit yourself by what you see. However, if you don't meet the requirements for the job, and it's gonna be a really hard sell, it's really tough for us to approve the exception to policy if you don't meet the skills that are needed. If it's a medical SIP position and you are a two-alpha, it's probably not the right fit whether or not you worked with that commander before or not. Wow. Chief. Oh, there you are, wait in the back, okay. Adam Guest, I work at Dias Air Force Base, Seventh Munition Squadron. I'm in a situation where the sitting chief is the surplus, but because he's on a deployment, he was rendered ineligible for this assignment cycle. If he'll still be the surplus next cycle, but he's eligible to retire. So if he retires, how soon do I become the surplus? Remember my question up there, it was like one of my top 10 about, hey, if my friend calls, why is he marks the surplus and I'm not, didn't I talk about that? I get that, but I'm not asking specifically for him, I'm asking for me, when do I become the surplus? I love these questions. When do I become the surplus? It depends. So kind of like school, right? It depends because you throw a lot of assumptions in there. You're assuming that just because he's eligible for retirement that he will apply for retirement, right? So until people are actually, they apply and are approved for retirement, we cannot assume that they are a valid loss and that we look at them as a loss. So come see me afterwards and I'll look and see what your base and we'll look at the AFSC Manning for the seventh munitions squadron just so I can take some notes so I can probably give you a better answer. Thank you. You're welcome. See? That was like number five of there, right? Just kidding, I don't want to mess with you. Yes, sir. See you master Robbins from Travis Air Force Base. So my question is, if you're interviewed for CIP positions and multiple commanders pick you, how does the rack and stack go then if you're picked for multiple? So it depends on where you're rack and stack with the commander. So if you have, say you're super awesome, right? Super special, who's the guy that said they're special? Say three commanders picked you as their number one. We're going to look and see what did you volunteer for first? If you're number one, links up with the commanders number one, you're going to get that job. That's how we do conflict it. Very important though that you guys, you remember what you volunteered for. So we had someone last cycle, they thought they were slick, right? So they volunteered for, let's say six jobs. They interviewed for a position. They found out they were going to get hired. They went back into slickums to try to change their ranking order, right? To match up with the one that they thought they were going to get hired for. What they didn't realize is my folks print out on the day that the assignment cycles close, what your ranking order is. So if you try to change it after the fact and you try to be slick and say, hey, that wasn't my ranking order. This is what I want, no, sorry. We knew what your ranking order was and this is what you volunteered for when the assignment cycle closes out. And we really do that to be fair to everyone. As we can have folks changing their assignment preferences after they get interviewed, it really is whatever, when the assignment cycle closes out, that was what you volunteered for. But that's how we do conflict. We really have to look at, and that's what I talked about. It's hand matching, right? Because we have to look at what is the commander one? Does a hiring authority want you? Okay, if so, where does that rank up with your volunteer preferences? And that's how we decide what assignments you're gonna get loaded for. So I will say this too. If a commander says, hey, I wanna hire you, you're my number one, we still have to look at your volunteer preferences because we have had times where, like commanders will say, this is my number one, but they don't always get their number one. Cause then that might not have been the individual's number one choice. And so we'll have to go back and say, sorry, sir, ma'am, you're not gonna be able to get your number one. Maybe you get your number two, your number three. Okay, I'll stand up here for about five more seconds. As I mentioned myself and senior master and student, we are back in, I don't know what room we're in, but there's a sign on the door that says, chief's here, but I have a question. So while this person's walking up, so we will be here this afternoon, we'll be here the rest of the day, so please come by, see us for the individual to the seventh munitions squadron, please come back and see us as well. We will answer your questions. I will be here tomorrow as well. I do have a meeting tomorrow from nine to 11, but I'll be here from 11 till about three o'clock to answer any questions you might have as well. And like I said, if there's a certain scenario, a certain special scenario, a unique scenario that you have, please come in and talk to us, ask away and ask questions. It's really a lot easier for me to sit down and pull up the records and to see what you might have going on in your record. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. This is Chief Nicholson out at Beale. I've got a question on the guard and reserve part. Is it ever considered to be blended or to backfill some of these vacancies on a temporary basis? Kind of create more of the blended TFI? We do for the command chief positions. However, it is difficult at times when you're talking about, especially for MPA days or having to get funding to bring a reserve individual onto active duty orders. It really requires a lot of coordination. And I'll give you an example from the cycle. We had an individual selected for a command chief position. We had to work very diligently with half A3 with the reserve four generation cell to make sure that there were enough MPA days to cover not only the deployments, but the training that's required because this year there was just a lot of issues with doing that. So I will say that the reserve command, they're actually in the process right now of standing up their own chiefs group. So they're on the fifth floor right above us. So they're starting to use slickums. They're trying to develop their own development process and their own command chief screening process and figuring out the best way that they can utilize and manage their chiefs. The guard as well, but they have a separate process. But as far as filling some of these other slots, no, we haven't gone that far, but we do integrate the guard and reserve as well into our senior leader development courses. So all those courses that I showed up on the screen, a lot of times you will see guardsmen and reservesmen in those courses as well. Yeah, because there's a Reg F Air Force gentleman that is now active duty reserve command chief in the East and it's looking pretty good. In Delaware. Isn't it in Maguire? There is an individual, he is active duty command chief. He is at a reserve base out in Delaware, 166. That's one of the TFI positions that I'm aware of. Hey chief, Wade Steinback from Columbus Air Force Base. So I'm a two A3 and this last cycle there was about 13 different positions that were available. If I don't get picked up for one that I volunteer for, is there anything that the chiefs group does before matching somebody to an assignment they didn't volunteer for? Or is it just April 1st comes? Congratulations, here you go. Okay, so let me get this right. So you're a two A3, repeat your question again. You said you volunteer for positions? Right, so I volunteered for several positions, but there was about 13 of them that are out there. So if I can't get matched to one of the ones that I wanted, does the chiefs group reach out to say, hey, we couldn't get you one that you want? Here's the ones that are still available. Do you want to rack and stack these? Or is it just, I get assigned and that's it? No, so we're gonna look at those 13 positions that you volunteered for. So our goal is to match you up with one of those 13. 13 is a lot of jobs. So assuming that they were all two A3 positions that you were eligible for, it's probably more than likely than not that you will get one of those jobs. Right, so there's 13 jobs total that are for a two A3 that were available. So if I only volunteered for four, if I don't get one of those four, do you guys match me to another job that just has an opening? Yes, maybe. It depends. It depends on how many people volunteer for those other nine jobs and if someone got selected for them. But our goal is to try to match you up with one of those four. Yeah, I just wondered if it's one of those like, do we get any kind of a heads up if we're not matched? No, so probably about two years ago, they used to do what was called soft matching where before the assignment was loaded, we would sometimes reach out to the chiefs and go, hey, this is what we have open. This is what we couldn't fill. What do you think about that? Or what do you wanna do? It's 434 times too much. It's too much for eight people to do. So no, probably not, but we're gonna try to match you up with one of those four positions. And if you don't get one of those four positions, then the good news is you will get into a valid two A3 chief master in position and do fantastic out there and do fantastic work out there. Track and thanks. You're welcome. Okay, so the lights are off. So I think we're gonna move on to the next brief. But as I said, we'll be here this afternoon. Please stop by and see us. We have capability to look up records and to do other things, but please stop by and say hello. It was great, hopefully meeting you guys throughout hopefully the next day or so. Please stop by and see us. And congratulations again on making chief. And thanks for what you guys do every single day.