 Welcome, everyone, to the U.S. Army Human Resources Command's live Facebook enlisted town hall. Thank you for joining us. We'll be getting underway in a minute, addressing your questions about the enlisted force assignment process and step. But first, a reminder, in addition to the live presentation you are watching here, HRC subject matter experts are already online reading and responding to your questions as they come into our Facebook event page. If you have specific questions about the assignment process or about step, that's the Army's select, train, educate, promote process, feel free to type them in. You will get an answer. Also, please keep in mind that a video of this event and a transcript of the live Q&A exchange will be archived on the HRC website and will be available to all soldiers for future reference. If you can't join us or are catching up with us after the fact, you can still get it right from HRC. So to kick off today's town hall, I would like to introduce the host of this event, HRC's senior enlisted leader, Command Sergeant Major Wardell Jefferson. Command Sergeant Major, sir of the floor is yours. Greetings, everyone. My name is Wardell Jefferson. I'm the Command Sergeant Major for the Human Resources Command. On behalf of our commanding general, Major General Thomas Siemens, I'd like to welcome you all to our live Facebook event. Today, we will be discussing the assignment process as well as the select, train, educate, and promote, which most of you know as step. As I travel around the various installations, myself and General Siemens, we receive a lot of questions on these two topics. So I thought it was very important to bring the subject matter experts to you to discuss these issues and answer any questions that you have for us today. So please, don't let this opportunity pass you. If you have questions that you are not getting the answers to, take this opportunity to submit your questions so that we can have the subject matter experts give you the answers. The next thing that I would like to do is I would like to introduce our first subject matter expert, which is Sergeant Major Bellinger. He's the operations division and the armor branch, sir major. He will be discussing the assignment process with you and answering any questions that you have. So at this time, Sergeant Major Bellinger, I'd like to pass it over to you. Good afternoon, Sergeant Major Jefferson and to our great team, our Army leaders out there. On behalf of our EPMD director, Colonel Kellogg, and our EPMD Sergeant Major Thorpe, we thank you for tuning in today. Sergeant Major, one of the frustrations that I have noticed as I battlefield circulate is that soldiers and leaders have a problem not understanding the assignment process. Have you felt any of that feedback from the force? Absolutely. You know, there's a lot of misconceptions out there. Soldiers feel that the assignment process is conducted in one way, but you know, a lot of the things that they're hearing is just what they hear from people that are out there, you know, telling them. So that's why I felt that it was very important that they were able to hear it from the experts that do this every day. So please provide some wisdom to them, Sergeant Major. Thank you very much. So team, I want to address two audiences today. First, I want to address the soldiers to ensure that you understand in layman's term what the assignment process consists of. And then how you can better inform your talent managers when you have discussions with them. Secondly, I would like to address the leaders and remind us of our vital role that we play in ensuring that our soldiers complete their critical leadership time, and we are doing all we can to prepare the soldier for broadening assignments. So for the next few minutes, I want to give you a general overview of the assignment process where we use this process to assign approximately 383,000 soldiers in over 170 MOSs. So I know you're asking, what is a so what? So what we want to do, the first thing up front is three things. We want to accomplish. We want to familiarize you with your steps that your talent manager takes to use in assigning you as soldiers in the assignment process. Secondly, we want to acquaint you with the language and the systems that your assignment manager uses as they do their jobs as PDNCOs. And then finally, we'll finish with some questions from the field. And we are very happy and we encourage you to start putting your questions in and we'll get to them by the end of this broadcast. Mr. Ruderman, what kind of questions do we receive from the force? Sir, we're getting questions in from the field as we speak. The first one we have popping up is how does time on station factor into the assignment process? Great question. Well, soldiers stationed stateside must meet a minimum time on station to be eligible for reassignment. Now that minimum time is normally 36 months. However, there are many exceptions to that 36 months requirement. There may be a soldier who has compassionate reassignment reasons. There may be a soldier who's in the married army couples program. Or there's a high priority assignment that the soldier has been selected to go to. Now, the 36 month criteria is just a general rule. That can be waived down to 24 months at the division chief level, our 06 level in here. And then that even can also be waived even further down to fewer than 24 months when there is a high priority assignment and the soldier meets those qualifications. That waiver is normally approved at the general officer level, which is our director. So, however, when you look at the assignment process, we normally want to make sure that we do our best to look at soldiers who have been on station longer before we move soldiers who have been on station less time. However, in some instances, the soldier who has been on station longer may not qualify to go on an assignment. So, it will cause a soldier who has less time on station meeting the army requirements to actually PCS and be put on assignment before they do. So, we want to talk about the steps that are required for us to go through the assignment process. Step one, please go to the slide. Step one begins the whole process with the authorization of spaces, faces, and department of the army policy. The DA policy gives demanding guidance for prioritizing personnel fields when the rules of assigning soldier. DA policy includes the following, the DOD policy that limits first-term soldiers from making PCS moves. Secondly, there is tour equity. We want to ensure that this is an internal policy that we have regarding back-to-back TDA assignments. We have further internal controls such as the enforcement of the home-based advanced assignment program, commonly known as the HAP, which is Assigning Returnees from Dependent Restricted Tours. And then, as always, we want to make sure that we take care of our soldiers and our families. We do our best as a rule regarding short notice assignments, those assignments within 120 days of report. And then finally, it is the faces, the army's inventory of soldiers to fill the spaces. It's like spreading the peanut butter to make sure that we have all the personnel authorized in the organizations. We synchronize all these things by using our Enlisted Professional Management Toolkit. There are some modules that we use in that program. The first one is the Soldier Assignment Module, and this enables us to filter through the 383,000 soldiers and determine the availability to fill a specific requisition at a specific time. We further use the Assignment Validation Report, AVR, which is commonly known here in the building. The AVR applies 67 different logics and modules through an assignment process and rules to ensure that the available pool is required to meet the requirements of the assignment, and then we have a quality control check in our processes. Our toolkit also provides a method to electronically route waivers to those AVR's rules if we determine that doing so is the right thing for the army, the right thing that meets the soldier's professional development needs. These waivers vary in their approval authorities, ranging from the branch chief, which is the O5 level, the division chief, the O6 level, and the director of the EMPD, which is the O6 level. Mr. Ruderman, let's take another question. Yes, sir. Next one up is, are my ask preferences truly considered? Because I haven't been assigned to any of my preferences. Additionally, I volunteer for assignments and ask, but I'm always turned down. Why? Bottom line, ask is taken into consideration. Assignments are determined by, first, needs of the army, your professional development requirements, and then the soldier preference. If we can cover all three of these things, then you will go on that assignment of choice. If one of those things cannot be met, army requirements, or your professional development requirements, then we cannot approve that assignment. Bottom line up front, you must update your ask. Sir Major, any thoughts on the ask program? Yeah, that last comment you made there, Sir Major, is excellent. I can't emphasize enough the importance of soldiers updating their ask. As I go around, there's a lot of soldiers that say, you know, I don't update my ask because they don't feel that we use it here at HRC, but I'm telling you, that is not true. Ask is one of the first things that the assignment managers or the talent managers go to when they look at placing a soldier on assignment, because at the end of the day, we try to get the yes. If a soldier is requesting to go to Fort Benning and everything lines up, they meet the criteria, it's within their movement window, then we're going to try our best to get them to Fort Benning. But if a soldier doesn't update his ask and we go on that ask and we find a location that's there, and as long as the senior asks, the assignment manager is going to try to get you there, so they've done their job, so it's very important that you do that. And then another key thing is time on station. You have to understand that sometimes what you have on your ask, it may not be available at your time, that you're scheduled to be moved, so everything has to line up, you know, your movement time, as well as you meet the criteria for that particular assignment. All those things have to line up in order for us to send you to that location. Thanks. Thank you, Sergeant Major. So, now, the Ask Satisfaction Key Program, the Volunteer Requisition Module, this uses an in-depth logic to ensure that soldiers who are eligible for an assignment before you can self-nominate for that assignment. However, there are some challenges to that module. The challenge is that the logic does not take into account the unit's current strength and it does not take into account the soldier's professional development needs. Again, in conversation and consultation with your assignment managers, if you are able to meet your professional development needs and the unit's strength is not affected, then you can be nominated for that assignment. However, if it is not and you can't meet those first two gates for accepting of being nominated for that assignment, the branch manager is going to recommend that that assignment is not validated in the system and you can proceed on it. Now, the branch manager is just a recommendation. He provides a recommendation and the recommendation is called, another waiver is gone, is put up through the system and it is called a Ask Rejection Waiver and it is approved at the branch chief level. Thank you, Sergeant Major. Can we have another question? Yes, sir. Next question from the field is, what are my options to PCS? Very, very bluntly. Thank you. Options to PCS change daily here. Assignment locations are based, one, again, on the Army Manning requirements, on the soldier's professional development needs and then on the soldier's preference in that order. Let's go back to the slide to step two. Step two is the enlisted assignment process is the listed targets and that's how EPMD plans and distributes the faces across the spaces in accordance with the DA policy and the CG's and the director's guidance. Step three is requisitions. Requisitions are built by the readiness division here at HRC and they identify a particular targeted space at a unit to be filled by a specific MOS and grade. Moving to step four, which is probably, Sergeant Major, the most important piece of this presentation, the assignment process. Assignments are generated when the career divisions assign a face to a requisition. Let's have another question, Mr. Ruderman. Yes, sir. Next one in from the field is, I am currently stationed at Fort Wachuka who would like to retire at Fort Jackson when I hit my RCP in 12 months. I have not submitted a request for retirement so why can't I move? Well, in order to PCS from one conus location to another conus location a soldier must have 24 months remaining or a service remaining requirement of 24 months to move. One more question. Sir, several people are writing in asking what broadening assignments are available and do I qualify? It depends upon the MOS but most MOS's are authorized drill sergeants, AIT platoon sergeants which is a 24 month assignment, recruiter duty which is a 36 month assignment and instructor writer developers which is also a 36 month assignment. Now these normally require sergeant promotables through sergeant first class but there is also equal opportunity advisor, inspected general office and professional development NCOs at the rank of sergeant first class. Qualifications for these broadening assignments is listed on the HRC website and during consideration of these nominating positions your managers review your records to ensure that you qualify to meet these assignments. Sergeant Major that is one topic that I would like to get your feedback on. When it comes to broadening assignments I believe soldiers have a responsibility to ensure that they are doing all they can to qualify for these broadening assignments. Our current pool is very small and which requires us to only focus on a very small pool of soldiers who are eligible. Any thoughts on that as we attempt to encourage our force and our leaders to prepare soldiers for broadening assignments? Yes, I tell you one of the biggest disqualifiers for these broadening assignments is the background screening that we must conduct here at HRC as well as the Department of Army. A lot of the soldiers fail to meet the criteria because they have the derogatory information in their records and that will automatically disqualify you from serving in a lot of these positions the ones that we most commonly call positions of trust. So the first thing the soldiers can do is ensure that they are doing the right thing and they avoid getting any derogatory information in their records. The other thing that you can do in order to make yourself competitive for a broadening assignment or broadening opportunity is to become certified within your career management field or your military occupational, especially your MOS because there's a lot of soldiers that want to go out and do broadening assignments but they have failed to become certified within their MOS so therefore their promotion opportunities are a little bit limited. So another thing that soldiers need to understand is if you are selected to go out and do a broadening assignment a lot of these typically run two to three years. Assignments don't get comfortable out there and don't stay out there. Go out there, do a great job at that broadening assignment and then you get back into your CMF and you continue to progress within your CMF to get you up to the next level and make you competitive for that next promotion. Thank you, Sir Major. So at the end of the day, as we have preached throughout this process three things are prioritized when it comes to assignments. First, it is the Army requirements. What are the Army requirements? That is the first consideration that the branch managers and the PDNCOs do when they do their selection for soldiers and they do their review of records. And that Army requirement is derived from the active component manning guidance the force comm synchronization matrix and the structure of the force. Secondly, professional development. These needs are derived from the proponent published MOS professional development models codified in DAPAM 600-25 the non-commissioned officers professional development guide and this includes a progressive and broadening assignment opportunities and military schooling. Our role here at HRC is to provide professional developing opportunities during the assignment process. The soldier's actual professional development will occur at the individual and local command level. And then finally and most importantly, what is the soldier's preferences? These are identified by the soldiers themselves through the entries into the assignment satisfaction key program the elections for specific re-enlistment options and direct conversations with your assignment managers. I encourage you, if you have not spoken with your assignment manager you need to get to know them and have that conversation as they help shape your career. Finally, we have family concerns also which includes considerations as enrollment in the Army married couples program exceptional family member program high school senior stabilization and as I said before, compassionate assignment requests. Let's take one more question. Yes, sir. This one comes in from a soldier who asks I am ineligible for special duty assignments. I had a situation in the past. How can I still be competitive and set myself apart from my peers? We just want to encourage you that you can serve successfully in all duty positions at every level. Earning top ratings continue to do that let your evaluations speak for themselves. I would encourage you to continue to pursue technical proficiencies military and civilian education and then continue to show that you are always willing to learn and grow seeking opportunities to better yourself and those around you. I promise you it is notice when we review your records. Mr. Ruderman, we have a few minutes. Let's take a few more questions. Yes, sir. This also seems to be a time on station question. I haven't been at my current location for 36 months yet. Why am I being reassigned? Great question. Again, the overall intent is to leave soldiers at locations for 36 months. But certain situations such as drill sergeants, recruiter and AIT platoon sergeants and nominative assignments require us to PCS soldiers with less than an optimal 36 months as well as the installation strengths also drives when a soldier PCS's. One more question. Sir, we have one in from someone who asks, I am the only certified NCO and command sergeant major wants to keep me. Can you delete my schedule to sign it? Well, if it falls in accordance with the Army Manning Guidance, career progression and the SM meets the preferences to stay, then yes, we can support it. If it doesn't fall within Army Manning Guidance or the Soldiers Professional Development Model, your talent manager is going to recommend no to the chain of command here at HRC and we'll have those discussions. One more great question. Sir, we have one more. I think it's a serious question. I'm sure you have a serious answer. How do I get out of drill sergeant duty? That is a great question. Drill sergeant duty is 100% priority fill. Being a drill sergeant is one of the most important jobs in the generating force and our Army needs qualified soldiers in this all volunteer force to be capable capable of training other soldiers to fight and win in this complex world. Drill sergeants who have demonstrated their proficiencies and done well out on a trail have been promoted above their peers. Finally, we do not consider the mission complete until the soldier is at their gaining unit. We track the soldier until they sign in. We routinely monitor the soldier's availability even after we put them on assignment because as life happens things change. The soldier's status may change. He or she may get a medical profile or have some legal trouble or the soldier may request an assignment deferment or deletion based upon personal reasons or the unit reasons may have changed. The unit may have come down on a lad. And then we will take all those things into account after we put a soldier on assignment and there are changes that need to be made. So I thank you for the time sergeant major. I'll end where I begin. Readiness is the number one goal of the Army. We all soldiers, leaders and people at HRC and this great team have a responsibility and a shared responsibility to make sure that we do our best to ensure that soldiers understand the assignment process and our active people and active people in the process so that we can get soldiers where they need to be in accordance with the Army requirements, the professional development requirements and the soldier's preference. Sergeant major, I thank you for this time. I thank you for the opportunity to speak to the great team of soldiers and leaders out there on the assignment process. Again, if you have any questions, I would refer you to the listed personal management director at web page and the URL is located on the screen. And with there you will find your specific career management field experts and they are standing by ready to assist you in your assignment concerns. Thank you. Sergeant major Bellinger, I'd like to thank you for taking the time out to share this information with the soldiers out there in the field. I think it's very important that they hear it straight from HRC and we let them know exactly how this assignment process worked. For all the soldiers out there in the field listening to this, I hope that you understand that there's a common theme here. It's called communication. It's very important for you to communicate with your assignment managers. As Sergeant major Bellinger stated, you can go on the website, find your career management field and your manager by your skill level and grade and reach out to them. You can't come here because of your geographical location, but you can always give us a call. And if for some reason the assignment managers are away from their desk working issues for other soldiers and you don't reach them by phone, email. And email your assignment manager but look for that PD-NCO, that professional development NCO and see them as well so that that way you're bound to get one of those individuals to reply back to you. But as we continue on with this town hall, you're going to understand that communication is the key to success here. So Sergeant major Bellinger once again, I thank you for joining us and sharing this information with the soldiers to better set them up for success. Mr. Ruderman, back to you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Sergeant major Bellinger. Again, we would like to remind everyone that HRC staff are reading and responding to your questions as we conduct this event and they will continue taking your questions after we wrap up the live video portion of our outreach. If you are just joining us, we are broadcasting live today to the field from HRC headquarters at Fort Knox. If you missed today's broadcast, a video of the entire event and a transcript of the live Q&A from our Facebook feed will be posted to the HRC website for everyone's future reference. Moving ahead, I want to turn the floor over again to HRC's senior enlisted leader, Command Sergeant Major Wardell Jefferson. Sir. Thank you, Mr. Ruderman. All right, now moving along with the next topic, another very important topic that's near and dear to everyone's heart and career is the Select, Train, Educate, and Promote, which I talked about everybody knows by step. I have today with me Mr. Bailey, he's the chief of the enlisted schools branch and he's going to share some information. As I stated up front, it is very important that you listen to this information because everything that we're discussing today affects your careers and your careers affects your family, so we think it's very important and we feel it's very important that we provide you the information to give you the best opportunity to continue to progress throughout your career. So Mr. Bailey, I'd like to thank you for joining us and sharing some information and I would like to turn it over to you. Okay, thank you, Sergeant Major. Good afternoon, Sergeant Major Jefferson and the great Army team. My name is Jesse Bailey. I'm the chief of the military schools branch and on behalf of the EPMD leadership, it is my pleasure to be here this afternoon to talk to you about STEP and how it has changed the way we schedule soldiers for ALC and SLC. STEP was established by Army Director of 2015-31. The directive revised how the Army promotion policy for enlisted soldiers in the regular Army National Guard and the reserves. The directive links structured self-development and the NCOES system to subsequent promotion. In order to implement STEP, HRC has had to change the way and change our methodology on the way that we train soldiers and how we schedule soldiers for ALC, SLC, and BLC for the AGR. This has led to numerous questions and phone calls from soldiers and leaders in the field. And I'm happy to be here this afternoon to discuss this with you and shed some light on how we schedule soldiers for STEP. Next slide, please. This slide depicts how soldiers are scheduled for stool and promoted. In column one, you'll see what promotions a soldier is scheduled for. And column two is what requirement for that soldier to be recommended for promotion. And in column three is what is required for that soldier to be promoted. Now, you'll notice for the Master Sergeant in column three, it says that MLC is required. MLC won't be required for Master Sergeant until the next, the calendar year 18 promotion list comes out. And currently for Sergeant Major, the requirement for recommendation for promotion is only SSD4 and for recommendation and for promotion pin-on, it is the Sergeant Major's course. CSM Jefferson, do you have anything there? Yes, Mr. Billy. One thing I'd like to highlight off of that slide is as he stated, the Master Leader course will not be effective until the results of the calendar year 18 Board results are released. So with that being said, if you are currently wearing the rank of Master Sergeant or First Sergeant, you are not going to be required to attend that course right now. But all individuals that come out on that list for Master Sergeant on calendar year 18, there will be a requirement for those individuals to attend the Master Leader course. That will become their PME requirement under this new STEP program. Thank you, Sergeant Major. Because we do get a lot of questions from current Master Sergeant asking if they are required to go to the Master Leader's course. And as the Sergeant Major stated, they are not required until the next promotion list of Master Sergeant comes out. Okay, Mr. Ruderman, can we have the first question from the field? Yes, sir. Mr. Bailey, the question we have is, how will soldiers be scheduled for ALC and SLC? Great question. And that's one that we receive in our branch quite frequently. Soldiers are scheduled for NCO PDS based on priority. For ALC, a soldier is scheduled based on the highest promotion points and by MOS. For SLC, soldiers are scheduled by the lowest sequence number. So that's priority one. For priority two is those soldiers that are in priority one but have been identified for deployment, short tour, or unit rotation. Priority three are those soldiers that are in the legacy backlog and that are deemed at risk for Q&P consideration. And that is the soldier has 24 months time and grade. And we do our best to try to schedule these guys for school but based on the number of seats that we have available, those soldiers are the third priority and may or may not be scheduled. Priority four are those soldiers in the legacy backlog with less than 24 months. We do our best also to try to schedule them, but like I stated before, priority one and priority two take precedence. Priority five are those trained head soldiers that are not in a promotable status. And basically, if we run out of soldiers in order to schedule and fill up all the classes, then we start scheduling the priority five soldiers. So I bet you have anything there? Mr. Bell, yes. I'd just like to add a couple comments to priority number three and priority number four. This, when STEP originally started, we were looking at soldiers, the legacy soldiers that had 37 months time and grade or more for priority three and then 36 months time and grade or less for priority four. As you can see from the slide, that has changed. It's now 24 months or more and then 23 months or less. Now, some of you may be saying, what is legacy? Legacy are those soldiers or those NCOs who have a data rank that was prior to STEP coming into effect of one January of last year. So those individuals, we call them legacy because they were promoted prior to STEP coming into effect and they still haven't gone to school yet. Thank you so much. Mr. Rubin, next question. Yes, Mr. Bailey, one soldier writes in asking, what happens if I receive a profile or can't attend school? Okay, if you receive a profile and can't attend school, you must submit a deferment request with a copy of the profile endorsed by the first general officer or at the SES in the chain of command. That request must state when the soldier will be available to attend the next class. I would also like to add that all deferment requests, whether they're operational, compassionate or medical, must be endorsed by a general officer or the SES before they come up to us. So I mean, do you have anything? That is great. You covered it. Okay. Next question, please. Sir, next question in from the field is, I recently graduated from BLC, ALC, SLC, but my ERB is not updated to reflect course completion. How long does it take to update? Okay, that is a frequent question we get into branch. Typically, it takes 10 to 14 days from the time a soldier graduates until their email poll or their ERB is updated or is updated in EDAS. If for some reason after that 14th day that your record is not updated, your ERB is not updated, feel free to send us a copy of 1059 to our branch and our managers will update that for you. Next question. Sir, next question in asks, I had an NCOES training date, but it was canceled due to a temporary profile. How long before I am rescheduled for school now that I'm off the profile? Okay, typically, if you're canceled for temporary profile for any reason, then what we do is we try to put you into the next available class. But it's still based on your sequence number or your promotion points. But everything depends on when, for temporary profile, when the profile expires. And still, any request still has to be endorsed by the first general officer and sent up to us by the first general officer or an SES. Sir, we have another question. It is, if I am in the backlog, when will I be rescheduled for ALC or SLC? Soldiers in the backlog are the third and fourth priority. And we will reschedule you if there are seats available. A lot of times, in some MOSs, there are no seats available, but in some MOSs, we can be able to get to you as soon as possible. But understand that we are going to try our best to get every soldier scheduled for school. Next question, please. Sir, we have a couple of more. Next one up is, what is the sunset clause? Okay, the sunset clause is applicable to soldiers that were selected for promotion on the calendar year 17, Sergeant First Class List and all following Sergeant First Class and Master Sergeant List. Basically, it states that if you have not completed SLC or whatever requisite course by the 24th month, that the first day of the 24th month that you could be administratively taken, removed from the list. Now, if you have not completed SLC based on no fault of your own, by the 17th month, you can request for training deferment. And that training deferment comes through us endorsed by the First General Officer, and then that will allow us to be able to go ahead and try to schedule you for the next available class. So for each month that you are now able to go to school, you'll get an additional month to stay on the promotion list. Sir, I think we have time for one more. Next one in is, when will soldiers be scheduled for the Master Leaders course or MLC? Okay, the Master Leaders course is a two-week course that would be taught at six locations, Fort Bliss, Fort Campbell, Fort Bragg, Fort Stewart, Fort Hood, and JBLM Lewis. Now, in FY17, we are teaching six validation courses. On 1 October of 2017, then those schools will start training 10 courses per school with 32 people in them. MLC will become a requirement for promotion pin-on to Master Sergeant with the release of the calendar year, F-18 Master Sergeant list. So right now, what we're trying to do is build up a bench. We're trying to schedule soldiers that may become promotable and we hope they become promotable and between now and that release of that Master Sergeant list when it's released. Sir, do you have anything else to add to that? No. Okay, so finally, I think there's all the questions we have from the field. Yes, sir. Okay, finally, I hope that this has helped you give you a better understanding of how soldiers are scheduled for school. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to either call or email one of my branch or my quota managers at the military schools branch. CSM, thank you for allowing me this opportunity and time to talk about step, a little bit about step scheduling. Yes, Mr. Bailey, I'd like to thank you for taking the opportunity to come out here and talk to the soldiers and inform them of this process. It is still a fairly new process and there are a lot of questions out there that appreciate you coming to take this time to do this. Thank you. To the soldiers out there in the field, I'll tell you, it is very important. We always talk about, you know, we have leaders who assist us with managing our careers, but I'll tell you, you are your best career manager and the way that you can assist yourself by being your best career manager is to become knowledgeable on all the things that affect you, your career, as well as your soldiers and their families. All these changes and everything that's coming out within our Army, if you sit back and you wait for someone to give you that information, all you're doing is hurting yourself. The best thing that you can do is take initiative, read up on it when you see these mail-per-messages coming out or you're seeing your leaders, the SAR Major to our Army, the FORSCOM Command SAR Major or the TRADOC Command SAR Major coming into your areas and conducting NCO professional development sessions, go out and attend those and take notes, you know, and also take the opportunity to ask questions while you have those individuals in your area. If you let senior leaders come into your areas and talk about things that are affecting you, your soldiers and families, and you don't take the opportunity to ask some questions, you're doing yourself a great injustice. You definitely need to do that. As I stated earlier, communication. Communication is the key. With your assignment managers as well as with the school's branch. I always tell leaders, there's nothing that HRC cannot work out for the soldiers and their organizations out there, but we need to know about it earlier. If you contact us early, let us know that there's an issue, then we can assist you with working through these problems. But the key is you got to understand that you're not always going to get it your way. Army requirements and readiness drive everything that we do here at HRC, and that is our primary mission. But as stated earlier, if we have the opportunity to accomplish the Army mission with readiness and take care of the soldier's preference and family, all in the same transaction, we will do that. So just make sure that you get engaged, talk to your leadership, educate yourself, and communicate with HRC. And expectation management is the biggest thing, is just knowing that you're not always going to get exactly what you want. Thank you. Thank you, Command Sergeant Major, and thank you very much, Mr. Bailey. We're drawing to the end of this live video portion of our town hall, but we would like to remind everyone presently online that HRC subject matter experts are answering your questions at this moment, and will continue responding on our live feed for the next hour or so. If they cannot respond to you today, our assignment, step, and promotion experts will respond to the Facebook feed of this event until everyone who has asked a question gets a response. We would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that if you missed any part of today's broadcast, or have a battle buddy you know who should watch this, the video of the entire live stream and a transcript of the Q&A from our Facebook feed will be posted to the HRC website for your future reference, and we will post those links as soon as the material is ready. Command Sergeant Major Jefferson, thank you very much, sir. I'd like to announce to the force at large that HRC will be conducting a similar live Facebook event. We're shooting for some time in May, and the subject will be centralized promotion process. So thank you all for joining us today. Please come back and check with HRC for the results of today's event, and tune in in the future for additional information that will guide your Army career. Thank you for joining us to get it right from HRC.