Historical Context of the Air Force Officer Assignment System

“A relentless barrage of ‘whys’ is the best way to prepare your mind to pierce the clouded veil of thinking caused by the status quo. Use it often.”—Shigeo Shingo

Before we discuss the challenges of the Talent Marketplace, we must first define talent management and understand the historical context that influenced its design. Talent management, defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “the process of attracting skilled employees to a company, and developing the skills of existing employees, giving them attractive pay, working conditions, etc.,” has continued to be a critical function in organizations.¹ As a result of the dynamic nature of the workforce, talent management strategies have evolved significantly over the years in response to shifts in organizational needs and ever-changing talent market conditions. In response to these shifts, the Air Force Officer Assignment System has undergone several changes throughout history that have shaped the way it manages officers today.

A quarter century ago, the Air Force introduced a “new way of officer assignments” as an improved assign-and-select model to manage personnel.² Previously, the Air Force experimented with various volunteer systems to improve retention during the post-Cold War drawdown of military forces. During this time, technology and personnel policy changes allowed officers a high degree of autonomy in determining their assignments and career paths utilizing internet-based job boards. The design and implementation of this model unintentionally reduced the Air Force’s ability to fill required positions and removed the commander’s role in mentoring officers in their career development.³ For example, officers could apply for a job online and subsequently be issued orders without any coordination or approval by their commander.

As a result of the flawed model, General Michael Ryan, the Chief of Staff at the time, appointed an Officer Assignment System (OAS) Review Group in 1998 and tasked them to perform a comprehensive review of the assignment process and provide recommendations for an updated assign-and-select model. The study’s findings resulted in four recommendations:

1. Increase the involvement of commanders in the process of future assignments for the officers serving under them;
2. Create a new Personnel Requirements Display to replace the Job Advertisement System “electronic bulletin board” maintained by the Air Force Personnel Center;
3. Develop a Preference Worksheet to be filled out by officers, routed through their commanders, and stored electronically at the center as part of the input for determining their future assignments; and
4. Require Officer Assignment Teams at the center to work more closely with losing and gaining commanders, major commands, and career field functional leaders in matching officers to assignments.⁴

The recommendations were approved by the Air Force and went into effect in 1999. These changes were described as “gone forward the past” as the Air Force re-deployed a revised assign-and-select model for officer assignments.⁵ The OAS changes remained largely intact, as reflected in the Air Force’s Total Force Assignments, Air Force Instruction 36-2110. The directive encompasses the “authority, guidance, and procedures to select personnel and direct their temporary or permanent assignment or reassignment to satisfy national security requirements.”⁶ The ultimate goal of the OAS is to “assign the right officer to the right position at the right time to meet [Air Force] mission requirements.”⁷

While the directive was in place, the Air Force recognized the need for continuous improvement of talent management through modernized systems and processes to adequately identify and align its Airmen’s unique talents with agility. The Human Capital Annex to the U.S. Air Force Strategic Master Plan set out a specific objective to “adapt human capital management and talent management practices within the Air Force to ensure an institutional human resource system capable of rapidly recognizing and adapting to the changing environment.”⁸

The identified objectives led to three significant changes to the officer assignment process. First, the Air Force reduced the officer assignment cycles from three to two in 2018, providing officers and stakeholders with more time to communicate and select assignments. Second, the Air Force implemented an advanced assignment notification for commanders. Third, since workforce management is not a static endeavor, the Air Force implemented a new system called Talent Marketplace in 2019 to facilitate the OAS process.

Like the previous assign-and-select model, the Talent Marketplace aims to improve various aspects of the assignment process, including increasing transparency in available opportunities, enhancing communication between officers and commanders, and gaining billet owners. Additionally, it gives officers a heightened degree of agency in their future assignments and career trajectories.⁹ As designed, this intricate process involves a nuanced balance that considers the needs of the Air Force, individual officers’ professional development, personal preferences, and commander recommendations. Achieving this balance is often called the art and science of assignment matching. This process works well when the officers’ respective Assignment Teams and commander are actively engaged in discussing their career aspirations and long-term goals. This comprehensive understanding enables personalized mentorship and customized assignment suggestions. Conversely, the process falls short when there is a lack of communication and transparency regarding the reasons and methods for assigning members to specific roles, especially if it is a role that was not on the officer’s preference list.

Talent Marketplace distinguishes itself from previous methods by utilizing a market-design approach inspired by the National Residency Matching Program that incorporates the two-sided matching preferences of officers and billet owners. The Air Force first tested the concept with the science community, followed by the fighter pilot assignments in 2017, then scaled it as the primary mechanism for all officer assignments below the rank of Colonel except for the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, or JAG, career field.¹⁰ The Air Force’s increasing demand to expand the Talent Marketplace beyond officer assignments and to include enlisted assignments reflects a significant shift toward modernizing the assignment-matching processes.

In spite of the Talent Marketplace platform’s introduction, the fundamental process and traditional manual assignment-matching methodologies have remained unchanged. Therefore, the process heavily relies on human judgment rather than the science of matchmaking that market design can provide. The alignment of human judgment and data-informed decisions is essential not only for optimizing current operations but also for promoting retention and strategically cultivating a future-ready force. The next chapter will further explore the key problems and challenges in the Talent Marketplace.