Moving up: Airmen in these hot careers are advancing — and fast

Year after year, across the Air Force, some enlisted airmen earn their next stripe after three or four years, while others wait twice as long for promotion to the same rank.

Why?

It’s not necessarily because one airman is that much better than another.

Instead, it’s all in their jobs.

A closer look at the average time-in-grade numbers, job by job, throughout the Air Force, provides a glimpse into how the service and its promotion systems work, where its greatest needs and manning challenges are, and — if an airman is skilled and motivated enough — perhaps even a way to get a leg up as they rise through the ranks.

A talented young airman could conceivably give his career a boost by moving into one of those key, in-demand jobs, said former Lt. Gen. Darrell Jones, who was the Air Force’s personnel chief until he retired in 2013.

"If those airmen are being promoted at a little earlier time, then there’s a great opportunity [for other airmen] to go into those career fields and enjoy the benefits of that," Jones said.

Air Force Times analyzed promotion data for staff sergeant through senior master sergeant, broken out by Air Force specialty code, for the last three years to find the fastest burners in the Air Force.

Chief master sergeant promotions were omitted because they are a much smaller population, typically promoting around only 500 each year instead of the thousands selected for other ranks.

Typically, the career fields that most frequently have a relatively short time-in-grade are those that are highly skilled and in-demand — and those that the Air Force is having a hard time filling.

The fastest-promoting enlisted AFSCs are most often in the intelligence, battlefield airmen, medical and remotely piloted aircraft fields. They include jobs as varied as cryptologic language analysts, in-flight refueling boom operators, cardiopulmonary laboratory techs, pararescuemen, explosive ordnance disposal technicians, and RPA sensor operators.

When asked why some career fields promote faster than others, retired general and former Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel Billy Boles responded simply: "Retention."

"People in the higher grades are getting out faster, and so that trickles down," Boles said. "If you lose one chief master sergeant, then you create a whole bunch of promotions. It creates a vacancy, somebody’s going to get promoted to replace that person," and so on.

Many of the career fields with the lowest time-in-grade are those with technical skills — highly marketable skills attractive to the private sector, Boles said, including air traffic controllers, RPA sensor operators, and linguists.

It’s not unlike the pilot retention dilemma facing the Air Force, he said.

Companies know that an airman who has progressed through the ranks has been vetted again and again, in many cases has the broadened perspective that comes from serving overseas, and has dealt with adversity. That makes the airman a safe and attractive hire. 

"The aerospace companies, they know that every person who comes into the Air Force goes through a very good technical training course," Boles said. "Then there is a rigidity to the [skill] upgrade process, and there’s schooling and there’s leadership."

Brig. Gen. Brian Kelly, director of military force management policy, agreed that market demands for airmen with crucial language and technical skills are a retention challenge for the Air Force.

"The opportunities outside the Air Force are significant," Kelly said. "Operational tempo is high for those folks."

But retention isn’t necessarily a problem in all high-demand fields, Kelly said.

For example, he said, battlefield airmen often stay as long as they can — barring injury, which is a common problem — once they’ve made it through the grueling process of joining their ranks.

Retention isn’t the primary problem there, he said, but accession. Finding enough willing and capable airmen to join the battlefield ranks is tricky.

However, that doesn’t mean the Air Force is ignoring retention for battlefield airmen. Because those jobs are starting with a disadvantage due to their recruitment challenges, it makes it even more important for the Air Force to hold on to the ones who make it through. This is why the Air Force offers generous re-enlistment bonuses and other incentives to such airmen.


Balancing act

As the Air Force tries to balance its inventory of airmen and its requirements — in other words, making sure it has the right number of airmen in the right jobs, with the right skills, and in the right ranks to accomplish its many missions — it has several tools in its toolbox. It can increase accessions, or offer retention and re-enlistment bonuses, or offer cross-training opportunities.

But another vital instrument is that the Air Force can boost promotion selection rates to beef up those critical and undermanned career fields.

Typically, all Air Force specialty codes are supposed to be promoted at the same rate. But the Air Force has flexibility to selectively boost the selection rates of AFSCs that are undermanned in certain ranks, and, conversely, cut the selection rates of overmanned fields.

The Air Force often uses many of those tools in concert to try to bolster vital AFSCs, Kelly said. 

 "So in all those areas, the same kind of four tools" will be used, Kelly said. "You’ll see high accessions, you’ll see retraining opportunities, retention bonuses, and slightly higher promotion rates, which means slightly shorter time-in-grade for all those folks."

For example, many 1A8X1 airborne cryptologic language analysts are eligible for selective re-enlistment bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars, and the Air Force is encouraging first-term airmen and noncommissioned officers alike to retrain into that job. 

Last year, the selection rate of airborne crypto language analysts for master sergeant hit 36.36 percent — much higher than the overall average 23.34 percent for E-7s in 2016.

That could have helped drive the average time-in-grade for E-7 in that AFSC down to 2.91 years — more than a full year faster than the overall E-7 time-in-grade of 4.04 years in 2016.

"The tools all work together," Kelly said. "When we put out the SRB list, when we put out the high-year tenure list, when we put out the retraining list, when we put out the promotions, you’ll see commonalities across the board in terms of who’s short and who’s manned up properly."


On the flipside, take 3P0X1 security forces, which Kelly said is overmanned. There are no selective re-enlistment bonuses for that career field. And in the 2016 tech sergeant promotions, for example, the average time-in-grade for security forces was 4.98 years, higher than the 4.6-year average for that promotion cycle. Those airmen’s selection rate was 17.22 percent, lower than the overall 22.35 percent selection rate.

Manning challenges can change year to year, Kelly said, meaning that, in some cases, a career field that is short-staffed one year could find itself healthier in the next. Which could lead the Air Force to stop using some of those tools, as it did earlier this year when it slashed the number of career fields eligible for SRBs by almost one-third.

For that reason, Kelly said, he’s wary of advising airmen looking to boost their careers to retrain into a more advantageous career field.

"If you’re at the four- or five-year mark, and you wanted to make a 20-year decision, it would be difficult to say, ‘Going in there is automatically going to make me get to chief much faster,’" Kelly said. "That’s probably not the best benefit."

Risk vs. reward

"What we did with the changes to the enlisted evaluation system, we made performance really count," Kelly continued. "The best way to move forward is to show good performance, because we’ve given the system an opportunity to reward good performance. [Switching career fields to advance faster] would be a risk-reward proposition. I wouldn’t go just to chase promotions and money, because those aren’t always guaranteed."

But Boles thinks ambitious airmen should look into retraining opportunities.

"If somebody has the aptitude … that can open some doors," Boles said.


Jones said entering these jobs — while challenging — can put airmen at the forefront of the service, with the potential to be rewarded for their effort.

"If you want to be on the cutting edge of what’s going on in the Air Force today, on the tip of the spear, these are the jobs that will put you there," he said. "These [increased] promotion opportunities reflect jobs that are extremely critical to the Air Force mission, and it signifies the importance of these jobs. These are very demanding jobs, and the incentives offered are a reflection of that."

But making that leap won’t be easy, Jones said. Those jobs are often mentally and physically demanding, and sometimes are accompanied by high operations tempos that can put a strain on airmen and their families.

"Those are some of the things that come part and parcel with those jobs — but many of them also are some of the most rewarding jobs in the Air Force," Jones said.

If an airman is considering making a change, Jones said, he or she will need to start preparing as soon as possible — getting into better physical shape to meet the tough standards of career fields such as pararescue, or hitting the books to learn the challenging technical aspects of a job such as intel or RPA sensor ops.

Sometimes, Boles said, "fear of the unknown" and fear of being the new guy could hold airmen back. That fear isn’t entirely unfounded, he said, but, in many cases, bosses are also looking at the attitude of someone who is retraining.

"Is that person champing at the bit to succeed?" Boles said. "If so, that overcomes a lot of new person syndrome."

But above all, Boles said, even in an organization as structured as the Air Force, airmen who aren’t satisfied with the path of their career probably still have the chance to make a change.

"If you’re not happy at what you’re doing, stop doing that," Boles said. "Find something else to do, and make sure that you’re going to be happy at that."