(Credit: istockphoto.com/KvitaJan)
Career Note
Taking AIM2
New Assignment Interactive Module Makes Officer Management Process More Efficient
By Lieutenant Colonel Katherine K. Stich
There’s a lot of buzz about the Assignment Interactive Module 2.0 (AIM2) among officers throughout the Army.You may have heard the term thrown around by your S1, your fellow brothers- and sisters-in-arms from other branches, your commander, or even your staff judge advocate. Your curiosity may have brought you to the AIM2 website, https://aim.hrc.army.mil/portal/officer/portal.aspx. If you haven’t visited yet, please take the time to do so.
Why all the excitement over AIM2? The Assignment Interactive Module 2.0 is a web based system designed to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the officer management process. It allows interaction directly with your career manager through the portal, and challenges individual officers to inform the Army of knowledge, skills, and behaviors (KSBs) that are not captured on their Officer Record Brief (ORB). This is a large part of the Army’s effort in developing a new talent management system to acquire, develop, employ, and retain the right talent.
The Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG Corps) intends to begin using AIM2 as part of our 2020 assignment process. In other words, those in the assignment cycle that begins this summer will be the first in our Corps to benefit from the new system. We anticipate it will be a tremendous talent management tool, as AIM2 encourages even more officer input into the assignments process. The more knowledge we have about an officer’s KSBs and preferences, the better fit career managers are able to make for the members of our Corps. However, the system is only as good as the input provided by leaders and individual officers. Leaders were recently asked to provide duty descriptions for every judge advocate position in their footprint. These descriptions will allow career managers to better understand each position and find an officer with complementary KSBs.
We are now asking individual officers to do their part by providing their resume. Officers will head to the website and click on “My Resume.” They will find a place to review and verify data the Army already knows about them and as well as areas where they may provide additional self-professed KSBs and experiences. The information they provide will appear on the back side of their ORB, and will serve as a complement to the front side. This information is similar to what was requested on last year’s assignment preference sheet, but allows for much more detail. It may highlight an expertise not readily apparent from the front side of an officer’s ORB, demonstrate an officer’s versatility, or bring to light a KSB not otherwise captured by constraints of the traditional ORB format. Regardless of the officer’s background, completing the resume on AIM2 will almost certainly help career managers better understand the talents of our teammates to best deliver the right officer to the right assignment at the right time. The information an officer provides through AIM2 will be available to career managers in real time, so officers can feel free to update it as often as they see fit.
While AIM2 offers a “marketplace” option for most Army branches, some specialty branches—including the Chaplains and the JAG Corps—are not currently using the marketplace option. The marketplace mechanism is intended to have both officer and units indicate preferences for assignments. For now, however, judge advocates will continue to make their assignment requests to career managers and will continue to receive assignments in accordance with policy and statute as opposed to participating in the marketplace.
Officers should feel free to start populating their “My Resume” tab now. The career managers at the Office of the Judge Advocate General’s Personnel, Plans, and Training Office (PPTO) look forward to reading about all of the talented members of our Corps. As always, officers are welcome to reach out to their PPTO career managers with questions or concerns about AIM or the assignment process in general. TAL
LTC Stich is a Career Manager with OTJAG’s Personnel, Plans, and Training Office.