Active duty senior enlisted Sailors looking for their next billet in a higher paygrade will soon have the opportunity to get a jump on the process thanks to the Advancement-to-Position (A2P) selection board, the Navy announced July 17.

The Fiscal Year (FY) 20 Senior Enlisted A2P selection board, announced in NAVADMIN 162/19, is a pilot program where active-duty senior enlisted Sailors apply for specific, priority billets listed in the NAVADMIN, and if selected, are temporarily advanced to the billet paygrade.  Those Sailors must still be selected for advancement via the annual Senior Chief or Master Chief Petty Officer (SCPO or MCPO) selection boards to be permanently advanced.

“The current advancement system is designed to advance ‘fully and best qualified’ personnel, regardless of specific billet, location, or Navy Enlisted Classification (NEC) needs,” said Cmdr. Chris Stillion, the Shore Allocations officer for the Career Management Department in Navy Personnel Command (NPC).  “This results in a situation in which many of our newly advanced Sailors are not aligned to the billets the Navy needs them to fill, and are not immediately available for distribution to those billets.”

“While the Navy may have enough senior enlisted leaders,” Stillion continued, “they are not in the places the Navy needs them to be – leading Sailors at sea.  To address this challenge, NPC has initiated this pilot program.”

The selection board is scheduled to convene 9 Sept.  Electronic applications must be submitted no later than Aug. 7.  Applications submitted via mail must be postmarked no later than Aug. 7.

To be eligible for the board, Sailors must meet the following criteria:

Must meet all eligibility requirements for the regularly scheduled FY-20 Active Duty SCPO or MCPO advancement selection boards.

Applicants must sign and have their CO witness a NAVPERS 1070/613 with the following statement: “I understand that by submitting an application for consideration by the FY-20 Enlisted Advancement-to-Vacancy Pilot Selection Board, I am certifying that I am assignable to any billets for which I applied and will execute orders to those billets if directed.”

Applicants must meet all prerequisite requirements detailed in NAVADMIN 162/19 for the specific billet(s) to which they are applying.

Interested Sailors who have submitted voluntary Fleet Reserve/retirement requests to NPC are not eligible for this board.

For a list of all available billets and prerequisite requirements, read the NAVADMIN at www.npc.navy.mil.

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