AF56 Interview, CC Recommendation

AF56 Page 6, Interview and Commander’s Recommendation

Commander’s Recommendation (Bullets)

In an ideal world your commander and supervisors will take care of this page completely on your behalf.  In this world your commander will ask for your EPRs and decorations, and he or she will have all of the information needed to put together your bullets.  The reality is that your commander is probably completely overwhelmed with the duties and responsibilities of just being a commander.  It’s a tough job, they are on call 24/7 for two years.  Even if they are on leave they are still responsible for what is happening in the organization.  Because we don’t live in this ideal world, you may have to play a larger role in this page than you want to because your commander may be too busy to do it all.  Look at it this way though, it is in your best interest to do everything you can to help with this.  This is actually a great lesson in what being an officer is actually like.

Interview (Evaluation Factors A-J)

I think one thing people overlook about this page is the connection between the interview and the commander’s recommendation.  In my opinion, these are on the same page for a reason.  While there is nothing requiring your commander to do a formal interview and mark off every item on a checklist, I believe this section does an outstanding job of telling commander’s what the board is looking for in future officers.  For example, factor B is “Confidence, Maturity (sincerity, social adjustment, etc.)”  One thing they continuously harped on in OTS is having confidence in what we did because if you are leading Airmen and they are looking up to you, being a floundering idiot will cause them to lose faith in your leadership.  The correlation between successful officers and every other factor is just as apparent.

If these evaluation factors are so important to your potential as an officer, how is this message conveyed to the board?  Is your commander’s only opportunity to convey this message through the little check box on the right?  In my opinion, absolutely not.  In my opinion, the primary objective of each bullet in Section K should be to clearly connect your accomplishments with one of the evaluation factors in Section A-J.  This gives weight to the check box rating your commander has given you.  If your commander is saying you have outstanding communication skills and tells the board that you brief and are commended by O-6’s on a daily basis, that “Outstanding” rating he gave you in Section H makes sense.  Conversely, if you get an “Outstanding” rating but there is nothing about your communication skills in the bullets, all that rating means is that your commander checked the block.  There is no context or weight behind the rating, therefore it probably means nothing to the board.

Bullets Mindset

I am not a bullet-writing expert when it comes to this section.  The thing about this section is that it really is something that should be written by your commander.  If your commander is recommending you for OTS, this section is supposed to tell the board “why you” from your commander’s perspective.  Due to this, I have a really difficult time helping people with this section.  It probably doesn’t help that a lot of the bullets I see have a lot of career field specific acronyms.  After two years of thinking about how I could do this better, I decided it would be helpful to lay out a good starting point for you to follow.  Hopefully you can use this starting point as you piece together your application with the help of your supervisors and mentors, and your commander can take it from there.

To be clear I am absolutely willing to help you out, just understand that my spin-up time for this page is much longer.  If you send me an applicant profile I can easily go through and look at the bigger picture, formatting, overall message, etc.  If you send me an AF56 Page 6 draft, I first need to understand your record (EPRs, decorations, etc.) so I can get a feel for what you had to work with.  Then I need to understand what the best bullets mean because your career field is probably different than mine, then I would need to try to look at the overall message of each bullet.  This would take so much time for me that it usually isn’t something I have time to do.  Then if I put a ton of work into it and your commander completely re-writes it, it was all for nothing.

Bullet Breakdown

To break this down for you, I think I will just summarize the message of each bullet on an AF56 I have on file.  Please remember that every commander is going to have a different take on how this should be done, this is just the perspective of a random lieutenant on the internet.

1. Overall Evaluation.  Summary bullet about your officer potential.  A stratifications should be at the very beginning and very clear.  For example, “My #1 NCO” means nothing, but “#1/48 SSgt’s in my squadron” says a lot more.  Specifics are crucial.
2. Leadership Potential.  Another summary bullet about your leadership potential.  What do you have to contribute to the future of the Air Force?  Why does the Air Force NEED you to become an officer?
3. Work Experience.  A summary bullet of the highest level work accomplishments.  This is easiest to measure with Sq/Gp/Wg/NAF/MAJCOM awards, etc.  In looking at your career, what are your top accomplishments that tell the board you are truly excellent?
4. Work Experience.  Another bullet discussing your excellence at work.
5. Work Experience.  And another one.
6. Leadership Potential.  A bullet describing how something you did at work proves that you have outstanding leadership skills.
7. Communication Skills.  A bullet describing how you have superior communication skills.
8. Confidence and Maturity.  A bullet explaining how you are more confident and mature than your peers, and ready to become an officer.
9. Attitude.  A bullet explaining how your attitude is exactly what we are looking for in the officer corps.
10. Motivation.  A bullet describing how your motivation facilitates mission accomplishment.
11. Work Experience.  Another bullet about how something you did at work is exactly what we need.
12. Appearance.  A bullet about how your dress and appearance is impeccable.
13. Leadership Potential.  A bullet about your incredible leadership accomplishments.
14. Leadership Potential.  Another bullet about something incredible you did which demonstrated your leadership abilities.
15. Leadership Potential.  And another example.
16. Leadership Potential.  And another example of your awesomeness.
17. Communication Skills.  Another bullet about how your ability to communicate helps Airmen and mission accomplishment.
18. Confidence and Maturity.  A summary bullet about your confidence and maturity, and likelihood to complete the OTS commissioning program.
19. Overall Evaluation.  Another summary bullet about your awesomeness.  After all of that is said and done, what does your commander have to say about you and your potential to become an officer.

The above format is not designed to be a set in stone template you are supposed to follow to become selected.  Instead, I was trying to demonstrate the importance of tying your bullets to the interview criteria.  If you tailor each bullet to the over-arching subject and make a specific point about each one, it can be extremely powerful.  The first and last bullets are the summary bullets.  The first one should introduce who you are, the middle body of the bullets should tell you why you are awesome, and the last bullet should summarize your awesomeness.