TCCOM:Roster Assignment Strategy
Excerpted from a TCCOM Report published on 3 Feb 24:
One thing I do as TCCOM is place pilots in squadrons. A lot of the time they're brand new pilots fresh from training and we've also got pilots coming back from the Reserves and Inactives. They're not assigned randomly, there are some considerations I make and I want to go over what those are.
For pilots that choose a squadron for themselves, even coming from IWATS, they go to that squadron as long as that squadron isn't already full. Personal choice is paramount, I don't step in and try to divert pilots away from an assignment they've chosen. My thought is that the surest way to discourage someone from being part of the club is to overrule an assignment preference they've expressed, so we don't do that.
Next up is looking at whether they have a recruiter and assigning the new pilot as close to that recruiter as we can. If the recruiter's squadron isn't full, the new pilot goes to that squadron. If the recruiter's squadron is full, I'll talk to the BGCOM about assigning them to another squadron in the same battlegroup. The assumption I'm making is that most recruits have met their recruiter and will do the best near the person that brought them to us. I'm hopeful that the relationship between a recruiter and their recruit doesn't end in IWATS, so I assign them together to help maintain that relationship. Also, the opportunity to fill out one's part of the roster forms a natural benefit to being a recruiter.
If there's no recruiter and no squadron preference expressed by an incoming pilot, I'll talk to the BGCOM of the smallest battlegroup about assigning the pilot to one of their squadrons. The pilot might not always go to the smallest squadron because we're also considering which squadron has something in common with the incoming pilot be it games played or even something like a general mindset. We want to make sure that a new pilot has the best chance of becoming a part of the community so we try to "hook" them by matching them with pilots we think they'll get along with. Sometimes we're not working with a lot of information about the incoming pilot so the BGCOMs are invited to talk to them before deciding which squadron to send them to.
Inter-squadron transfers happen infrequently, but pilots are always free to request a transfer to another squadron. It could be that they've made friends in another squadron or don't get along with someone in their current squadron, and in those situations we come back to personal choice being paramount. I give the leaders involved a chance to talk to the transferring pilot before the transfer is processed in case there's been a misunderstanding that can be resolved; I feel like that's not a lot to ask the transferring pilot to wait for and I make sure to tell them that they're not under any obligation to change their mind. Transferring hurts sometimes, but it's better than telling a pilot they can't move and have them fade away on us. That's not good for us or them.
