Posted on Sep 12, 2020
Do letters of recommendation help for officer promotion boards?
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I transferred from the Marine Corps and I'm currently in the Guard. I will go to the LTC promotion board in January. Because I haven't been in the Guard that long, I don't have a long track record of OERs. One year. Will letters of recommendation from senior officers help?
Posted in these groups: 
LTC
Promotion Board
LTC Promotion Board
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 5
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Unless officer boards are extremely different than enlisted ones, third party letters are absolutely prohibited to be submitted to promotion boards. What you can do is write your own letter describing any experience you have that’s not reflected in your file or explaining any gaps in time periods, or generally any questions the board might have like why you only have one OER
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LTC Jason Mackay
LTC (Join to see) - not attacking you. Just asking. As SFC (Join to see) said look at the board page. Read the MILPER. I'd call the HRC POC to see what has been done before. Usually a letter to explain something raises more questions than the answer. They start with your ORB and (used to) look at the photo. Then they scanned senior Rater blocks. 37 seconds. Then they score files 1-5. If they have board members with wildly different on the file, the president asks the board members to explain, then it gets re boarded.
While a letter to the board president is permitted, it is a high risk activity.
While a letter to the board president is permitted, it is a high risk activity.
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LTC (Join to see)
LTC Jason Mackay I appreciate it. Didn’t take it as an attack. While I’ve got a lot of time in uniform, my time in the Army is limited. Just trying to learn from others.
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CPT (Join to see)
LTC (Join to see) - Sir, can you not pull your old OERs from the Marine Corps system and have your admin NCO submit them to iPerms? If we can upload foreign awards and civilian document to iPerms, I would assume you could upload your MC OERs.
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Your name alone should make you a lock. Personal letters of any kind are not authorized. Only submission of missing information and the like. Having said that, this stands for AD, not 100% on Guard.
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LTC (Join to see) The National Guard and Reserve boards are combined for purposes of O-5 selection. If you completed all the education required for O-5 selection it is a matter of making sure your board file has all the correct documentation. This file is available via the HRC site. You can go to your Guard G1 shop, usually at the State HQ location, they can provide guidance. You can also look for the HRC O-5 board announcement, this will provide a step by step instruction of where to update as well.
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