The U.S. Navy is currently considering a transformation of its personnel performance evaluation system to ensure retention and promotion processes that are less subjective and contribute to a more efficient personnel management system. In this thesis, using an integrated quantitative and qualitative approach, we examine the process and criteria used by the U.S. Navy to select officers from the unrestricted line (URL) for O-5 promotion. We find that the Navy lags in using personality traits and measures of emotional intelligence metrics in its leadership selection and promotion processes, metrics that are considered increasingly important in selecting leaders in the civilian sector. We use historical personnel records to estimate predictive O-5 promotion models in the URL community. Officers’ educational background is the closest measure we have from the existing Navy personnel data when trying to distinguish between officers more likely to exhibit hard skills (associated with technical degrees) versus soft skills (associated with non-technical degrees). We find that officers with technical degrees promote to the O-5 rank at similar rates with officers with either a mix of technical and non-technical degrees or those with exclusive non-technical degrees. We recommend that the Navy start collecting measures of personality traits and emotional intelligence to use in more efficient, less subjective personnel selection and promotion processes.

Subjects: O-5 promotion; selection; URL; Navy retention; Promotion; selection criteria; promotion board; selection process; civilian industry selection