You Should Care About Promotion Board Precepts and Convening Orders

Joel Schofer's Career Planning Podcast

Whenever a promotion board starts, the members are provided two items to guide them as they decide who to promote, the board precept and the convening order. These documents are available on-line and should be used to figure out how to promote and write your fitrep.

The Board Precept

The precept is released in December and can be seen anytime afterwards. For example, if you go to the FY19 O4 Staff Corps Promotion Board page and click on the link marked with an arrow, you’ll get the board precept even though this board hasn’t started yet:

The Convening Order

The convening order for a promotion board is not released until it starts. If you monitor the board page closely, you’ll usually be able to get it within 1-2 days after the board begins. You just click the link that reads “Board Convening Order”:

Incidentally, this is how I always find out the promotion opportunity for all the boards and post it on the blog. It is in the convening order.

Why You Should Care

You should care about the precept and convening order because they tell you how to promote to the next rank. Go to this page and download them from the most recent boards of your next rank. You can see all the different boards circled in red here:

Click on the board for the next rank you’ll be competing for, and download the precept and convening order. If the board hasn’t happened yet (like the FY19 O4 board), then you’ll have to look at last year’s convening order (FY18).

Use these documents for two things. First, to figure out how to promote. For example, I deconstructed a past O6 convening order here.

Second, use them to come up with wording for your fitrep bullets, as discussed here where I showed you how to pull phrases for your block 41.

The Bottom Line

1. Go to this page.
2. Get the precept and convening order for your next rank. You might have to go to last year’s board for the convening order if the board hasn’t started yet.
3. Use them to figure out how to get promoted and for writing your fitrep.

https://mccareer.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/episode-61-why-you-should-care-about-promotion-board-precepts-and-convening-orders.mp3