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thedrifter
03-10-06, 08:12 AM
Marines given access to manage own careers
MCB Quantico
Story by: Cpl. Jennifer Brown

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va.(March 9, 2006) -- A new Web-based career retention system designed to facilitate Marines’ career management and provide a place to meet their career needs is operating in its first phase from January through April 2006, starting with 20 units and spreading Corpswide.

This phase of the Automated Career Retention System allows leathernecks, career retention specialists and commanding officers to interact with each other through an interview management system. Marines can set up interviews and the career retention specialist and commanding officer can conduct the interviews.

“When the system is fully operationally capable, through the ACRS system the Marines, CRS, and commanders can better prepare for their interviews because it provides links to research reenlistment incentives and obtain information about other career options to help them advance in their military career,” said Staff Sgt. Jason F. Steadman, assistant operations chief for Enlisted Retention and Counseling section of the Personnel Management Division. “With ACRS, Marines will be able to manage their own careers.”

Right now, this interview information will be stored and later used when Marines begin submitting for reenlistment with ACRS in early 2007, according to Steadman.

After the program is complete, the Marine can also access the system to see what duty assignments are available and request a specific one.

Ultimately ACRS will help each Marine track his own career, it will not replace any career retention specialist billets. The career retention specialists will continue to manage their assigned units or commands, but this system will enhance the career retention system by making it smoother when career retention specialists and Marines transition from one duty station to another.

Additionally, the system will assist smaller, remote commands that do not have immediate access to a CRS.

“We still want a face-to-face interview, but by using the system, we will be able to track it,” Steadman said. “Unlike the system we have been currently using, every interview conducted on a Marine, wherever they move, will go with them.”

ACRS will replace the Total Forces Retention System, a Lotus Notes-based program constructed in 1997. TFRS is being phased out because it does not interface well with other Web-based programs, Steadman said.

The systems that career retention specialists have been using varied and did not always keep up with the Marines information, according to Steadman.

“The problem we kept encountering was that every career retention specialist filed and set everything up differently,” Steadman said. “As service members moved from one command to another, and the paperwork didn’t always follow their trail, so we needed something electronically that would track the Marine.”

For nearly six years, the Enlisted Retention and Counseling Section of the Personnel Management Division worked to establish an elaborate, unfaltering system that can track Marines from the time they enter the service until retirement or end of active service.

“This is part of standardizing the career retention specialists system,” Steadman said. “This system is not a trial program that will eventually phase out and go away.”

This system is going to mean a better interaction between the Marine and ultimately Headquarters Marine Corps in a sense, because it is going to build retention efforts, make it better, faster and smoother to get retention approval, whereas in the past they would typically wait 30-90 days, Steadman said.

Any Marine with an established MOL account will have access to ACRS.

To access ACRS, a Marine must log onto his personal MOL account, click on the “Resources” page, and click “ACRS” at the top.

Currently, about one-third of Marine Corps units, including units from: I Marine Expeditionary Force, 1st Marine Division, 3rd Marine Division, 1st Marine Logistics Group, 3rd Marine Air Wing, Marine Helicopter Squadron 1, and Marine Corps Base Quantico are able to access ACRS.

The program is scheduled to be complete by spring 2007.

For more information, visit the Marine Corps’ official Web site at www.usmc.mil and search for MARADMIN 090/06.

Ellie