High Quality. One impact of the defense drawdown is the Services' redesign of a number of career fields, with incumbents assuming a more diverse workload and greater responsibilities.  The redesign both increases the number of tasks assigned to an individual, and requires incumbents to perform new tasks of greater complexity. (35)  The Services believe that as the levels of job/task difficulty and importance increase, so will the need to bring in and retain greater proportions of individuals with above-average aptitude.  The Services define high-quality recruits as high school diploma graduates who score in the top 50 percent on the AFQT, Categories I through IIIA.  Figure 2.9 shows the trends in the proportion of high-quality accessions since FY 1973.  In FY 1998, the percentage of high-quality recruits ranged from 56 percent in the Army to 74 percent in the Air Force.

Figure 2.9.  Percentage of high-quality NPS accessions, FYs 1973–1998.

See Sellman, W.S., Since We Are Reinventing Everything Else, Why Not Occupational Analysis? Keynote address to the 9th Occupational Analyst Workshop, San Antonio, TX, May 31–June 2, 1995.  (go back)

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