Training Officer Neutrality

Before going forward, you should be aware of a very important part of being a training officer: neutrality.

Remember the program's goals

To understand why neutrality is important, you need to remember what the goal of the training program is: bring new cadets into our fleet and prepare them for simming. Notice we said fleet, and not any specific ship. The program is in place to usher cadets into our community as a whole, and not to prepare them for any one particular ship.

Do not recruit from training

That being said, the core of this principle is that you are strictly forbidden to recruit any of the cadets from the training program to your, or any other vessel in the fleet. The Fleet Placement Officer holds the final authority over where a cadet is placed, and it is important to every ship in the fleet that cadets are allowed to at least try the vessel they move to before they are influenced to move elsewhere.

As such, training officers may not influence any cadet to request placement on a given vessel. As a way of avoiding this situation altogether, training officers are cautioned to avoid "talking-up" any particular ship in discussions with a cadet that they may have either in, or out of the main training session.

Stay neutral throughout training

Taking into consideration what has been laid out above, training officers should maintain a neutral tone when speaking with cadets and simply answer questions as they are offered in a manner which does not suggest that any one vessel is "better" or "worse" than another. The fact is, every ship in our fleet is unique and has an atmosphere that may fit one officer more than another. However, as a training officer it is important that you allow the Fleet Placement Officer attempt to place cadets on vessels which both need them, and on vessels which will be a good fit for the cadet.