Coast Guard EER Bullet Examples for Every Section

Your EER came back with mostly 5s and 6s, but the narrative blocks look like a form letter — "excellent performance," "great attitude," "always willing to help." The marks were there. The proof wasn't. That's the USCG EER problem in miniature: strong scores with no supporting evidence, which means a board in eighteen months has nothing to cite when they're stack-ranking you against four other BM2s with the same marks.

This guide covers the sections that drive EER outcomes, with side-by-side weak and strong examples for each block, plus a short breakdown of what makes the difference.

How the USCG EER works

The Employee Evaluation Report (CG-3788 for E-4 through E-9) evaluates members across competency blocks, each scored on a 1–7 numerical scale with space for supervisor narrative comments. The marks feed your Overall Advancement Recommendation (OAR), which combines with your Servicewide Exam score, time-in-grade, and awards to determine your total score for advancement.

The numerical marks attract the eye on first glance. But the narrative comments are what boards, commanding officers, and selection panels actually read. A 6 in Professional Performance with a blank comment line tells them nothing. A 6 backed by "47 SAR cases, 6 survivors recovered, #1 RB-S crew in 5th District" tells them exactly why that mark was earned.

Two blocks deserve your heaviest writing investment:

• Professional Performance — your mission outcomes and technical accomplishments
• Leadership and Initiative — your impact on the unit and on the people around you

The other competency blocks (Teamwork, Adaptability, Military Bearing, Communications) still need attention, but Professional Performance and Leadership are where competitive EERs win or lose.

Professional Performance

What the supervisor wants: Evidence of scope and outcome. Not job description — actual results. Cases, lives, dollars, sorties, boardings, certifications, equipment accountability, maintenance intervals. The question the rater is implicitly answering here is: What did this member actually produce?

Weak:

Performed duties in an outstanding manner; consistently exceeded standards in all assigned tasks. Excellent team player who is always willing to help.

Strong:

Coxswain for Station Portsmouth's 25-foot Response Boat-Small; conducted 47 SAR cases in FY26, recovered 6 survivors and 3 deceased — #1 RB-S crew by case count in 5th District. Maintained 100% crew qualification rate through 4 personnel turnovers; zero training delinquencies across eval period.

The weak version is a reflex — it describes the member in adjectives. The strong version quantifies the case count, names the life-safety outcome, and ranks the crew against peers. That last clause — "#1 RB-S crew by case count in 5th District" — is what a board member circles.

For IT and EM rates

Technical specialties require a slightly different frame. Replace SAR cases with availability, response time, and dollar accountability:

Managed network infrastructure supporting 380-person sector; diagnosed and remediated 14 Tier II outages, average resolution 1.9 hours against 8-hour standard. Administered $230K in communications equipment across 2 semi-annual inventories with zero accountability discrepancies.

The numbers here are response time and dollar scope. Any technical rate can find equivalents — maintenance deadlines, calibration currency, server uptime percentage, software patch compliance rate.

Leadership and Initiative

What the supervisor wants: Evidence you led without being asked. Not the duties you were assigned — the gap you found and filled, the person you chose to develop, the qualification you built from scratch. Advancement outcomes (promotions, qualifications, retention) belong here.

Weak:

Strong leader who mentors junior members and is always available to help the team. Well-respected throughout the unit.

Strong:

Selected as Collateral Duty Training Petty Officer for 42-person shore unit despite serving in E-5 billet; built 6-week qualification roadmap that cut time-to-ready from 14 weeks to 8 — adopted as unit standard by incoming XO. Directly counseled 3 FS3s through advancement exam prep; all 3 advanced to FS2, best pass rate in the Atlantic Area sector.

Two specific stories. Each names a gap, shows what the member did about it, and ends with a quantified outcome or comparison. "Well-respected throughout the unit" tells a board nothing. "Best pass rate in Atlantic Area sector" tells them how to rank this member against everyone else.

For Maritime Enforcement Specialists (ME rate)

The ME rate is relatively new and CGBI boarding teams have inherently quantifiable training outcomes:

Led boarding team qualifications for 12 BLET students during 90-day sector deployment; all 12 qualified on schedule, 2 nominated for Boarder of the Quarter — first back-to-back nominations from a training team in 3 years.

New rates can build strong Leadership blocks by leaning on qualification pipelines. Every student who qualifies is a citable data point.

Teamwork and Adaptability

What the supervisor wants: Times you made the team stronger, not just times you showed up for the team. Coverage, cross-training, TAD deployments, carrying extra load during a manning shortage — this block rewards members who bent their schedule to fill someone else's gap.

Weak:

Great team player; always willing to assist shipmates and supervisors

Strong:

Covered MK3 billet for 38 days during cutter underway manning shortage; qualified as small boat engineer within first week, maintained engineering watch qualifications through patrol with zero casualty reports filed.

The strong version describes a coverage situation and the outcome it produced. "Always willing to assist" is on every EER. Covering an engineering billet — and qualifying within a week — is not.

What the overall mark can't do by itself

The OAR mark is the number boards remember. But narrative comments do two things numbers can't:

They make the marks credible. A 6 in Professional Performance with no supporting comment reads like a generous rater. A 6 followed by "47 cases, 6 survivors, #1 crew in district" reads like documentation. Boards know the difference.

They survive the record. Your EER stays in your personnel file for years. The narrative comments are what a new CO, a selection board, or a transfer board reads when they want to understand your career. Generic comments disappear into the stack. Specific ones get remembered when your name comes up in a discussion.

Approach each narrative block the same way you'd write a performance award citation: specific action, specific result, comparison or ranking where you have one.

Common USCG EER mistakes

Copying from last year. Same unit, same responsibilities, same accomplishments? Probably not. If the narrative looks like last year's EER with the member's name changed, a sharp XO will notice — and so will a board.

Leaving blocks blank. No narrative comment means the board fills in the gap themselves, usually not in the member's favor. Even one line with a specific number beats silence.

Adjective stacking without evidence. "Consistently outstanding," "exceptionally talented," "truly top-notch" — these are confidence markers without proof. Every adjective should be replaceable with a number or a comparison; if it isn't, cut it.

Burying the lead. The strongest item belongs first in each block. The second paragraph gets skimmed. The first one gets read.

No ranking language. USCG advancement is competitive, and the service is small enough that stacking-ranking matters more, not less. A single phrase anchors the member near the top: "of 8 BM2s assigned," "best case-to-delinquency ratio in Sector," "only E-5 selected for the pilot program." Without it, the board ranks them average.

What to do with a quiet rating period

Not every eval cycle produces six rescue cases and two process improvements. For quieter periods:

Sustained performance is a legitimate entry. "Maintained 100% qualification currency through a 90-day cutter deployment with three port calls and reduced crew" describes composure and reliability. Boards value that — it's not exciting, but it's exactly what senior enlisted leadership wants documented.

Training and certification wins are always available. Did the member complete a required school ahead of schedule? Earn a qualification that wasn't required for their billet? Finish CGBI coursework? These fit the Professional Performance block and they're quantifiable.

Coverage and TAD count. USCG members frequently fill short-handed patrols or cover vacant billets. Name the unit, the duration, and what happened as a result. "TAD to Air Station Cape Cod for 21 days" is neutral. "TAD to Air Station Cape Cod for 21 days; qualified as rescue swimmer spotter within 72 hours, flew 4 live hoists" is a Professional Performance bullet.

Boards understand that operational tempo varies. They penalize empty narratives, not quiet cycles.

Write the EER the record deserves

The USCG is a small service. Word travels, and so do records. An EER with generic narratives follows a member for years — not because it says anything bad, but because it says nothing at all. A well-written block of comments can pull someone past a half-dozen peers with identical numerical marks.

If you want a starting point, RapidEPR generates Coast Guard EER bullets — drop in what actually happened, pick the USCG EER format, and get a clean draft in seconds. The same writing principles that apply to strong military evaluation bullets across all branches hold for EER narratives: specific action, specific result, and at least one comparison that tells the reader where you stand.

Get started free →