It wasn't all at one shot. Credit hours helped erase just about all of them. It was probably over 3-4 panels (better part of a year) since we weren't eligible to let anyone go for the first 2-years of NCEPT. Being stuck that long, you have a lot of time to sit and stir, just itching for some kind of action or progress. For me I ended up doing all I could do, which was go out and talk to people and find out information to try and gain an advantage. Some of my trips were during already scheduled vacation I had doing other things in the area's. But there were two facilities I made a special trip to go see.
I didn't know too much when I started, but I just knew that if there was someone ranking the ERR's at each facility then I could probably network with that person and make my chances better having just one low level up/down on my resume. At first I naturally assumed it was the ATM only as it was called the "managers ranking list". But after a few visits to places I soon found out that was not always the case. Also, as has already been covered somewhere else in another topic, not only is who is doing the ranking different at each facility, what they are looking for varies wildly too. Some people look at seniority, some people look at level of facility, some people look at type of facility, some people (mostly on the facrep side now) look at if you have a position on your local natca e-board or other natca position, some people look at if you donate to the PAC, some people simply look to see how much you've interacted with them (visit's, email's, etc). It's impossible to tell how the facility you are interested in operates for NCEPT unless you find out from the facility or someone at that facility. There is no universal answer that all facilities have this specific person rank using these specific criteria.