Just a tiny suggestion. If you want to add new ranks it always puts them at the top, for me means renaming every rank to shift them all up one for the rank I am adding to the bottom. Would it be possible to have the option to add a new rank to the bottom and automatically shift all personel down one rank? I don't know if there might be a better solution, especially this would spam the logs saying everyone was demoted at once. I'm sure you probably have bigger fish to fry right now but I just thought I'd mention it.
I seem to remember that it is related to the pool auto promotions feature. Basically make it that way will result in a freezing of all promotions until the new created pool reaches the minimum amount of personnel which in some cases will require 300 plus cadets. Considering that, it is easier to move the few people up than all the people down.
I feel your pain and what you suggesting has been suggested other times but it is what it is and I haven't seen anything from Steve on these regards, I mean it has been discussed to change many feature related to this area and he never officially replied or committed to anything, so I will keep my hopes down a bit...