It may be beneficial to think what other purposes there would be to having personnel as usable items.
The obvious one would be that building ships would require some crew units. The crew units would themselves be generated using a mix of personnel types.
E.g. Megathron - would require say Ship's Crew, Gallente Ship Specialists, Gallente Officers.
Apocalypse - require Ship's Crew, Slaves, Amarr Ship Specialists, Amarr Officers.
That sort of thing.
Ship's Crew is an existing ingame item.
Racial Ship Specialists would be produced in groups, made up from various other personnel types.
e.g. Gallente ship specialists produced from Civilians + Exotic Dancers
As would Officers.
Then, have the personnel types all used in some other gameplay aspect. I suggest Space Cities. Build cities in space, as attackable facilities, to provide small gangs and individual raiders with targets. Cities produce the personnel required to build ships. Cities also provide opportunities for such things as aesthetic competitions.
Much of the required art for space cities is already ingame, in the form of all those mission structures - habitation modules, astrofarms, warehouses, asteroid-colonies, etc. etc.