OpenOPM Search Ideas

We've all heard the expression "they come for the mission but they leave because of the managers". Some call this line of sight, but it would make sense to have an interactive Career Pathing Tool on USAJobs.gov. Career Pathing Tools are a great way to allow potential candidates the opportunity to explore their future with your agency. Candidates, especially millennials, want to see what the rewards are for a commitment... more »

make every federal agency that is going to contract out or a full year prior to the end of the current contract conduct a formal A76. I bet my left kidney that most of these overt paid contractors would be US federal employees. if this is a short duration thing, they could do a TERM NTE position.

Inside deals area real problem with Dept of Army. Several agencies use AVEU, others USAJOBs still others only accept hard copy US mail applications. make it simple if AVEU is good enoug, then all agencies use that. The Army system has so many screen out words that have been passed out to spouses that all the spouse needs to do is write a good story to make the priority list.

I know many young, bright and eager individuals who are interested in becoming public servants. However the KSA's are difficult to understand and the online process of filling out an application is way too cumbersome! Even when a person labors and gets the application in they never hear anything back. The entire process is frustrating, impersonal, lacks good manners etc etc. The result is a lot of talent is going... more »

During emergency situations, OPM at times issues delay/unscheduled leave. However, some components of my agency have flextime, meaning we can arrive at any time from 6-9:30am and leave 8 hours later. When delayed opening is issued, OPM has effectively canceled flextime and it has created traffic jams getting into work and leaving work. I suggest that OPM exempt from delayed opening those who have flextime.

OPM should consider revising its outdated qualification standards. Currently, for most positions, agencies can require only one year of specialized experience equivalent to the next lower grade level. Agencies must then define the specialized experience necessary to do the job, which can often be very narrow and difficult to screen for on a resume. Most applicants do not think to specifically address the specialized... more »

The OPM website hosts a lot of great information about approved programs. But when new program ideas are being considered, it is typically worked through the departments and agencies within the Washington, DC area. However, many of those departments and agencies have organizations/employees in field sites and information and solicitation of ideas rarely is requested or shared with those units. Similarly, the FEBs and... more »

OPM should negotiate a supplemental health insurance plan for retired Federal Employees who are on Medicare since their health care costs are mostly paid for by Medicare. It is wrong that we continue to pay the full amount.

On the current USAJOBS site, there is little information about the individual employers outside of what is discussed in the specific job description. The Silver Search offering allows an employer to brand the header of the position listing, but doesn’t allow for much more. Deciding to work for an organization is a major life-changing decision for an individual. A college student may want to know about training and advancement... more »

A pilot project to build a next-gen OPM portal for the Federal Community Cloud. The idea is to build a suite of opensocial portals, one at each Federal Agency, based on The Open Stack that will enable communication with all opensocial partners.

Useful Links:

http://tinyurl.com/yks78pg

http://bit.ly/cUrTv8

OPM should use existing social networks, including LinkedIn, GovLoop, and Facebook to further its mission. You could have the OPM Director host a blog, announce "hot jobs," provide best business practices, and issue polls on hot topics. This shouldn't cost OPM much, but will make them much more accessible to their customers - Federal employees.

It just makes sense to measure the effectiveness of your outreach campaign. Typically, cookies are deployed to track user activity and store personal information. But this method is far too invasive for government use. Should restrictions be lifted to allow for the use of cookies on media placements for recruitment and outreach, agencies might spend thousands less on sites or sections of sites that are not producing results.... more »

Community = the citizens who are looking for federal jobs + the federal employees who need to fill jobs + the OPM'ers who are responsible for making the process work on a country-level scale. The work of the latter can be shared between OPM and other agencies' experts, but someone with a collegial, competent presence has to manage the community. I think that person should be based at OPM. A good model for how this could... more »

I would encourage OPM to leverage existing or create new collaboration vehicles to increase collaboration between job seekers and federal recruiters. Often the two groups are very disconnected although there is basic contact information (email/phone number) on job descriptions. Through collaboration, some of the same questions can be answered once and create repositories of knowledge. See business.gov as an interesting... more »

I would like to see the USAJOBS data on data.gov.

Right now I think the data is available through partnerships with OPM. I would remove that barrier and make it easy to just grab the data from data.gov.

This would allow lots of innovation around the hiring process by 3rd party developers and would not cost OPM money.

Steve Ressler

Founder, GovLoop.com