On February 17 Commissioner Astrue sent an e-mail to all Social Security employees to explain what the passage of the President's economic stimulus bill would mean for the Social Security Administration. Here is an excerpt:
We believe that when Congress passes the FY 2009 appropriation in March or April, we will have an opportunity to hire between 5,000 and 6,000 new employees before the end of the year. If you have hiring responsibilities, please do not let the legislative situation translate into inaction. Post the jobs, interview the candidates, plan for training, and hope Congress provides the money to pull the hiring trigger in the next 30 – 45 days.There are 31 weeks between now and the end of this fiscal year. If there are 5,000 new employees to be hired, something like 161 new employees should be hired each week between now and the end of the fiscal year. Currently, Social Security has only 29 job openings posted. A few of these may be for more than one vacancy. I know that this is the federal government and things take time, but Social Security needs to get moving on advertising job openings. As the Commissioner said, "Post the jobs, interview the candidates, plan for training." It will be possible to pull the "hiring trigger" long before any job opening advertised now can possibly be filled.
The problem is that we have been down this rad many.many times. We have spent endless hours developing advertising, reading scores of applications and then nada, absolutely nada. Funding doesn't come through or money is diverted elsewhere. I think most supervisors with hiring authority are going to wait until they see something concrete before wasting a lot of time on another rabbit trail that SSA is so good at creating.
ReplyDeletePersonnel offices are busy preparing the vacancy announcements now and hiring will be starting soon.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about elsewhere, but the managers in our area are already interviewing individuals for whom they have resumes on file. Of course, they can't make any offers yet (and are telling the applicants such), but they are hoping to be close to making final selections when they get hiring authority.
ReplyDeleteODAR generally does not post vacancies for new attorney positions anymore. They quitely solicit applications from local law schools and perhaps local bar groups and hire from the accumulated applications. I am not sure why but I would guess that it does help them avoid preference eligibles.
ReplyDeleteAvoiding preference eligibles? I thought SSA had just rec'd an award for equal opportunity. Is there something wrong with lawyers who are also vets? At one time, ODAR's lawyers were almost exclusively male. If that is still true, it deserves some upper management attention.
ReplyDeleteThe non-posted openings are generally filled under the FCIP (Federal Career Intern Program).
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