Hire Quickly Using Hiring Flexibilities
As many recruiting managers know, it is not simply a matter of filling the job with someone, but filling it with the right person. Hiring the person with the skills you need greatly increases workforce productivity and efficiency.
With the expected surge in retirement of federal workers over the next 10 years, combined with an increasingly competitive job market, there is a growing emphasis on mass recruitment to replace this loss of talent.
However, as the Federal Times reports, simply hiring more workers may not be the solution to federal agencies’ workforce problems.1 Instead, recruiting managers should target jobseekers with the skill sets their agency needs and be willing to look outside the traditional candidate pool to use flexible hiring authorities that include jobseekers with disabilities.
Fill Positions Quickly Using Hiring Authorities
Special hiring authorities are in place to give federal agencies flexibility and alternatives to traditional hiring practices. Using the civil service competitive process to hire new workers can be time consuming, and in some cases, impractical. Moreover, the General Accounting Office has cited the cumbersome and lengthy application (PDF) process as a barrier to attracting new talent.2 Hiring people with disabilities by using existing hiring authorities is one of the easiest ways to fill your positions with the talent that your agency needs (PDF).3
Hire People with Disabilities
Schedule A allows agencies to hire quickly by not requiring positions to be posted publicly.4 It was updated in August 2006 to simplify the hiring process. Multiple hiring authorities for people with disabilities were consolidated under Schedule A 5 CFR 213.3102(u). Applicants must have a certification of disability and, unless hired under a temporary appointment, a certification of job readiness. Applicants who do not have a certification of job readiness from a vocational rehabilitation counselor can be hired for a temporary position and work under this appointment until they can prove they can do the job or receive a certification of job readiness.
Federal agencies can now accept certification of disability from multiple sources, including licensed vocational rehabilitation counselors, licensed medical professionals, and federal agencies that issue or provide disability benefits. Agencies can hire someone on a temporary, time-limited, or permanent appointment.
“Without question. Schedule A has been very successful to me throughout my career as a manager.”
IRS program manager T.J. Cannady discusses why he recommends federal managers use Schedule A.
1 Dan Davidson, “ ‘More’ may not be the answer to work-force problems,” Federal Times 5 February 2007: 13.
2 General Accounting Office, “Additional Collaboration Between OPM and Federal Agencies is Key to Improved Federal Hiring” (PDF) June 2004.
3 General Accounting Office, “Human Capital: Status of Efforts to Improve Federal Hiring” (PDF) June 7, 2004.
4 U.S. Office of Personnel Management, “Excepted Service – Appointment of Persons With Disabilities And Career and Career-Conditional Employment Regulation: Questions and Answers”.
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