The Office of Personnel Management is looking to revamp its centralized hiring register program to make it easier for agencies to search for specific skills. Federal Times reports chief human capital officers say the hiring registers -- under which OPM advertises for 13 of the most in-demand federal jobs, including IT - are too broad and insufficient for helping them target the skills they need, according to OPM Director John Berry. For example, the Internal Revenue Service needs information technology specialists with experience writing Java code, but the current registers don't identify candidates with those skills.
OPM announced the launch of the job registers in April but reported late last month agencies have only hired 71 of about 106,000 qualified job candidates from the registers thus far.
Berry suggested OPM may need to tailor the registers to make them more specific to agency needs. OPM will test the revised, more detailed registers during the next five months, he said.
Brittany Ballenstedt
Brittany Ballenstedt writes Nextgov's Wired Workplace blog, which delves into the issues facing employees who work in the federal information technology sector. Before joining Nextgov, Brittany covered federal pay and benefits issues as a staff correspondent for Government Executive and served as an associate editor for National Journal's Technology Daily. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Mansfield University and originally hails from Pennsylvania. She currently lives near Travis Air Force Base, Calif., where her husband is stationed.
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