Top News from the Past Week and a Special Thank You to Vets

This past week has been jam-packed with federal and military news–so much, in fact, that if I gave each a separate post you’d be here reading until Thanksgiving.  Below are links to some of the best and brightest web articles of the past week.

The top news, of course, is Veteran’s Day.   The staff of CareerPro Global work with the exceptional men and women of the military every day–we are, in fact, dedicated to assisting them with their transitions into civilian life and have been since 1986. We are in awe of the exceptional work and sacrifice given by these spectacular folks. Any many of our own are veterans themselves.

We salute our veterans–as well as those who are still in active duty and those who have given their lives for their country. You have our appreciation and love.

Do you know how Veteran’s Day came to be?  Here is the history of the Day: http://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp

CareerPro Global is working on an exceptionally exciting  high-visibility initiative for veterans that is coming soon from the White House, Joining Forces, and we are giving vets a sneak peek of our material here: http://veteranstransitionhq.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/joining-forces-for-veterans-day/

Learn more about the Joining Forces intiative: http://www.whitehouse.gov/joiningforces/resources

More big news of the day for veterans–assitance from the top: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/senate-passes-legion-backed-jobs-bill-for-veterans-2011-11-10

The Veteran’s Administration opened a new site today to assist veteran’s looking for federal work: http://vaforvets.va.gov/

Has anyone else seen the clever television ads from the Post Office, reminding viewers than many of their workers are veterans? Here’s the story behind the ad: http://federaldaily.com/articles/2011/11/08/bill-would-affect-many-vets-in-postal-workforce-unions-say.aspx

And my favorite topic, UAJobs.gov–it looks like they’ve got yet another change up their sleeves: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1111/110811al1.htm

OPM responds to USAJobs complaints

The Office of Personnel management is finally acknowledging and taking responsibility for the kerfuffle surrounding the launch of USAJobs VG.3.

“We made some mistakes,” OPM’s Chief Information Officer Matthew Perry said at a media briefing. “There are no questions that we got overwhelmed.”

The new site, which went live Oct. 11, received nearly 45 million page views on its second day and a total of 39,642 help desk complaints to date on topics including login difficulties, unreceived email notifications and nonworking search parameters.

“I want to first apologize to all applicants who were dealing with trouble of the last three weeks,” Perry said.

Security concerns drove OPM to bring the site in-house, Perry said. When USAJobs was contracted out to Monster.com in its previous iterations, federal employee job resumes co-mingled with those of the private sector on Monster’s servers, potentially leaving government workers vulnerable to identify theft, according to some on the Chief Human Capitol Officers Council, which includes representatives from every major federal agency.

Though there were errors in search functions, Dillaman said OPM’s response has been effective and the problems have “gone from being a wave of critical system function issues to . . . very specific types.”

Dillaman said OPM could not have prepared for the high volume of initial site traffic. “If you have ever been to the mall the day after Thanksgiving, you know what it’s like when everybody hits the doors at once,” she said, adding that OPM did not have the time necessary to “fine-tune” the site prior to its launch.

Response from users has been overwhelmingly negative for USAJobs 3.0, which faced a five-hour shutdown Nov. 1 despite an increase in servers. About 667,000 applications to date have been submitted on USAJobs 3.0. Perry said that no federal agencies have had difficulties posting jobs to the site.

“I’m not here to declare victory or that we’re done. We will continue to refine this every week,” Perry said.

See the entire story at http://bit.ly/thnBJV.