Resume uploads to be next USAJobs focus, OPM says

After addressing capacity and help desk issues plaguing the Oct. 11 relaunch of USAJobs, the Office of Personnel Management now is turning its attention to the job search site's resume-uploading feature.

During the Chief Human Capital Officers Council's monthly public meeting, Kathy Dillaman, senior policy adviser to the director, announced that the number of resumes uploaded to the redesigned website is fast approaching 1 million. Many users have complained that not all the information on their resumes is being properly uploaded to their online applicant profile.

Dillaman explained that though all the information is there, users cannot see the resumes in their entirety. The USAJobs team will be addressing these visibility issues in the coming week, along with a continued focus on password-reset complaints, which remain the topic generating the most help desk tickets.

The other officers at the council meeting roundly praised Dillaman's efforts to respond to the upgraded website's multitude of launch problems.

"As we used to say in the ballet, it's not how you fall, it's how you get up," said Eugene Sexton, deputy chief human capital officer of the Labor Department.

Meeting attendees provided other updates on workforce issues, including a progress report on OPM's hiring reform initiative. From the second to the third quarter of fiscal 2011, 50 percent of CHCO agencies reduced their average hiring time, according to data OPM collected. There was also an increase in manager satisfaction with the hiring process during the same period, but applicant satisfaction decreased, OPM reported.

Angela Bailey, deputy associate director of OPM employee services, emphasized that while reducing hiring times should be the goal, there are certain boutique jobs that will always require more than 100 days for a decision. In general, she added, agencies should prize finding the best applicant over filling the position in a timely manner.

"Timeliness is great, but if you're not hiring the right person . . . you're quickly hiring the wrong person," Bailey said.