BLMJobs Online Deployment --\
HR: the Few, the Proud, the Panicked

**A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**February 10, 2004**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The Bureau of Land Management satellite network presents live
from the BLM national training center in Phoenix, Arizona, BLMJobs
Online, an interactive workshop designed to introduce BLMJobs Online to
the HR community, to managers and employees and to explain what this new
conversion means to each of you. Now your instructors, Melissa Dukes and
Sherian Long.\
\
M. Dukes: Good morning Bureau of Land Management, or for you folks in
Washington, good afternoon. I am Melissa Dukes, human resources officer
for the Colorado state office.\
\
S. Long: I am Sherian Long and the human resources officer for
California.\
\
M. Dukes: We would like to welcome you to today\'s broadcast. There\'s
actually a reason for the title. We\'re going to get to that in a
minute. But first I would like to introduce Marilyn Johnson, the bureaus
assistant director for human resources management who would like to
share few words of welcome to you. Marilyn?\
\
Greetings, friends and associates. I\'m Marilyn Johnson, the bureau\'s
assistant director for human resources management. I would like to
welcome you to this satellite broadcast on the deployment of BLMJobs
Online, one of our key E-gov initiatives within human resources. E
government is one of the items on the president\'s management agenda.
Not only does implementation of automated staffing support the
accomplishment of this goal, but it also fulfills the needs articulated
in the bureau\'s workforce planning initiative. This is an exciting time
for all of us within the bureau, because our move to Internet-based
staffing opens the door to new and positive ways of filling our
positions.

The new system has a wide range of benefits for employees, supervisors
and HR professionals. I would like to take a moment to highlight some of
those benefits. For employees, the new system will reduce the time it
takes to complete an application and will make it easier to update your
application. You will also be able to post and update your resume
online. Once you\'ve applied for the desired position, you will receive
an e-mail notification letting you know that your application was
received. For supervisors, BLMJobs Online will allow you to hire the
right person with the right skills at the right time because job
announcements will be accessible to a wider range of potential
applicants. This increases the potential to have a more diverse
applicant pool.

In addition to this, automated staffing will allow hiring officials to
be able to reach applicants faster, which in turn will cut down on the
amount of time that a position will be left vacant. For HR
professionals, there will be more consistency in the procedures for
application evaluation and will cut as much as 25 days off of the
recruitment process. This will free up more time for you to serve as
consultant and advisor to management and will make you more accessible
to them as they try to hire the very best for their organization. I
encourage you to fully participate in this broadcast, follow along in
your workbooks, participate in the exercises and use the push-to-talk
microphone to ask questions. I wish you the very pest and I\'m looking
forward to working with awful you in ensuring the success of this new
and exciting system.\
\
M. Dukes: Thank you, Marilyn for those kind words of encouragement to
the HR community out there. I don\'t know if all of you have done push
to talk broadcasts before, but the push to talk technology is extremely
straightforward to use. Keep your microphone 12 to 15 inches in front of
you, push the button down, give us your name, your location, make sure
when you\'re all done to release the button. In that way you can hear
what\'s going on in the broadcast. If you keep the button down, you shut
off your audio. Please do that. We also know a lot of you are sitting in
offices that may not have access to push to talk given the number of
people attending. So we are accepting faxed questions and you can fax
your questions to NTC here at the number below. The faxes come right
next to Sherian\'s feet.

We\'re also accepting telephone calls today. If you need to call in that
you don\'t have access to a fax or push to talk isn\'t working, you can
use the telephone number below and we will accept telephone calls as
well. But because of the interactive nature of push to talk, we want to
go with the push to talk technology. So please, the other thing we would
like to do, is this is our one chance as an HR community to really have
a good dynamic ongoing dialogue about deployment of QuickHire and
BLMJobs Online. Unlike deployment of some of our other HR systems, this
is really changed management. We are doing things in a totally new,
different and I think in an exciting way. But we want this opportunity
to talk about these changes with you and to have a dialogue ongoing with
all the HR community out there. So, please, we\'re going to keep the
microphones open the entire broadcast.

While there are sections where we\'re going to say, do you have any
questions, we will invite questions throughout the broadcast because we
want to make this an extraordinary interchange. Also with us today, we
would like to welcome Barbara Morrisey from the national human resources
management center is known to awful lot of you as the technical guru
here in the deployment of BLMJobs Online. Barb, could you use the push
to talk technology and tell everybody good morning and let us know
you\'re out there.\
\
Good morning, Melissa.

M. Dukes: I\'m glad she\'s there, because there might be a technical
question or two that comes up during dialogue and Barbara promised she
would sit through four of the five broadcasts, I think she has a
conflict on one of them. So she gets to hear all this stuff more than
once. We\'re hoping today will be an exciting and dynamic program. I
promise you I would explain why we called it HR, the few, the proud the
panicked.

When we got this assignment from Marilyn to do this broadcast in the
middle of November we were talking about different things we needed to
have, and we got together in December here in Phoenix, appeared we
talked about the supervisory content and decided we had to have an
employee broadcast and we had a conference call with all staffing folks
in December on a Tuesday morning to talk about their concerns and issues
and we heard so many concerns and so many issues that when we came back
from the conference call we sat down with Barbara and said, what\'s
really going on out there? What we heard were just training hadn\'t been
scheduled yet, though I know lot of you have since then had training. So
we said let\'s do an HR broadcast. Let\'s give everybody one last chance
to have this dynamic interchange using the broadcast. So that\'s where
we came up with the title HR, the few, the proud, the panicked. I know
the panic isn\'t there as much anymore. We\'re still the few and the
proud. Let\'s get started with Sherian.\
\
S. Long: Each of these broadcasts we\'re going to be doing have a
different focus, but the first reason we wanted for this one is, as
Melissa was saying, because we want to alleviate any type of panic that
anyone in our own HR community was feeling. Besides that, we really
wanted to integrate our other HR officers as well as the HR specialists
and assistants into this whole rollout process. We wanted to address any
concerns that you might have, answer any of your questions, identify the
changes that are going to be occurring in the roles and responsibilities
that you have, and then we need to also bring you up to speed on those
other topics that we\'re going to be covering in the supervisor\'s and
the employee broadcast. This whole idea of automated staffing certainly
isn\'t cutting edge news. Certainly other government agencies, private
industry, even nonprofit organizations are moving through the same
thing. It makes sense because it is a good business reason for doing it.
We all have the same goal\... we want to be able to improve the quality
and certainly to reduce the cost of what it is we\'re doing.

In case you might have missed some of the more recent HR literature
that\'s been out there, it\'s telling us that fully 80% of all
recruitment actions are going to be going on the web. So what we\'re
doing tells us we\'re moving in the right direction. Automation
certainly isn\'t new to HR anyway. We have all been involved in it for
some time and I\'m sure you\'re familiar with most of the systems I\'m
going to talk about. If you want to follow along with me, they\'re on
page 1. We\'ll start off with the vacancy announcements. We announce
those through the USAJobs website. We\'re processing personnel actions.
And we\'re paying people using our own FPPS. I\'m sure you manage your
own individual thrift savings plans out at the TSP website. We make
benefit changes and we\'re now even printing off our own leave and
earning statements by going to the OPM employee express. Finally, you
should have registered for this training by using NTC\'s website.
BLMJobs Online is just nothing more than our newest generation of the
human resources business solution. But the thing that really excites me
the most about what we\'re doing is finally we\'re being given this tool
that\'s going to allow us to for once not try to be totally functional
experts but to help us to begin to transition to having some time that
we can become strategic partners with our managers. Now, all I\'ve given
you so far is just a little bit of background information. So we\'re
going to have Melissa get us started and talk about the staffing
process.\
\
M. Dukes: Thank you, Sherian. The goal of any staffing process is to
hire the right person with the right skills in the right place at the
right time. Amazingly enough that sounds an awful lot like workforce
planning and it be because there were a few staffing people on the teams
but the reality this is what workforce planning is all about, right
skills, right place, right time. Obviously you can get those skills
through training, through partnerships, through acquisitions and the
traditional method of recruiting. Just remember that goal of staffing,
right person, skills, place, time, is what we are all about in the
recruiting business. This is no different than what you find in the
private sector, in other government offices, in the nonprofit.

The thing you have to pay attention to, of course, for federal
recruitment are the rules and regulations and laws we have to deal with
and this includes the legendary merit principles, prohibited personnel
practices, uniform guidelines on employee selection, and the DOI merit
promotion plan. These obviously are just four of the many, and we know
many there are many, laws, rules and regulations that govern what we do
in staffing. Just because we\'re in the federal government and we have
all these laws and rules and regulations doesn\'t mean that we can\'t
use cutting edge technology in our processes and procedures, and that\'s
the exciting part about BLMJobs Online. We are using cutting edge
technology to at least evaluate and refer candidates. Even though we\'re
changing our processes, there\'s still a lot of good things about the
things that we do in staffing.

So what I\'d like you to do is to turn to page 2 in your workbook and
sit back and think about as an applicant, as a staffing specialist, for
those of you who have done selections or involved in selections, what
really works well today in our staffing processes and procedures? Sit
back, take 30 seconds, think this through, jot some notes down on page 2
of your workbook, and we\'ll come back in 30 and you can share with us
what you think works well today in the staffing program. So we\'ll see
you back in 30 seconds. . Using your push to talk technology, faxes or
phones if you don\'t have it, what are some of the positives you\'ve
thought of about what works well today in our staffing program? Anybody
out there? We have a list. So we\'ll call if nobody responds. I\'ll call
my own staff is nobody responds. Ok. Barbara, I\'m going to ask you to
start off since you\'ve done staffing almost as long as I have. Could
you think of anything that really worked positive?\
\
Caller: Well, in my own experience, I\'m already using the automated
process. So maybe that\'s cheating. I think it works really well.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. You\'re right, that is cheating. Anybody else who is not
using automated staffing have some positives on what we do? You can
answer this, too, Sherian. Hmm\...

S. Long: Certainly we\'re getting our jobs filled.\
\
M. Dukes: That\'s true. Jobs filled. One thing that I think is really
positive is we\'re filling them hopefully with candidates who have the
qualifications that we need.\
\
Caller: Excuse me, it\'s Tom from Oregon.\
\
M. Dukes: Hi, Tom in Oregon. Thank you for responding. What positives
did you come up with?\
\
Caller: I just actually deed to try this, but I would say the fact that
we involve the supervisors in helping us identify what the selection
criteria is.\
M. Dukes: We like that one, Tom. Anything else? A couple more?\
\
Caller: This is Tracy in Montana.\
\
M. Dukes: Hi, Tracy.\
\
Caller: Ours is that we thought the applicants would have fair and
consistent consideration.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. Thank you Tracy for that insight. One more, if anybody
else is interested in coming in. Or we might have duplicated what
everybody said. Ok. Since it\'s quiet throughout in BLM land, we\'re
going to go to the second exercise. Same 30 seconds. I want you to think
about what frustrates you, and if you can\'t come up with anything, I
will be shocked. But what frustrates you with our staffing program today
that you wish could be different or better? We\'ll come back in 30
seconds and give you a chance to respond to that one. So we\'ll see you
in 30. . Ok. Before we get to the answers just a reminder \--\
\
Caller: Salem, Oregon.\
\
M. Dukes: When you\'re responding on push to talk please keep the mic
about 12 to 15 inches away from your mouth. We\'re getting an echo and
we\'re hoping it may just be talking too close to the mic. If there is a
problem with a bad echo we\'re going to ask you to have your disconnect
from the push to talk and have your IT. folks call in. I think I heard
somebody from Oregon. Anybody in Oregon want to add what doesn\'t work
right in our staffing processes?\
\
Caller: Oregon just checked in. Melissa, it\'s Tom.\
\
M. Dukes: That was a bad echo.\
\
Caller: This is Tom. This is in Oregon.\
\
M. Dukes: That\'s better, Tom. Thanks. What did you want to add on the
negative side?\
\
Caller: We\'re still putting together our list. It\'s quite long.\
\
M. Dukes: I was afraid of that. So we\'ll go to somebody else who
probably is ready to at least jump in with one or two things.\
Caller: Hello? This Janell from Montana.\
\
This Rita from the Washington office.\
\
M. Dukes: Let\'s go to Janell first. Check the distance on the mic.
Share with us your answer.\
\
Caller: We found inconsistent applications and resumes and incomplete
applications like the DD-214s.\
\
M. Dukes: Both good answers. We had somebody come in \-- RENITA from
Washington?

Caller: How are you?\
\
M. Dukes: Same thing, please keep 12 to 15 inches from the mic. We\'re
getting a lot of echo.\
\
Caller: Is that better?\
\
M. Dukes: You want to try \-- ok. Washington, we\'re going to ask you to
disconnect. You\'re not coming through. Could you have your I.T. folks
called AT products as we\'re going to run that number again so they can
correct your. Echo. It\'s really \-- we can hardly hear you. I\'m very
sorry about that.\
\
Caller: How about now, Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: That was really bad. Have your folks call AT products tech
support and they\'ll help you work that out and get you back online.
Anybody else have \-- we have inconsistent application formats. And
incomplete applications. Anybody have any other \--\
\
Caller: This is Sherry in Utah.\
\
M. Dukes: Hi, Sherry. What do you want to add to this?\
\
Caller: What we had he\' like to say is the amount of time that it takes
to determine basic eligibility and then to rate and rank the
applicants.\
\
M. Dukes: Both very good answers. Actually, we were here a couple weeks
ago during Barbara\'s first class and ran into Barbara from NFC. She had
110 applicants and said, I wish I could have done this electronically.
Anybody else. Oregon \--\
\
Caller: This is Nancy in Alaska. Mine is kind of similar.\
\
M. Dukes: Nancy?\
\
Caller: Can you hear me?\
\
M. Dukes: Yes.\
\
Caller: One of the things that bothers me is the time consuming
documentation process which is similar to the rating and ranking but
it\'s a little more.

M. Dukes: Ok. Time consuming documentation process. Anybody have
anything else they want to share?\
\
Caller: Hi, Melissa, it\'s Tom.\
\
M. Dukes: I heard Mark and Tom. \--\
\
Caller: Hello \--\
\
Caller: I think maybe to supplement the first item which was
inconsistent application forms what I think we\'ve seen is sometimes
when the applicant is either rated qualified or not qualified via state
to state. So I think to some degree there has been some inconsistencies
there also.\
\
M. Dukes: So inconsistent applicant evaluations. You\'re qualified in
Arizona and not qualified in Colorado. I hear appear lot from
applicants. So, yes, very good. Tom, you were trying to get in there,
too.\
\
Caller: I know.\
\
M. Dukes: It\'s ok, Tom. You can add.\
\
Caller: Hey, Melissa, I would say \-- I would say that one of the
biggest concerns is the fact that applicants have to still out a lot of
information, and I think it\'s kind of cumbersome to the applicants, and
I think that there \-- just the process itself is extremely \-- is not
very customer oriented.\
\
M. Dukes: We got two items from Tom, and he said lot of information, and
the process is not customer friendly. I have to tell you, I think these
are good ideas. Now what I would like you to do is to just think about
these as I\'m finishing writing \"customer friendly.\" Think about these
things, the things that particularly frustrate you, the inconsistent
application formats, the extraordinary volume of things we request from
applicants, the fact that we are inconsistent in our qualifications
determinations, that may be just personal as opposed to job related.
Lots of these things that you all raised as well as the ones you
probably wrote down in your workbook. Think about these things as we go
along because the idea of automated staffing is, in fact, to resolve a
lot of these frustrations and to make our process better, faster and
cheaper.

When we first started looking at automated staffing, actually it was
before the fire season of 2000, before national fire plan, we were
really focusing at the national HR center and in dialogues with the
field going to automated staffing primarily for two reasons. We thought
it would be faster, and we thought it would be better. So let\'s kind of
talk about what that better, faster, and now cheaper looks like. In
terms of better, what we find, I think in the automated staffing world
is we get an actual increase in the caliber of the applicants that we
receive \-- or the applications we receive. We see an increase in the
actual number of applicants. I think even with Recruitment One Stop,
Sherian, we\'ve noticed a lot of that in our jobs in our smaller areas.
We\'re seeing huge numbers of people we didn\'t see before. There\'s
also with good strategic outreach recruiting a chance to increase the
potential diversity of the applicant pool both that we get applications
from and that we refer. So I think there is and was always even from the
very beginning the idea that automated staffing would be better. But the
bigger one was the faster part. Faster is the thing that I think really
charges people up about automated staffing. The fact that you don\'t
have to spend all that time developing rating criteria. Once the task
statement library is built and you can just use whatever is in there
from either the task statement teams or from other states, we\'re
talking a process of hours, not a process of days. We\'re also \-- we
also talked about the time it takes to keep an announcement open to
ensure we get a reasonable number of candidates.

We have for a lot of our key jobs and senior jobs the national PMC when
we first went to NPMC required 30-day open periods and for jobs where we
didn\'t think we would get a lot of candidates, we have done that 30-day
open period. Automated staffing should get us out of that 30-day open
period mode. The last thing, and most important thing, and a think that
Wendy brought up, is the time that it takes to rate and rank 110 people,
and I think Sherry brought that up from Utah. So clearly better, faster.
Cheaper is a little harder one, but, of course, if you\'re introducing
an I.T. solution, it\'s not only about process improvement, it\'s
typically about saving money and there is a very clear savings here and
it\'s in the rating process. When particularly as we get to more seen
jury jobs or more technically complicated jobs we have rating panels or
bring in subject matter experts to rate and rank the panels. There\'s
the travel costs.

When you\'re bringing someone in to rate and rank 100 applications,
you\'re talking about bringing them in a week, so that\'s \$1,000 to
\$1200 depending on where they\'re flying in to and from. There\'s also
the panel cost. It\'s a lot of money. This goes away. That\'s one of the
best things about I.T. solutions and it\'s one of those things that
convinces managers we should pursue an I.T. solution, is not only the
better is faster but the saving money, our budgets is are tight and
saving money is a good idea. You notice it doesn\'t say anywhere about
fewer HR people. Marilyn really articulated this in her introduction,
that this is about giving us time to not spend rating and ranking 100
people but time we could spend doing more strategic or tactical
maneuvers to support our state\'s strategic goals and objectives. We
don\'t have time right now to do that kind of work and our goal here is
to free up our staffs to actually do more strategic or tactical work and
get out of process. So better, faster cheaper I think was the mantra
we\'ve also embraced in deploying BLMJobs Online. It was clearly the
idea years ago in the spring of 2000 when we really started evaluating
I.T. products and ended up looking at QuickHire as a good solution for
the bureau. But there are actually five key pieces, automated tools,
solutions or approaches that are involved in this whole automated
staffing thing.\
\
M. Dukes: Am I echoing? I apologize to you but I just got somebody on my
earpiece that I\'m not sure what they\'re asking for. Ok. Thank you.
Appreciate that clarification. I wasn\'t supposed to hear that comment,
so we\'re going to go on to the five key automated tools here. They are,
and we all know them well, USAJobs, Recruitment One Stop, QuickHire,
BLMJobs Online and FIRES and let\'s go through them a little more in
depth, and the first one, USAJobs. You need to kind of think of it as
portal to the individual agencies staffing programs or vacancies, and
it\'s the one that we\'ve used the longest and it\'s essentially web
based job board where the federal government I think posts now something
like 15,000 jobs on any given day where we\'re soliciting applications
from individuals either current or former feds, veterans or the
population as a whole. The second one is Recruitment One Stop.
Recruitment One Stop isn\'t actually a tool. It\'s the program name OPM
gave to their desire to make USAJobs much more customer friendly,
appeared to do this they actually contracted with monster.com, the
private sector job board on the Internet that everyone in the private
sector knows and uses to really give this tool U.S.A. jocks a lot more
functionality \-- USAJobs a lot more functionality.

There are five things they hired them to do for USAJobs. The first one
is to improve job searches. Took me a little while to get used to what
monster.com did on their improved job searches but once I went on there,
it made a lot of sense. I think they have made searching for vacancies
by series, occupation, location, job type much easier. The second one
was clean, understandable job announcements. I don\'t know how many of
you had a chance to read the merit systems protection board evaluation
of federal vacancy announcements, but they kind of took the staffing
community to task. Our vacancy announcement formats had a lot of jargon
a lot of techno federal stuff it in add we weren\'t really marketing our
vacancies and inviting people in. We were kind of turning them off. That
was one thing OPM wanted monster.com to do, was to make the
announcements cleaner, more inviting.

he third thing was electronic resume submission. USAJobs technically had
this capability oral. I know a lot of us in staffing it didn\'t seem to
always work real well. So we ended up setting up our own e-mail address
where people could e-mail their applications us to and then we would
print them out. What they really wanted to do was to make electronic
applications, bet \-- use the technology better as opposed to using the
e-mail concept. We all know when we get fully loaded e-mail boxes, we
get this thing saying we can\'t accept any more. With the electronic
resume submission, we\'re not loading down our e-mail. The fourth thing
is my personal favorite, and we\'re going to go into a lot more detail
about this, is resume data mining. I love resume data mining. I was
looking at filling a GS9 term recruiter position and I just wasn\'t sure
if the salary was really competitive and I was talking to a friend in
the private sector who works in California about \-- I wasn\'t sure \--
I didn\'t have good salary data for Denver. So I wasn\'t sure I would
get anybody at the GS9 level. 10 minutes later over the e-mail using
monster.com and their data mining thing I got four resumes from this
friend of mine saying, yep, there are people in Denver, this is a
reasonable salary for them, it\'s very competitive. So go for it. I just
said, oh, yeah, I love this. This is like the coolest thing in the
world. Data mining is my personal favorite and it has a lot of
advantages to it.

The fifth thing OPM hired monster.com to do was applicant status
checking and I think for those of you who get the question from the
candidate, did you receive my application, probably are going to embrace
this idea the most. Applicants can go online and see if their
application was submitted and they actually get notification that it was
submitted through an announcement. So those five basic areas were the
goal of Recruitment One Stop and I think monster.com has delivered add
will continue to deliver these five things as they continue to upgrade
the USAJobs software. The next three items we listed, the first one is
QuickHire. We need to remind everybody QuickHire is the vendor name for
the software which is why we can\'t call our automated recruitment
program QuickHire. It is the Department of Interior\'s automated
software of choice. They find it extremely useful and it will be found
throughout the Department of Interior once it is fully deployed. We are
not obviously the first to use this software, but we are excited about
using it in BLMJobs and the place we use it first and foremost is
BLMJobs Online. It is the place where we are going to announce all of
our vacancies, solicit, evaluate and refer applicants to selecting
officials using the QuickHire software. But the title of our program is
BLMJobs Online, and it applies to just about everything. But just about
everything doesn\'t include temporary seasonal fire jobs. Those are
actually recruited under FIRES, which is the fire integrated recruited
employment system. It is a DOI-wide system.

The department very much as had as a goal and objective recruiting
candidates for temporary seasonal fire positions for the department and
uses the same criteria to evaluate those applications throughout the
department and make it easier. So right now everybody\'s jobs is
advertised under FIRES, all except Colorado and Wyoming are advertised
as BLM vacancies. In Colorado and Wyoming we\'re advertised as
Department of Interior vacancies. Eventually all with show up as DOI
positions where applicants can pick locations regardless of who actually
operates a fire unit in that location. So before we go on, any
questions, comments, concerns I guess not. So Sherian is going to take
offer and get into the heart and soul.\
\
S. Long: For those of you who haven\'t used it, you\'re probably
thinking, why not get to the bottom line and tell us what changed.
Remember, we have the needs analysis. We do recruitment. There\'s
receipt of the application, the evaluation that goes o referrals,
interviews, reference checks and finally, finally, that selection
itself. I want you to keep in mind what we\'re talking about here with
automation is we\'re not changing the what we do, because we\'re still
going to do all those things. But it\'s how we go about doing it.
That\'s what the real change is all about. If you want, you can follow
along on page 5 in your workbook, and we\'re going to see how those
steps have changed. Now, for the benefit of those who are non-staffing
people that are watching the broadcast today we\'re going to go ahead
and grow over the current method. So you staffers, I just ask you bear
with us as we get quickly through this.

First off, in that needs analysis, we\'re talking here about, well, what
grade level is it we\'re going to be announcing this position? What are
the KSAs that are going to be used? How about those other behavioral
characteristics? And, of course, what\'s our area of consideration? I\'m
sure you recognize those are all topics of conversations that we have
with our supervisors during that pre-recruitment consultation time.
Ultimately what we get out of these is going to be a rating or might
call it a crediting plan and that vacancy announcement. How long does it
take? Oh, anywhere might be 5 to 30 days. Melissa and I realize these
are somewhat subject when we talk about how long it takes, and there are
a lot of reasons why it sometimes takes us longer than at other times.
When we talk about recruitment, we\'re \-- we\'re going to say it\'s not
the posting time. That\'s something else that we\'re really talking
about those activities you\'re going to go through to get this notice
out. It might be some information you\'re going to put in professional
journals. It could be in articles in newspapers. It may be those e-mails
that we\'re sending out to the different states. Phone calls. Just all
kinds of things that we do to make sure that people know that, in fact,
we really do have these announcements out there and we want them to
apply. The receipt of application is that time of when the vacancy
announcement is actually open. Some of them are open, we know, for as
little as 10 days but typically it\'s 30 days and it certainly isn\'t at
all unusual we\'re having to extend it beyond the 30 days because we
don\'t have an adequate supply of canned indicates in our pool. Once
it\'s closed we\'re still having to wait for another five days because
you know an awful lot of people want to wait until the last minute
before they submit that application. So we\'ve got that mail time lag
we\'re waiting for. Then we still have to get all those applications
rated and depending how many it is, we could be looking at another two
to four weeks.

We recognize that it\'s the workload in our offices that certainly
influences how long it takes, but then again f we\'re doing rating
panels, that\'s going to have to take that much longer to get it all
accomplished. As far as the certificate, right now, of course, we are
getting those things typed up. But then we spend another 1 to 5 days
with it in the mail to get it from us into the hands of supervisor. So
the total time? Could be anywhere from 1 to 3 months to get it done.
Many of you know that I happen to be on detail right now to Marilyn\'s
staff, and since I\'m originally from the Washington area, I still have
family there. This last weekend I was talking to my brother-in-law. Now,
he didn\'t have any idea what it was I was coming down here to Phoenix
to talk about. But in our conversation he says, you know, nobody wants
to apply to the government because it takes six months before we can
ever find out about a job. As he was saying that to me, I thought, you
know, that probably is the perception by a lot of people that it takes
at least six months to fill a job but BLMJobs Online I guarantee you, it
is going to change that perception that\'s out there.

Now we\'ve gotten through what we do. Let\'s take a look at see what it
is that\'s going to happen with our new automated process. In the first
place, when we talk about that needs analysis, we\'re no longer going to
be dealing with those KSAs. We\'re going to be talking in terms of the
task statements. If you\'re not familiar with the task statement, really
what that is a question, or it\'s a statement, and I want to also point
out that task statements are based upon the job analysis just like we
had when we were dealing with KSAs. Automation has not reduced the need
for that. Let\'s see how this is really going to work. You\'re still
going to have your pre-recruitment consultation. We\'re assuming you
have a valid job analysis there. So instead of trying to start looking
at the book and see what KSAs you\'ve used before or calling another
state, you\'re going to be looking in the task statement library and
you\'re going to be pulling up the list of those task statements that
are relative to the position that you yourself are going to actually be
filling. Then you\'re going to be working with that supervisor, they\'re
going to go over it and they\'re going to decide which of those they
want to use is evaluation criteria for their candidates.

Fit turns out that they see that there\'s something missing and there\'s
something more they want evaluated, you are going to be able to write
additional task statements for them. I guess one of the questions we
might all ask is, how many do we have to have? Is there a standard? The
answer is no. Maybe in some cases we might need to have as many as 15 or
20 task statements. But in others it could very well be just as few as 7
to 10 of them. As that task statement library is built, we\'re going to
find that this whole process here is going to be reduced down to hours
to get it done, not like days like we\'ve had to deal with in the past.
If you haven\'t seen samples of task statements before, then let me tell
you that the responses on those, they could be a multiple answer, it
could be a multiple choice, it might be a true/false, it might be a
yes/no, it could be a short fill in the blank, it could be a long fill
in the blank type of an answer. And along with the supervisor, you\'re
going to be weighting those as to which ones of those task statements
are the most critical for the evaluation process.

Under the receiving applications portion, what you\'re going to do is
instead of going out onto USAJobs to post the vacancy announcement like
you\'ve done in the past, you are going to go into the BLMJobs Online,
and they\'re you\'re going to post when you input it and hit the submit
button, it\'s going to automatically link it back over to USAJobs. On
the other hand, the applicants are going to still go to USAJobs, because
as Melissa mentioned, that is the portal for all government jobs. Now,
when they get there, if this is a position that we\'ve announced under
the BLMJobs Online process, it\'s going to link them back over to
BLMJobs Online, and that\'s where they\'re going to be putting in the
responses to the task statements. Now, even before the job is posted,
what we really want to do is encourage employees to go out there and
pre-register. Now, where they\'re basically going to put in their own
personal information just like you do when you fill out your \-- the old
SFS-71s or OF-612s, and they\'ll put in also their resume.

Resume itself can be done in any kind of word processing system and
it\'s just a matter do having a cut and paste back, except now they\'ve
only got about 16,000 characters of free space to put it in, which comes
down to roughly five pages worth of resume. The best part is there are
no KSAs they\'re going to have to write. I know that\'s one step I
personally hated, was having to sit there and come up with all of those
answers and I know everyone feels pretty much the same way. So assuming
they\'re pre-registered or if they hadn\'t pre-registered, at the time
it links them back, they will do their registration then, the only thing
they have to do is be able to answer those task statement questions.
Whole thing shouldn\'t last more than 15, 20 minutes. If you recall, our
merit promotion plan requires we send out this acknowledgment to
candidates to let them know that we\'ve received their application. I
have someone in my office that every time one comes in, they\'re sitting
there and writing out this postcard we send in the mail to them. Thank
goodness w QuickHire, it\'s taken over that task force. As soon as they
hit that submit button, within a couple minutes they\'ll have an e-mail
back to them saying, hey, we\'ve already gotten your application.

There\'s also not going to be a problem with employees missing out on
vacancy announcements because when you register, you can also indicate
those kinds of jobs that you\'re interested in and that way when one of
those jobs is posted you\'re going to get an e-mail notification telling
you it\'s there, it\'s your choice whether you choose to apply or not
apply for that particular one. The fact this whole thing is web-based
means you can be sitting on the Hawaiian Islands and you\'re going to
have the opportunity to apply for the job if that\'s what you are
choosing to do simply because you have to get into the web and there it
is. Now that those KSAs have been eliminated we believe, and certainly
based upon the experience of other agencies already using the automated
staffing, we\'re going to see a large increase in the number of
applicants we\'ll get. In fact, it\'s because of this we anticipate we
will not have to have announcements open for more than two weeks at the
most. The system does rate applications as soon as they are submitted to
it but that\'s not their final rating. During the time that the
announcement is open, the employees have an \-- and applicants both have
the ability to go back into their record, they can change anything they
want in their resume and they can change any of the answers on how
they\'ve rated themselves on the task statements themselves.

Also, I know I\'ll get calls on certain positions and I\'m sure you all
do who do this all the time wanting to know how many applicants we have.
Has anybody applied? You still have that ability with the \-- with this
software to be able to look in there and you can tell them right away,
yeah we\'ve got 5, we\'ve got 30, whatever the case might be. Now,
although the system is going to rate them, as I said, as soon as they
submit it, final evaluation and final rating does not take place until
closing. Now, this is something that you really need to take note of
because the closing is as of midnight eastern standard time. So that
means if you\'re in California, that our closing is going to occur at
9:00 in the evening. Also, if we\'re talking about one of those
announcements that it\'s an open continuous and we have those specific
cut-off dates during that time, for those the closing time is 6:00 p.m.
eastern time. So if it\'s somebody out of Colorado on mountain time, the
cut-off time is going to be 4:00. I\'m sure that\'s something you\'re
going to want to put into your vacancy announcement as it\'s clear what
time closing time will be. No more reading all those KSAs to go through
the ratings.

One time in my career I\'ve also been a staffing specialist. Tell you
the truth, some of that can get tedious and boring and all of that part
of it is finally gone. Even though the final ratings have been
accomplished by the system, it doesn\'t stop right there. You\'re going
to need probably one to three days after the ratings are accomplished
\-- or after final rating is done to do some quality control. I\'m sure
that there are going to be people who are going to be concerned, are
they over inflating their ratings, and that\'s where you come in.
You\'re going to be looking at the ratings and comparing it to the
resume to make sure if they\'re saying that they are expert in something
that there is something in that resume that supports that type of a
rating. Once the ratings are completed, you\'re satisfied with your
quality control, then you\'re not going to be typing up a list and
sending it out to the supervisor any longer. Again, we\'re talking about
web-based things here. So this is going to be electronic. You instead
are simply going to send a password to the supervisor, and it will allow
them to go out online and they\'re going to be able to see the
certificates as well as the rests maze.

Now, whether they choose to print them off or not, that\'s strictly up
to them. The system does allow for us to send out certificates both
ways, both for ranking for score like for the DEU as well as those in
alphabetical order under the merit promotions ones. When we get down to
talking in terms of the interviews and the reference checks and
selection time, there\'s not a thing that this system can do to speed
that up. But what we\'re going to be looking for you to do is to
encourage the managers to understand they\'re going to get this stuff so
much faster than what they\'ve had before are, they do need to clear
their calendars, set that time aside and get right onto the interview
process itself. One other thing that has always taken time is all those
letters we have to send out to all the applicants letting them know they
were disqualified or, yes, they were referred, that kind of information.
Again, the software is going to do that for us by sending out the
electronic e-mails.

Barbara will go through that with you when we\'re doing the QuickHire
software training. All the time we\'re going to save, and it may well be
as much as two months s a directorate of the fact we have redesigned the
way we go about doing this work. Remember as I said earlier, it\'s not
what we\'re doing, because we\'re still doing all that, but it\'s how we
do it that\'s making the difference. You might have noticed I did skip
talking about recruitment, the true recruitment and there was a reason
for that. That\'s because true recruitment is a passion that Melissa
has, and she\'s going to be sharing her thoughts wow on that in just a
moment. I realize I\'ve only given you kind of a thumbnail sketch about
the way the system works. So before we go to Melissa, I want to pause
and find out if you have any questions about what I\'ve shared with you
so far.\
\
Caller: Sherian, this is Colleen from Alaska. My question is, or
clarification request s the one stop versus \-- doing the resume on
there and having the process handled through there, letters,
notification, versus if a person applies through the BLM on job line \--
BLMJobs onsite.\
\
S. Long: Right now there is no link between the QuickHire software at
Recruitment One Stop. You are absolutely right, there are resumes
resident on the Recruitment One Stop but we also have to have our own
resident in the BLMJobs Online. Eventually, and they are working on
this, there will be a link, in which case, then, the resume that they
have on the Recruitment One Stop is going to flow over us to, but in the
meantime, they would have to have one in both locations. And I say in
both locations because if they want to apply for positions in other
agencies, that\'s where they would send their electronic resume from.\
\
Caller: Colleen again. If I\'m understanding correctly, we will deal
strictly through the BLM online job site. So doing the entry into
USAJobs is confusing in some circumstances when it gives you opt shun of
all of. So we should be informing employees to do everything through the
BLM online job website, am I correct?\
\
S. Long: That is correct, for all BLMJobs. They must have their resume
resident in BLMJobs Online. Whether they choose to put them in
Recruitment One Stop, that\'s strictly up to them.\
\
M. Dukes: We do have not employee broadcast scheduled for Thursday, and
we are going to talk about this issue with the employees because
obviously we do have employees who are interested in other federal
agencies occasionally, Forest Service comes to mind, but that\'s
probably because they have a lot of dual jobs. So we are going to talk
to them about the need to recognize the difference between the two
systems and if they are interested in positions outside BLM the need to
actually build their application right now in Recruitment One Stop. So
we\'re not avoiding that question during their training. We\'re just
going to walk them through it relatively slowly so they understand the
difference between the two systems. Sherian?\
\
Caller: It\'s Colleen again. I hate to keep bugging you on this. With a
as HR specialists here were having a discussion only thing to clarify in
our minds the Recruitment One Stop versus the BLM online jobs. So thank
you.\
\
S. Long: Good. Any other questions? Colorado this is Sherry in Utah. We
have two questions. Where does the background survey fit in and the
quality control check of the application versus the question \-- the
responses to the questions?\
\
S. Long: The first one was the background information. As I understand
and remember, it is part of what they will do at the time they\'re going
through their application, the basic information.\
\
Caller: This is Barbara. It is part of the application process.
Applicants do not have to fill that out, but we\'re getting almost a 90%
return on that form. It has the same questions that we have on the hard
copy, and so it does \-- there\'s one problem because it mirrors the
1935, one section says check all that apply, so when you have five
applicants, you may have 15 different R&O identified for that. But we do
get a return on that. And second question you had that I can\'t \--\
\
S. Long: The second question had to do with the quality control of the
resumes.\
\
At that time we do quality control at the time we assess the applicant
and before we generate the certificates. And I go over that in the
training that I do for the HR specialists.\
\
S. Long: Ok. Is there anything else?\
\
Caller: Yes, share Sherian, Colleen again. On the veterans, will they be
allowed to do delayed filing? Will BLM maintain an applicant file \--
This is where we\'re working on fax imaging and we\'re hoping to have
that that sometime this year so we will be able to \-- when we have a
veteran we can e-mail them and ask them to fax their DD-214 so that we
can have it reside in the system. The other question you ask is almost a
policy question on when to consider that. So that we\'re also discussing
as far as right now, the merit promotion plan did say that we would give
a benefit of the doubt. Some states require documentation at the time
the application is submitted, and others go with verification at a later
time. One of our staffers who recently transferred from USGS said that
they, too, had those kind of inconsistencies in their policy and they
found that they had to go to a standardized policy because they were
getting complaints from office to office. So that\'s something that
we\'ll have to discuss as a whole.

Barbara, I want to let you know we\'re going to be talking about policy
a little bit late or in the broadcast and I\'ll address that at that
time.\
\
Caller: Sherian, sorry, they made me spokesperson here. The other
question that came up is feedback for the applicants and the fact they
get immediate feedback regarding whether their application was received,
then you discussed they can keep changing their resumes until the
vacancy actually closes. So at what point do they get notified that
their score on the vacancy and would it be possible for them to get that
score and then change it before \-- before the vacancy actually closed?\
\
May I address that that, too? The option to get the applicant status is
the option that the staffing specialist decides before they put the
vacancy announcement out. I \--\
\
M. Dukes: This is Melissa. You know, there is so much technical content
in that QuickHire training, as we know that, I think, was a lot of
concern and that\'s why Barbara is going to be teaching so many training
classes on QuickHire. So I think some of those mechanical things would
probably be best discussed when you\'re in the training class Barbara on
exactly how that works. Partly because we need to kind of keep moving on
with the broadcast, and partly because I think as you get through the
technical stuff you\'re going to want to be dialoguing a lot on how you
handle these specific things. So if that is \-- I\'m going to actually
make a technical decision. I hope that\'s ok with everybody. But I think
we need to start moving on with the next step of the broadcast. So
Sherian, do you ever anything else you need to add on to differences
before we get to the next section?\
\
S. Long: I was going to clarify one thing there. It\'s two different
types. When they\'re getting that initial rating, that says, hey, we\'ve
accepted your application. As far as your ranking, that can be handled
later. But I agree with Melissa, we\'re going to hold that real
technical things like that off until later on. If there were any other
questions that were not as specific as that that you just wanted
clarified from anyone.

Caller: This is Steve in Utah. I just wondered in the event of few
candidates is it possible to QC for underrating as well as for over
inflation.\
\
S. Long: You\'re not ever going to raise somebody\'s score. What if
somebody applied for a position, you knew them, and you knew they had
and that they didn\'t put it in a resume, you\'re not going to rate them
higher. You\'re only going to rate them on what\'s there. If there is
going to be any change, it\'s going to be changing something down
because the resume did not support the fact they were a brain surgeon
and you see they\'ve never been to medical school. I think Barbara will
cover some of that for you when you have your software training also.\
\
Yes, I will.\
\
S. Long: Anything else? Then, how about \-- Melissa, why don\'t you talk
us to about outreach recruitment.\
\
M. Dukes: Thank you, Sherian. Sherian and I have had a chance to have
lots of dialogues about this and she was quite you a pews mused when I
first started in HR I thought of myself as a classifier instead of a
staffer. She said, all you have is this energy about staffing and
crewing. \-- recruiting. She said you\'ll have to take this section. The
reality is outreach recruiting to me is the thing that from a staffing
standpoint, not posting but recruiting, is the way we can really
positively impact our organization, ensure if we\'ve done our job right
that we\'re getting the really great candidates to select from, that
we\'ve connected with people that are not traditionally identified for
or applying for federal jobs. A lot of the underrepresented candidates
don\'t think of the federal government as a potential employer because
we haven\'t aggressively gone out and invited them in. So I do. I have a
lot of passion about recruiting, particularly strategic recruiting.

This is kind of where I wanted to talk a little bit about data one stop
and the data mining capability. That is a great tool. You can go in and
see what competitive and noncompetitive applicants have their
application residing. Which is why I would like to see BLM employees
apply both systems. We don\'t right now have that data minding
capability in the QuickHire software but we do in Recruitment One Stop.
You can see are there candidates in that occupation? Are they lots of
them? Are they good candidates, senior sand dates, are they junior
candidates? You can actually as you post your vacancies send them an
e-mail and invite them to apply. So I think that\'s a very
straightforward easy strategic recruiting tool that\'s sitting out
there. Another thing is the feature in QuickHire called the diversity
notification list. If you\'re recruiting for land law examiners, and one
thing we do is we look for both college as well as upward mobility
candidates. You can be sure you have your announcement going to
candidates particularly \-- or at least schools that have
underrepresented populations in their student groups and make sure that
they see a copy of your vacancy announcement. It\'s called the diversity
notification list.

You build a list of organizations, individuals, colleges, universities
that as you recruit specific kinds of jobs you want them to receive an
e-mail electronically that says, we are accepting applications for this.
And you can do that, and that\'s one of the fabulous things I think
about the QuickHire software, to get to those candidates that typically
aren\'t invited in to federal jobs. How else do we find them and get
them to apply except maybe by asking them to apply. But there\'s more to
the strategic recruiting stuff than just using the QuickHire software or
maybe data mining through Recruitment One Stop.

A lot of us through our workforce plans are starting to identify what do
we anticipate recruiting in the next 12, 18 months. It\'s not so much
that vacancy, a job comes open so we\'re issuing an ad, but we\'re
starting to strategically look at what kind of jobs do we need to fill?
Do we need that right skill, right employ job as an employee, not as a
contractor partner. Let\'s say you have I identified the need for two
specialists, range management specialist aGS9-11 you want to come
onboard in November and an entry level, recent college grad, 5-7, you
want to come onboard in June. What kind of things can you do to
strategically outreach to these candidates? What we would like you to do
is to observe a dialogue that we have recently observed between two
individuals, Leon, the HR specialist, and Barbara the supervisor, and
they\'re starting to talk about what kind of innovative ways can we go
about recruiting candidates for these upcoming vacancies each though the
vacancy isn\'t open now and the reason we\'re looking at this is that
thing that Sherian talked b pre-registering or pre-applying. We can
connect with candidates now even if there isn\'t a vacancy open. Let\'s
listen in on Leon and Barbara and see what they have to say.\
\
Barbara, let\'s look at some other recruitment strategies outside of the
traditional online approach.\
\
Leon, how come we\'re doing that? We\'ve used USAJobs before pit works
fine. We have a lot of stuff going on in the office. I don\'t think I
understand exactly why we\'re doing this.\
\
I know we\'ve done this before, but let\'s think outside the box. Let\'s
get creative. Sometimes more is better. We can explore other avenues and
possibly the good qualified candidates in areas we never thought about.
Are there any professional societies you can think?\
\
Yeah, there\'s the society for range management.\
\
That sounds good.\
\
In fact, they have a conference coming up in March, a state conference
in August. There is a publication called \"rangelands.\"\
\
I\'ve heard of that. Ok. Is there any other place you can think of where
qualified people may go?\
\
I get what you mean. Yeah, maybe rodeos, state and county fairs?\
\
That\'s a great one. Ok.\
\
How about the Cheyenne frontier days. A and there\'s something going up
in Calgary, like the Calgary stampede or something like that, up in
Canada?\
\
You know what else I\'ve heard, Colorado state, they also have a program
in range. There are any other universities in the area that may have
similar programs?\
\
In fact, New Mexico state does and the University of Wyoming.\
\
University of Wyoming?\
\
Yes.\
\
Do you know any professors at either institution where you can maybe get
your foot in the door?\
\
I used to while back. Let me look back at my old stuff \--\
\
We may even think about country music stations.\
\
Ok.\
\
I know a lot of students listen to those. Do you know of any other
creative advertising approaches that you\'ve seen out there?\
\
Well, if you\'re talking about just getting our name out there, movie
theaters, you know how they have the slide shows, maybe we could do
something with that.\
\
Also I\'ve seen at the baseball games people have used the first pitch
or the banners \--\
\
Those banners? I get it. Exactly. I\'ve also seen sky writing. That\'s
really neat, posting things on the fence. There are plenty of ideas we
can he can explore.\
\
Interesting dialogue. From Barbara an Leon. What kind of tactics did you
identify during that little discussion they had? Anybody? Sherian is
waiting for someone to mention her personal favorite, but anything that
anyone particularly noticed that was either unusual or something they
hadn\'t thought of before?\
\
Caller: Melissa, this is Stella at NTC. I guess what was unusual was
maybe the rodeos and \-- yeah, the sky writing, definitely. The radio
advertisements.\
\
M. Dukes: Sherian loves the skywriting one. We talked about this earlier
when we were putting that together. Actually, IBM does that. IBM, BLM,
practically same initials. Ok, they have a little more money. IBM has
actually done that. So we thought we would include it in the broadcast.
Thanks, Stella, for identifying any some of the key ones. Anything else
people noticed?\
\
M. Dukes: No\... Ok. We would like you to do is turn to page 14 of your
workbook, appendix C, and what you\'re going to find is a strategic
outreach recruiting plan for a state, multiple vacancies, multiple
locations based on what they think their anticipated needs are and when
and some of the ideas and tactics. For instance, going to the society of
range management. What exactly are you going to do there? And it lists
some ideas and tactics. One of the things I think is particularly
successful in that recruiting plan is a lot of people look at recruiting
still as an HR responsibility except possibly my state director who has
made it clear it\'s a management responsibility, and it is. One of the
things we specifically listed in there was networking.

What we found very successful in the entire recruiting world to get lots
of really high caliber candidates is to have our selecting official
network with their peers, their former colleagues, people they went to
college with who they stay connected with throughout the years. E-mail
them about those vacancy announcements. Recruiting isn\'t just an HR
specialist\'s job. It\'s everyone\'s job to attract good candidates. If
you can identify those things the manage Kerr actively do to assist in
the recruiting process, one, it\'s better in the long term in terms of
the caliber of candidates you receive, and it\'s also better in the long
run because they are fully engaged in the recruiting process. So there
are some ideas in that appendix C.

We don\'t actually have that many vacancies in Colorado right now, and
in reality we\'re not anticipating that many in range, but we did want
to look like what was a statewide plan, so we creatively identified
vacancies in Colorado. Any questions, concerns, comments from anyone out
there? Ok. It\'s still all quiet on the western front. So I think this
is a very good time to take a ten-minute break. You all have been \--
10-minute break. You have been patient sitting there for an hour and 10
minutes now. We will take a 10-minute break and see you back here in 10
minutes to go through things like changing roles, implementation
strategies and the cheese. So we\'ll see you back in 10 minutes. .\
\
S. Long: Welcome back. I hope most of you returned from the break. We
are going to be picking up now at chapter 3 and page 7 in your workbook,
and this is that implementation schedule. For a those of you not
familiar yet with QuickHire or BLMJobs Online, those terms
interchangeably, let me just say this isn\'t a turn key system. By that
what I\'m really saying is that we simply don\'t have the ability to one
day stop using the old method and the next day doing nothing but the new
one. Although there was an I.M. that came out last November that said
that we are implementing as of 1 February, so technically implementation
has taken place but the reality is going \-- this is going to go over a
period of months as we do the full deployment. First and foremost, what
we have to do is finish all the task statement development.

Most of you already know that the approach that BLM took on this was to
have a senior staffing person from each of the offices go to Denver and
they took the training on how to write task statements. This group then
was given this huge task to be able to develop the task statements for
the 38 most populace series we use here in the bureau. They in turn have
to work with subject matter experts in order to complete these. Their
final date to have those done are the 31st of March. The last report
that I saw, status report, showed we were getting along pretty good and
that we seemed to definitely be making progress. For those of you,
though, who are not involved in this part, Melissa and I thought you
might find it of interest to hear what the experiences are of somebody
who has been participating in it, so we have Federica Lee and Jim Cavity
who is one of our subject matter experts in California, and they worked
together to develop the task statements for land surveyors. Let\'s
listen and here what it is they have to say concerning their
experience.\
\
I\'m Jim Cavity. When Federica approached me with the BLMJobs Online
skeptical. My skepticism grew as she said \-- I vision \-- responses to
multiple choice questions. As Federica explained more about the process
my confidence in it grew. Together we developed task statements for the
land surveyor series and then developed questions. I realized that by
asking the right types of questions I could actually gather more
information from an applicant than I could using the traditional KSAs.
Also the questions could be layered to drill down for further
information for to ask for a written explanation. For example, since
I\'m pry mayor will he interested in an applicant resurvey experience, I
could start with a general question such as do you have resurvey
experience? If the answer is yes, I could then attempt to quantify that
experience with ale follow-up question with approximately how many miles
of section line have you resurveyed. Something I see as key to the
correct development of the task statements and questions is consultation
with a human resources professional. In my case Federica had experience
with the process. Based on what I now know about BLMJobs Online, I
believe selecting officials like me will be better served through this
process.\
\
Hi, I\'m Federica Lee. Probably like most of you, when I first learned
BLM made a decision to mandate the use of QuickHire to fill permanent
positions I had some reservations about the whole concept of automated
recruitment. I guess my reservations stemmed from a couple of things.
One, negative feedback I received from managers about the lack of
quality candidates. Two, fear of the unknown. And three, having to
change the way we normally do business. However, a few months ago I
received some training on developing task statements. This training was
provided by a very knowledgeable contractor with QuickHire. During this
training I soon realized that the process of developing the task
statements was no different than developing a job analysis, identifying
some KSAs and developing a contracting plan.

I believe that the task statements really replaces the crediting plan.
So upon completion of the training I sat down with Jim McCavitt to
develop some task statements for a land surveyor position. I provided
Jim an overview of the BLMJobs Online concept. Through my presentation
of identifying that applicants would be receiving a numerical score
based on how they answered some questions, I could sense some concern on
Jim\'s part. But we continued through the process of developing the task
statements and through my explanation of how answers are weighted and
how the system allows the opportunity to follow for a narrative
explanation from the applicant, Jim seemed to be more comfortable with
the process and even stated this may work. So developing the task
statements on the front end will require more work. So it\'s important
that the HR professional and the managers work closely together to
develop good quality task statements to get the good quality candidates.
This change will take time, but if we invest our time to do it right,
this way of doing business and this tool will be a success for both the
HR community and our customers.\
\
S. Long: Thank you very much, Federica and Jim. We really appreciate
hearing what your experiences were like. If you want to turn to appendix
A in your workbook you will find a list of the series currently under
development and those people who have been you a to those various
series. When Melissa and I first began the work on the design of this
back in December, one of the things that we were very concerned about
was that our HR community in got sufficient training so they were going
to feel very comfortable in this transition period as we\'re moving from
our old method into having this QuickHire software. Fortunately many of
you have already had your training now on that aspect of it, although
there is at least one more session I know that Barbara is going to be
doing in California, and also we have some additional task statement
training that will be taking place as well. All the training should be
completed by the end of March. Of course, many of you need to remember
that the most important date is September 30th because that\'s the last
time we\'re going to be using these old methods. After that, Al
positions that we announce will be done using the BLMJobs Online. I want
you to look at page 7 in your workbook and you\'ll see this quote I took
in recent issue of the \"Government Executive.\" It says, HR is going to
be.\
\
J. Dugan: On whether we meet our commitments, and if we do, we say we
are going to do. We just jump into this with both feet add quickly give
up our methods. When I first struck that, it struck me like good grief,
he could have been talking about what it is we\'re going through right
now. I fully believe we have to end this and simply move forward.
Marilyn has already committed to the BLM that we will do it. But she
cannot do this alone. It\'s going to take each one of us really working
together that\'s going to make this a complete success that I am sure
it\'s going to be. I am going to be talking about policies but before I
move on, I want to just make sure that there aren\'t any questions yet.
Ok. Good. Then let\'s get into this. Needless to say, since we are
changing the how we go about doing something there is obviously going to
be impact on our policies and practices. Think about it, our merit
promotion plan was written before we had any automated staffing so, of
course, that is going to cause some changes right there.

Interim policy has been pretty much promulgated by this point and WO700
has definitely mated a commitment they will get a new merit promotion
plan out that\'s going to encompass this whole process of automated
staffing. As we were preparing to go into this broadcast, in fact,
during our design and so forth, we came up with a lot of questions
between just Melissa and I about, well, what are we going to do about
this? What are we going to do about that? Unfortunately because of the
constraints put on us concerning the way we have to get these workbooks
out for publication, we were not able to have final answers and put them
in there. So we did first was give you the kinds of questions we were
thinking about. But I\'m going to have the \-- what will probably be
your final answer for a lot of these things. Marilyn and I have talked
extensively about these and we will do so again when I return back to
Washington next week. But I\'m going to share with you the answers as I
believe it\'s going to be.

To start off, which vacancies have to be advertised in QuickHire? Well,
the use of BLMJobs Online is going to be mandatory now for all of our
permanent and temporary positions except as Melissa mentioned earlier
for the FIRES position which, of course, we\'re going to use FIRES for
that. We have the capability of using BLMJobs Online for details, for
announcing \-- interest announcements or even doing SCP recruiting but
that\'s strictly going to be optional within the state and what will
work best for you. During this transition time, if the task statements
are already in the library, you must use BLMJobs Online. If it\'s a case
where the task statement is under development but it hasn\'t been
completed, you can continue to announce that job using our traditional
methods. If it\'s a situation where the task statement has not yet been
developed and it hasn\'t been assigned to anyone, we\'re asking you to
step up and do the development of the task statements for that
particular job for the bureau.

Of course, we recognize that the \-- things I just talked about are
dependent on you having had the appropriate training, but as I said, I
anticipate all that will have been completed anyway by March. Also,
because we know there\'s always those things if something unusual comes
up, the human resources officers, you all will have the discretion to be
able to make exceptions to those rules during the transition time. But
again, as of 1 October, that\'s the way all of our jobs are going to be
done. Now, what are we going to do about those non-electron
applications? The only exception we have shall those people who
demonstrate to us that in fact that they do not have that ability to
apply. Based upon the experiences they had during FIRES, we think this
is going to be very few of them, but if in fact we are going to accept
anything non-electronically, they are going to have the same
requirements that we do \-- that we put on the electronic applicants,
meaning they will still have to give us the basic information as well as
their qualifications information and, of course, the resume and
responses to those task statements. Also, as we\'ve mentioned a little
bit, a few minutes ago, too, the only electronic resumes we can accept
those are those that are resident in the BLMJobs Online site. If you
think about it f somebody calls and says I want to send you an
electronic applications, then you should realize that, whom, they
already have access to the web. How do they think they\'re getting it to
us. So you direct them back to the BLMJobs Online site. What about the
waiting period that we need for those five days for mailing? That\'s not
going to be the case any longer. Simply because we don\'t have anything
that\'s being mailed in of that nature. We have to have the applications
in, and it closes as of the times I mentioned to you earlier. That would
include those non-electronic applications as well. They have to meet the
same deadline that everyone else is having to meet.

Then the question comes up, what about the receipt of those other
things, such as your DD-214 and transcripts? This is something Marilyn
and I talked about \-- it was yesterday again, and our feeling at this
time is that it\'s \-- those things are supposed to be to us by the time
we finish our quality control, which means it\'s probably within three
business days of the time it closed. Eventually, as I indicated, we\'re
going to have this fax imaging capability, but right now we still have
all fax machines. So if somebody is really running close to the wire,
they can fax it right into the office and we can accept it that way.
What about those noncompetitive candidates? How are we going to refer
them? How many are we going to refer? We expect we\'re going to have lot
more than we\'ve had in the past? The answer is we\'re going to refer
all of them to the manager and it will be up to them to follow the merit
promotion plan as far as the interviews are concerned and they can tell
how many or who it is they want to interview.

Finally, what about putting these things into the task statement
library? One thing we really want is to have a quality library. So as a
result of that, we are going to have only the senior staffing person
from each of the states to be the one to submit it over to the NHRMC and
as far as actually getting it into the library, that will be done
exclusively by Denver. Now, you should be looking for an I.M. We are
going to complete the policy decisions and we will have one out to you
shortly. So keep looking for that. Also, standard business practices.
There\'s no doubt we\'re going to need some of them. In fact, maybe
quality control is the standard business practice we\'re going to wind
up having. On that one, let\'s say that we may decide that three
business days is sufficient time and that we will accomplish the quality
control that we need to do on our vacancy announcements during that
time. But on the other hand, we recognize there\'s other things that are
going to be standard operating procedures that are going to be unique to
each office.

The main thing we want to make sure is to see to it that we meet all of
OPM\'s requirements. And yet we don\'t want to put everybody in lock
step. We want to have some flexibility out there. So there will be some
of those things that are going to work better in one office than in
another, and that\'s where those standard operating procedures for each
office are going to come into play. What we did is because NHRMC has
already stepped out into this, they had already written whop they saw as
their original SOP and we have provide add copy of that to you to use as
a sample and you\'re going to find it at appendix D in your book. I know
that I have already given you just a lot of information. So I want to
check first and see if there\'s any other questions that you might have
concerning some of the policy thing that I just covered? Anybody have
any questions at all? Or was that pretty well straightforward? Sounds
like you all got it. So we\'re going to have Melissa talk to us about
this changing role that\'s coming about. Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: On my own I\'m going to do something. Colorado, could you guys
check in for a minute, please? I\'m a little concerned it\'s getting
quiet and I\'ve been on a couple broadcasts where nobody calls in and
you can\'t tell from this end. So, Colorado, my folks at home,
councilperson check in on push-to-talk?\
\
Caller: We\'re here, Melissa.\
\
M. Dukes: That means the bridge is up and running and no one has any
questions because we\'ve covered these thing in such an extraordinary
manner. But now we will be going into something with \-- I would like
you to move to the next chapter which talks about changing roles. The
interesting thing that\'s been happening in HR is that we\'ve been
really getting a strategic role to play in the organization, layered on
top of our personnel operations role. It was interesting that
\"Government Executive\" Sherian was quoting was a great executive
because it was talked about HR stuff, and one of the quotes they have in
there is this change is moving at a snail\'s pace. When we talked about
that, that snail\'s pace seems to be because we have all of our
operational work to do, none of that had changed and now we have this
additional duty strategic tactical operational work.

Automation is supposed to save time but what we\'ve discovered, I think,
really is that FPPS, employee express, paycheck for those of us who do
time and attendance issues, really hasn\'t resulted in a huge amount of
time savings because all we do is automate the same business process we
had done before. The really exciting about automated staffing is we\'re
not automating the same. As Sherian said, what we do is still the same,
but how we do it has totally changed. So this is the exciting thing
about this. We can now really move into the strategic or tactical role
we\'ve talked about. And so Sherian and I were sitting here talking
about the broadcast, we talked about what does that mean? What does that
translate to? What kind of additional things can we really do we were
never able to do before? So the outreach recruiting strategy, I know a
lot of us don\'t have time to really build strategies and implement them
and work on designing paid advertisement for magazines and stuff like
that.

We typically go on USAJobs. Now we have time to do in a totally
different way, possibly beyond what we\'ve traditionally done with
student employment. Another one is exit into views. All of us have had
access to the bureau exit interview software. Who knows how many of us
have actually had time to go into the results and look at retention
issues. One thing that is really \-- you find in a lot of HR literature
and at one time we actually started doing some of this stuff through a
benchmarking project is metrics. One thing I would really like to know
is, the selectee, how did they find our job? Did they like our website?
How did they find the application process? How did they find the
selection process? Have you ever asked a selecting official six months
after the person came onboard d they select right person for the right
reasons? Is there something they wish they had done differently?
Obviously all of the supervisors in HR will go back to our clients and
asked for client feedback, but it\'s general for performance stuff, are
they meeting your needs. But do we ever ask every time we hire somebody,
did we hire the right person the right way? Wouldn\'t that be an
interesting metric to see if we\'re doing our job, not from a
quantitative basis, yes, the ad closed, but from a qualitative basis.

Personally I think quality of HR work would be the exciting thing to
find out, and that would be done through metrics. There\'s a lot of
things that QuickHire does, different kind of metrics. DI-1935s, there
was a while for about a year we actually had subscriptions to three
diversity job boards. We posted all of our external announcements on
these diversity job wards. Based on the stuff I looked at, who knows. I
mean, we\'re talking a 10% response rate on the DI-1935s if we\'re
lucky. Now we\'re getting 90% response rate on the 1935s. So anything
that we do to attract non-traditional candidates we can actually
determine, are we doing the right thing? Are we inviting the
underrepresented candidates in? Are we referring them? QuickHire
software actually gives you a lot of those reports and gives you an
opportunity to do more with your recruiting strategies. What\'s
successful. What\'s not successful. Those kind of metrics will help us
determine that.

One thing, and it\'s starting to percolate up, I think, in the pure owe,
is worker\'s comp costs and this is true private sector as well as
public sector. So we\'re not any different than the rest of the world on
this one. What they\'ve found in worker\'s compensation is the faster
you can get somebody back to work even if it\'s not to their job but
possibly, I don\'t know, filing 50s in and OPFs, kind of like that idea,
catch up on my filing, but you can get somebody back to coming to work
every day, the faster their recovery is in terms of returning to work
and this actually statistically true. The longer you\'re sitting at home
not returning to work, because you can\'t do the job that you were hired
to do, is you start to have a defeatist at in many cases. Will my life
ever be the same again? But if you can get actively engaged back into
work as quickly as medically possible, isn\'t that a great thing?

It helps the person recover faster and it\'s not because we give them a
boring job like filing 50s but because they are back into the workplace
engaged in doing something meaningful and valuable. Wouldn\'t be great
if we could counsel or advise manage oars what those jobs could be, or
tasks could be or how to ensure they\'re properly implementing the goals
and objectives of workers\' compensation. One other this Inc. was
workforce planning. One of the ideas I listed in there just from
Colorado\'s workforce plan is developing competency models, those skill
sets, knowledge of skill sets, behavioral characteristics that we\'re
looking at for occupations. Workforce planning is such a cool thing and
I think for HR there are so many places we can actively engage in that.
I know in California you\'ve talked about workforce planning in terms of
the changing roles of HR.\
\
S. Long: Compactedly. One. Parts that has interest to me, we\'re
developing the workforce plan but we haven\'t made any attempt to go
back to look and see the activity that we did in our recruitment and
hiring this year, is there any correlation? And if we wound up hiring
positions that we didn\'t have in the workforce plan, the question is
why? Is our workforce plan that far off? I think particularly since
we\'re into the second year of that, that kind of thing is going to be
really valuable for us as we go on. Melissa, there was one other thing
that\'s come to my mind and that had to do with resumes, the fact that I
think we need to think in terms of what it\'s like as the applicant
themselves, and we need to be out there applying ourselves, not that we
necessarily are looking for a new job, because, gracious don\'t anybody
in my office leave, I don\'t want any vacancies, but it\'s a lot easier
for us to become good advisors for folks if they, too, have actually
gone through the process whether you\'re in the Recruitment One Stop or
in the BLMJobs Online, and see what those questions are, how do you
actually write this resume, and think about it like, ok, now I\'m on the
receiving end. What can I do, then, when I am I\'m doing that
recruitment side that\'s going to make it a much more valuable
experience for them.\
\
M. Dukes: Sherian and I were talking about this and I took my resume out
that I prepared for a job in word processing software and one of the
questions we had was what would 16,000 characters look like. Sure it was
it was like 15,876 characters. So we learned one thing, it\'s about five
pages on a resume. I also went into Recruitment One Stop. Boy, was that
different. I had never done resume building software before. I got asked
funky questions I didn\'t think of. What skills do you have? Previously
in this stage of my career I was thinking different things. I wasn\'t
thinking staffing anymore, classification do I do? I manage an HR
program. I put in some of the things. I do organizational consulting. I
do performance coaching for managers. I\'m a supervisor. So I had to
think differently about my experience. So as part of my doing that was
something that we wanted to do for the employee broadcast now, the
employee broadcast is not a resume building skill course. It\'s about
BLMJobs Online deployment.

We are going to really focus on BLMJobs Online but we do talk about
resume writing for them during that broadcast. Odds are at the end of
the broadcast if they hear what we have to say, they might in fact be
coming to you for one on one coaching or enough people coming to you may
say, yeah, we probably need to do some resume writing training in the
field. Once again a changing role, helping our employees become
competitive for our jobs. What I would like you guys to do now is \-- we
really focus on staffing stuff and I know a lot of you do compensation,
do classification, student employment program management, I think some
of you are total generalists and do labor-employee relations. But I
would like you to sit back and really in your groups, at the office
you\'re sitting in, and think about if you have this extra time, what in
your back of your mind have you ever said if only I had the time I
really wish I could do? Or it\'s maybe this has sparked some ideas. So
take three minutes in your groups and think about what it is that you
maybe wish you could have done or these things have sparked ideas, oh,
yeah I wish \-- now I have time to do X, Y or Z. Take that three
minutes, write those down. We\'ll come back and have you share with the
rest of the group what the changing roles you see maybe are for you. .\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. I probably won\'t call on every state and I promised
Colorado just because I come from you I won\'t call on you, but if you
want to jump in, that\'s fine. What kind of ideas did you come up with
in your locations that you now have time to maybe do or you hope to? Can
I call on California?\
\
S. Long: Yes, call on California.\
M. Dukes: California, what did you come up with? I know they\'re out
there. They\'re on our list. I hope they\'re our list. Anybody?\
\
S. Long: Party was probably their answer.\
\
M. Dukes: Who was that?\
\
Caller: Diane in Montana.\
\
M. Dukes: Diane in Montana. Long time no talk to. You know what it\'s
like to sit up here with nobody calling in, so we appreciate you doing
that. What did you guys come one in Montana?\
\
Caller: Melissa, this is Diane in Montana. What we talked about was
spending more time with the managers to try to do a better job up front
of really defining what they\'re looking for.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. Taking that extra time up front.\
\
Caller: Melissa, this is RENITA calling from the Washington office.\
\
M. Dukes: Are you \-- make sure \-- you\'re getting a bad echo. Make
sure you\'re the right distance from the mic. Try turning the volume
down on your TV that might help. We want to hear what you have to say,
so jump back in.\
\
Caller: Is that bet center.\
\
M. Dukes: A little bit. So what did you have?\
\
Caller: Basically I think we should be able to provide conflict
resolution \--\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. It\'s not better. We can\'t hear you. I apologize, RENITA
because I imagine you had something special to share and we can\'t. If
you have access to a fax machine, that would be great. Kim has asked
that you turn your TV volume all the way down to state your statement,
and if that doesn\'t work, then we\'ll go with the fax. But try one more
time.\
\
Caller: Is that better?\
\
M. Dukes: That is much better. Thank you. She probably can\'t hear me
now because the volume is down.\
\
Caller: Melissa, the only thing I wanted to comment on was the
consultation part. Right now we really don\'t have a lot of time to do
our research and we can keep up and keep abreast on current interests
and human resources field, OPM, just basically having enough time to do
research so we can keep abreast of the new things going on in the HR
world and provide consultation add advice accurately and consistently.\
\
M. Dukes: That was excellent. Just keeping up with the profession and
what\'s happening in the profession and translating that information to
managers I think was an extraordinary answer. Thank you, RENITA, for
that. Anybody else?\
\
Caller: This is Nancy in Alaska. We were just talking about having the
time to be a real partner with managers in the organization and really
being in on the bottom floor with their planning efforts and recruiting
efforts and also have time to maybe do \-- practice some innovations
that may be coming down the road in HR to participate in that.\
\
M. Dukes: Very good. Very insightful. Thank you. Anyone else have
something new or different they want to add? Three great ideas. I\'m \'
sure you probably had a lot of good dialogue at home with your friends
in your office sites. We appreciate you participating in that. Sherian,
I think it\'s about time to start wrapping up.\
\
S. Long: Let\'s go into some of the final thoughts area. If we think
back to some of those issues we talked about at the beginning of the
session, things we liked, which there weren\'t a whole lot, but we were
certainly more vocal when it came to those things we didn\'t like, we
can realize BLMJobs Online isn\'t going to solve everything, but it sure
is going to solve quite a few of them. For example, employees, they are
going to have that electronic notification coming to them within
minutes. They\'re going to get consist tent evaluation all the way
across the bureau and they\'re going to have a lot faster referral. For
selecting officials, we\'re increasing the number of applicants they\'ll
have in their pool. They will be able to finally eliminate most of those
time consuming panels that we have. It\'s going to reduce the length of
time that we\'re going to have to have announcements open and it
certainly is going to shorten the time from when the \-- we finish the
closing time and when we issue that certificate out to them. But for us
in HR, once we finish with the bulk of the task statements it is really
going to free us up and give us more time so we can devote it to eye to
things we want to go to. Before we close out I want Melissa to talk to
us about the cheese. Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: I don\'t know how many of you have read this book, \"Who Moved
My Cheese.\" Sherian asked me to read it she said do you think it might
fit in our broadcast. My guess is everybody in California has read this
book. Essentially it\'s about four characters, two mice, two little
people who live in a maze, through the maze they look for cheese. It\'s
in the same place for what they think is forever and all of a sudden
somebody moved it a it\'s not there. The book is really about responding
or adapting to. It kind of gives you the four ways you can respond to
change and each of the characters responded this way. One refused. It
didn\'t change. My cheese will come back to where it was before. One
didn\'t like it, fought it as hard as they could, eventually accepted
it. One accepted it. Said, ok, cheese isn\'t here anymore. It\'s moved.

One of the characters, one of the mice, I don\'t remember which it was
scruffy or not, actual embraced the change it several and thought the
change was a great thing because in reality, what they got instead of
cheddar was Swiss and brie. So the change was exciting for that mouse
who opened their door first to the idea of change. But there\'s some
lessons we would like to go through on \"Who Moved My Cheese\" and it
talks about accept responding to change. Over here on the Elmo is change
happens. We all know what that is. We\'ve been federal employees a long
time. We know change happens. I remember going from mailing out vacancy
announcements to AVADs, for those who don\'t know, it was the automated
vacancy announcement distribution system. This change is so beyond that.
It\'s the next generation of change. So we have to accept the change
happens. Next thing we actually should do is anticipate change and we
could have told everyone and I think people kind of knew this, though
they didn\'t like it, when we went to QuickHire for our FIRES jobs in
2000 and 2001 on our seasonal jobs at SCP jobs this was going to hit the
permanent NDU vacancy process. A we anticipated this change a long time
ago.

The next one was monitor change. I personally like this one. Smell the
cheese often so you know when it is getting old. Once again, we could
have anticipated change. We could have monitored what was happening. As
we saw more and more things happen, OPM announced Recruitment One Stop,
the department was talking about moving to a departmental automated
system, we could have monitored the situation that told us that this
change was going to occur. Adapt to change quickly. You can fight, you
can adapt, you can embrace. Personally I like embracing change \--
embracing change partly because I\'ve gone through so much, it\'s the
way of the world. And maybe I should fight more than I do, but I think
there\'s \-- sometimes change is an exciting, positive thing. But you
do. You have to change. You have to actually move with the cheese or you
will be left behind. Enjoy it in that goes back to that really savoring
the cheese, the BRIE and the blue cheese and the Swiss in addition to
the cheddar. Part of enjoying the cheese, though, is to be ready to
quickly change again because it is going to change again, because as it
says at the top, cheese happens or change happens. Brief overview of
\"Who Moved My Cheese.\" You can get it at any bookstore. Takes about, I
don\'t know, 30 minutes to read, but it\'s a good idea, overview on
change. Sherian?\
\
S. Long: Melissa, as you were talking about change, it brought to my
mind those of us, you talk about AVADs, changes since then, how many of
us have been around who were originally using 7 cards. I know some of
you are way to young for that but still there are a number of us who
used to have to do those 7 cards, and believe me, staffing has come a
long way since then. Just for your information, we did want to make sure
you\'re aware of a couple more topics we will be talking about with
supervisors and then the employees in these next broadcasts. Melissa
mentioned one of them to you already.

Let me talk first about the fact we\'re going to be dealing with their
interviewing skills because there\'s no question that the interview is
going to become a very critical process for them. That\'s from both
sides. We\'re talking about the interview skills for the supervisor who
is coning it as well as for the employees who are being interviewed.
Now, this year the \-- in the leadership academy one of the teams in
actually working on developing a broadcast that is to help supervisors
hone those skills and that team is being led by our very own Vince out
of New Mexico, and we can be looking forward to seeing that broadcast in
the fall.

We\'re also looking at what we can do to help employees in this area as
well, but we\'re not quite certain that class idea is being developed
right now and whether it\'s going to be broadcast or whether it\'s
something that\'s going to be online or classroom, we\'re not really
certain. But as this is being developed and fleshed out, then we will be
passing that information along to you. Finally, employees are going to
be getting tips about writing resumes. You know right now that some of
those KSAs and apps that we get are 20-plus pages long, and it\'s simply
not going to work. There are a number of resources and we\'re going to
let them know, and this, for example, is one of them, that will be
available in my own office, and this has several great ideas about how
to do it. So we\'re going to be telling them that they may be contacting
you guys to see what resources you ever available there. I don\'t know
how many of you all saw it, but just in December there were a couple of
articles that came in under the federal daily e-mails that we all get,
and it had a couple of links, and one of them was to an article will you
be the best prepared candidate, which is in essence a lot of
interviewing tips, and the other had to do with converting your PD into
being great resume content. I have the URL for those, and if anyone is
interested in having them, sent me an e-mail and I\'ll be glad to
provide it to you. Now, one thing we want to do righted here at the very
end is to say thanks to folks.\
\
M. Dukes: But before we do, is there any last questions, concerns,
comments, feedback, dialogue from anyone out there that would like to
raise one last question before we thank all of our participants and sign
off?\
\
S. Long: Ok.\
\
M. Dukes: Boy, we must have been thorough. First of all, I would like to
thank Federica and Jim. I stole your thunder. You were going to do them.
I\'ll let you duty other two. \-- do the other two, for their testimony
on task statements. We appreciate that.\
\
S. Long: We also want to thank Leon Thomas and Barbara for that great
role play that they did for us. Finally, of course, we want to thank
Marilyn for the introduction that she gave us, and most of all we want
to thank you guys, particularly for you guys brave enough to use that
button and participate with us online today. We\'re now basically going
to say, go forth, do good, we have no doubt we will be a success with
the BLMJobs Online. Bye-bye.\
\
Bye!

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