Re: Hiring for the Government

How about alcohol tested and cigarette tested? They are just as bad as marijuanna.
How about making it certain drugs?

Re: Time to hire

In defense of TSA (or FBI, DEA, Secret Service, Air Marshals, etc.) it takes a LONG time to get a Top Secret Security Clearance done. And, more importantly, PEOPLE LIE! They will fill out an OF-306 attesting to the fact that they have never been arrested, served time or been convicted of a crime. So when do we find out about it? When the background checks are done. It makes no sense to dispatch an investigator to do field investigations when it is discovered that an applicant has been convicted of 15 felonies. They are NOT going to be hired, so quite often, it is a WASTE of money to do things concurrently.

Re: Time to hire

To DoDs PM - And then there's the OTHER side where hiring is on rapid fire. The military walks out the door, goes home to change clothes (unless they have a clean set of civvies in the car) and comes back in later (or maybe they wait until the next day) as a Federal employee. Yup, hiring is purty darn speedy - too bad promotions for the ones on the payroll already aren't quite that fast!

Re: Hiring

Wow, I thought that the hiring of kids fresh out of college was just going on at my agency!

Here, they are hiring these college kids into "intern" positions with guaranteed raises at midpoint as well as at the end of a two year "trial" period, and at the end these kids get to pick where in the office they want to work.

Anyone working here for many years who doesn't at least have a Bachelor's degree are shunted off to the side, not given any more priority assignments, etc, even though WE have been here 20 to 30 (or more) years and know the business inside and out. (These days, "institutional knowledge" is considered useless.) But when projects fail, they want to place the blame on us old folks not "sharing" our knowledge!

I think this is happening because the first crop of interns who were brought in at the inception of the intern program about 20 years ago, are all now in management.

I am retiring at the end of the year even though I'm just 55.

Re: Hiring

Jasmine & PSA: why shouldn't "kids just out of college" be hired? If they're not in college anymore, they need to get a job somewhere. It might be a good idea for the feds to get some of them, on the possible chance that some of us old folks might retire or die & need to be replaced. Maybe your organization is not being totally fair in judging you re: having a degree - but - might there be possibilities of getting a degree on line or thru some other method? It's your right to retire as soon as you can, but if you're not going to improve yourself while you're still working, you can't blame your employer for looking elsewhere to accomplish the mission; they need to look out for the agency's future, just as you're looking out for your own.

Re: Hiring

Even better: My activity is requiring degrees or degrees in processfor jobs that don't actually require degrees. Their logic is they want people taken for these jobs to be able to compete for the degreed jobs later on. But that cuts out those of us who do qualify for the jobs but don't have degrees. We DO have years of experience with the job and are trying to keep the dear young things afloat. However, they think that since they have degrees they ought to be running the show. One of the ME's is wondering why she is not being taken seriously and constantly complains to the boss. We can't teach her the most elemental things and she keeps trying to tell us how to do what we do best. It isn't pretty. My office mate is retiring because she can and is getting frustrated. I will be stuck with two of the young and intractable ones who don't have the basic information to manage the higher level they have been thrust into.