The chair and ranking members of the Senate federal workforce subcommittee, Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, have introduced a bill intended to streamline federal hiring partly by allowing job applicants to apply for federal jobs the same way everybody else does, with a resume and cover letter rather than the more traditional and cumbersome knowledge skills and abilities essays.
The Federal Hiring Process Improvement Act of 2009 further would require job announcements to be in plain English, require agencies to periodically notify applicants as to the status of their applications, set an 80 day time limit to make an offer after deciding to fill a vacancy, and require agencies to keep an inventory of applicants who have said they would consider taking jobs other than the ones they originally applied for.
