The Chief Human Capital Officers Council and OPM have announced changes for fiscal 2009 to the career patterns program, a key program informing all human capital assessment and accountability framework systems.
OPM said the program has helped expand workforce planning efforts, implement new recruitment programs, design new branding and marketing initiatives, and improved job announcements. It called the initiative a "strategic thread running through" its end-to-end hiring initiative.
OPM has been piloting the use of career patterns in USAJOBS since April in a bid to get HR staffers to focus on writing job announcements geared to attract targeted applicant pools. It has issued the following instructions to agency human capital officers:
* OPM will no longer ask agencies to provide "quality of applicant" ratio data.
* Guidance for the government-wide deliverables for career patterns has been restated to: "Align agency job announcements with career patterns strategic initiative."
* There is no Career Patterns deliverable for this current quarter.
A revised job builder template invokes career patterns icons on the job announcements, and the pilot has an internal goal to focus HR staffers on writing job announcements geared to attract targeted applicant pools.
As an external goal, the pilot will make it easier for applicants to search for jobs matching their requirements. However, that goal will be postponed for the time being because of technical issues with back-end systems compatibility with the USAJOBS changes, according to OPM.
