Two HR specialists have been suspended after tweaking and re-issuing job announcements to hire a particular individual.
According to the Merit Systems Protection Board: a Coast Guard officer wanted to promote one of her civilian employees into a vacant GS-11 position; she requested and received two certificates of eligible candidates, one external and one internal, but her preferred candidate only applied for the internal list and didn’t make the cut; the official’s HR advisor asked a staffing specialist to reopen the announcement but the preferred candidate again failed to make either list; and the HR advisor then recommended to the supervisor that they cancel the certificates and issue a new one at a lower grade.
Around that time a new staffing specialist was assigned to the action and MSPB found that the new specialist understood the reason behind re-advertising the position and still went ahead and canceled the referral lists and issued another announcement, this time for a GS-09 with promotion potential to the GS-11 with the area of consideration limited to the local commuting area.
This time the desired candidate made the referral list.
