Despite a dwindling federal workforce (some statistics show that of the 1.9 million federal government workers, 44% are eligible to retire by 2010 — including 60% of senior managers), CareerBuilder.com says it sees more than 1.2 million job searches each month for government jobs.
And federal government employers are competing with both the public and private sector for top talent and are becoming more aggressive in attracting qualified candidates to their agencies.
These are just two of the reasons why CareerBuilder launched a new site, WorkforAmerica.com. The site is intended to help expedite the recruitment of qualified workers for federal government positions.
The red, white, and blue home page lacks a lot of bells and whistles, but it does a good job of laying out numerous links to government job advice, government job search tools, government news, and a list of the top-10 new federal government jobs.
When a user clicks on the “Search Government Jobs” tab, the site is quite similar in appearance to the traditional CareerBuilder.com home page. However, job categories include Air Force, City, Civil Service, County, FBI, Federal, Homeland Security, Police, Social Security, State, and U.S. Postal. There, job seekers can search by keyword, location, and job type and by full-time, part-time, and contract positions.
The site also features a helpful “Working for the Government vs. Corporate America” article. Among other things, it points out that getting a government job “is very complex, requiring extra patience and legwork” and that some “wait up to three months for a response — a lot longer than the wait in the corporate world.”
The article also cautions would-be federal workers that such bureaucracy is “designed to protect jobs from elimination and employees from being fired, which fortunately adds up to job security.”
However, the article admits that the government is more flexible with qualifications than the corporate world. For example, years of experience may often replace college education, while a senior-level government position may require no college degree compared to a comparable corporate position.
CareerBuilder says WorkforAmerica.com will help government employers brand themselves to job seekers through job postings and BrandBuilder pages, which include details on the organization’s mission, benefits, news, and career opportunities.