Hiring people with disabilities for your office just got easier.

A program that helps Government managers find and then hire people with disabilities has incorporated two changes that will make it easier for USDA hiring officials to find qualified candidates for permanent positions or summer slots.

First, USDA recruiters have been doing more to match up the applicants with the specific needs of individual USDA managers--so the hiring officials’ search will be faster and simpler. Second, USDA initiated a pilot program, which began this year, in which the Secretary’s Advisory Committee for Employees with Disabilities--not individual program agencies--is paying for five USDA interns with disabilities who will work all summer at no cost to the hiring agencies.

The Workforce Recruitment Program for College Students with Disabilities (WRP) is a competitive, nationwide Federal government internship program. “Its purpose is to identify qualified persons with disabilities for full-time permanent work or for summer internships,” said Bill Haig, Departmental Disability Employment Program Manager in the Office of Human Resources Management. The majority of candidates are college students, and the rest have a bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D., or JD degree.

“The program itself doesn’t actually hire anyone,” Haig clarified. “It just offers officials a look at a highly qualified talent pool of students able to do the jobs managers need to fill. The WRP program is very flexible; once managers identify a qualified candidate, they can use any hiring authority available to bring the person on staff.”

“What’s different about the program this year is that our USDA WRP recruiters are providing more help to managers,” said Terry Thir, Departmental Disability Program Manager in the Office of Civil Rights.

“Nine of us recruiters met with USDA’s Disability Employment Program Managers in all USDA mission areas to learn about agencies’ hiring needs, so we could do a better job of finding applicants who seem especially well suited for USDA jobs,” she explained. “Then, we fanned out across the country in January and February to interview several hundred students at more than 40 colleges who might have an interest in the USDA intern program.”

“Armed with this information,” Thir added, “the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor created a database of all the students, including their education level, location, and job interests.”

In mid-March, OHRM provided to all of USDA’s agency-level Disability Employment Program Managers a CD-ROM containing this data, which they were expected to share with managers who wanted to search for people with the education and skills to match their programs’ needs.

According to Samantha Schmucker, USDA’s WRP coordinator in OHRM, “A new improvement for this year is that, in addition to making the CD-ROM available, the USDA recruiters also identified more than 60 students who seemed especially well suited for USDA jobs. By carefully screening candidates, and matching them up with specific skills and experiences needed by a particular USDA office, the recruiters created a short list of exceptional candidates that was made available in March to all interested managers at USDA.”

Once employers see the students’ profiles--either on the CD-ROM or on the short list--they can contact them directly for possible interviews and job offers. As of May 21, six USDA agencies had hired 15 employees through WRP.

According to Schmucker, the summer intern program offers hiring officials:

• Candidates who are pre-screened in face-to-face interviews,
• Information about applicants’ qualifications,
• Referral pools tailored to specific job requirements,
• Access to candidates across the nation, and
• The chance to conduct independent interviews after getting referrals from the WRP program.

In turn, she noted, WRP interns can:

• Undertake special projects postponed for lack of time or resources,
• Assist permanent staff with assignments or projects,
• Share specialized knowledge and innovative technical skills.

“I hope that hiring officials and program managers across the Department will take advantage of this chance to help meet their disability hiring goals while attracting qualified staff for permanent positions or for summer hires,” Schmucker emphasized.

“The program works.” •