Most Bush administration applicants file resumes online

Ninety percent of the 60,000 people who have applied for Bush administration jobs have filed their applications online, the White House director of presidential personnel said Thursday. Clay Johnson said the online application process has helped streamline the Office of Presidential Personnel, which has 40 employees compared to 70 to 80 employees at the beginning of previous administrations. Johnson's office must fill 6,000 jobs, ranging from Cabinet secretaries to part-time board members. The online process "allows us to focus on the selection of people rather than on the entry of data," Johnson told a gathering of reporters at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Applicants have been submitting online resumes since December, when the Bush-Cheney transition team put an application form on its Web site. Applicants can now fill out the form on the White House Web site. The form asks for basic resume information as well as information that helps the Office of Presidential Personnel categorize applicants. Behind the scenes, White House staffers use a customized version of TeleMagic, a software package produced by Dallas-based Sage U.S. Holdings, to sift through the database of applications. They can search the database by key words to identify job candidates. Despite getting a late start on the appointments process because of the contested election, Johnson has set a goal of getting all Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointments through the Senate confirmation process before Congress' August recess. Johnson is presenting 20 to 30 names each week to President Bush for his approval, and has so far presented more than 230 names for appointments.

It takes about 43 days from the time the President signs off on an appointee until the name can be sent to the Senate. During that period, the appointee goes through background checks and clearances. So far, 129 appointees have been officially named or confirmed, Johnson said. While the online form and database help the White House manage applications, the selection process still involves the in-person input of White House officials and Cabinet secretaries. Johnson said officials first identify the skills that are necessary for a given position, factoring in the basic needs of the job as well as the background of other appointees with whom an applicant would be working. For example, if a Cabinet secretary is deeply interested in management, then the White House may search for a deputy secretary who is more of a policy expert. Once the job's needs are defined, Johnson's office identifies top candidates and makes a recommendation to the President. Sometimes Bush approves candidates quickly, other times he challenges the recommendation or asks the office to keep looking. One important position that has yet to be filled is the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. OMB Deputy Director Sean O'Keefe told GovExec.com earlier this week that efforts to fill the position have been hampered by the onerous nomination and confirmation process. Johnson said he wasn't aware of any problems in finding interested candidates. "That's a huge job," he said, noting that asking someone to fill it is tantamount to asking someone, "How would you like to come in here and change the way the federal government works?" Paul Light, director of governmental studies at Brookings, said he was impressed at how quickly the White House is moving on appointments, given the late start the Bush team had. "It could be the blend of an MBA President with an MBA director of the Office of Presidential Personnel," he said.