Exclusive online resume bank created for SESers

If you're a government executive looking for a new position, post your resume on a new Office of Personnel Management Web site designed to match seasoned executives with top-notch jobs. The exclusive Web site, open only to members of the Senior Executive Service and graduates of OPM-certified SES candidate development programs, was launched Thursday. Federal agencies will be able to use the site to identify executives to fill temporary or permanent jobs quickly, since SESers can be appointed without any review of other candidates. The Senior Opportunity and Resume System (http://sesmobility.opm.gov) will "not only help executives who are interested in making career moves, but also help agencies staff their key vacancies," said Joyce Edwards, director of OPM's Office of Executive Resources Management. "There's been discussion about the value of SES mobility for as long as the SES has existed. … We firmly believe that movement is a good thing. Executives grow when they periodically change jobs. We think it's good for programs, too." Executives can log on to the site and enter descriptions of their current and past job experience, assignments they're looking for, geographic preferences, whether they're interested in permanent or temporary assignments and their contact information. They can also search through job opportunities by agency or by keyword. Agencies can post job descriptions and browse through the executive database looking for people who match their needs. The new Office of Homeland Security, for example, could use the site to draw experienced executives for short-term assignments. "This is an ideal tool to identify what executives might be able to make quick moves on a temporary or permanent basis," Edwards said. "The leadership in agencies can use it to fill their key jobs, particularly in times of emergency." In 1998, when OPM did a top-to-bottom review of the SES, one proposal it considered was making mobility mandatory. Executives wouldn't be able to advance into the top pay grades of the SES until they had worked at more than one agency, under the proposal. That idea got shot down. The new Web site encourages, rather than requires, mobility. Most federal executives work for one agency for their entire careers. Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, said the new site is a first step toward making it easier for executives to move around. Many agencies' job vacancies for SES positions tend to be written in ways that favor internal agency candidates, she said.

"We needed to do something to really facilitate mobility at least on the part of those executives who are interested in being mobile, which is a fair number," Bonosaro said, adding that mobility could include brief assignments to give executives a taste of other agencies' ways of doing business. "We need to do more to facilitate details, short assignments in other agencies which would represent the first olive out of the bottle for some executives, where you go to help with a specific problem for a temporary time."

OPM's executive resources office and the employment services office developed the site for $75,000, said Joe Riddle, director of OPM's SES Learning Center.