After a monthlong hiatus, the Navy's civilian job search Web site is functioning again.
The Navy disabled its Civilian Hiring and Recruitment Tool, which allows job seekers to hunt for openings and create searchable résumés, at midnight on Dec. 7 to move the server to a new, undisclosed physical location, said Lisa Becker, a human resources specialist. The move occurred for "reasons of economy," a Navy spokesman said.
"Navy staff working this project did everything possible to relocate the infrastructure as quickly as possible," Becker said.
But the change still resulted in a service disruption that lasted longer than anticipated.
CHART, which the Navy developed and operates and which handles approximately 20,000 job applications a week, began functioning again on Wednesday night. It may remain unavailable to some job seekers for up to 48 hours because additional time is needed for computers around the country to recognize the new site.
The Navy extended application deadlines and lengthened résumé expiration dates to accommodate the technical glitch. Active résumés set to expire while the site was down will now be retained until Jan. 31.
An announcement on the CHART site informed applicants that the malfunction created "an excellent time to review your résumé to ensure all of the information is up to date."
While the system was down, Navy job hunters were still able to submit paper résumés to the central Employment Information and Resume Intake Center. Civilian Navy jobs also are listed on the federal government's central recruitment site, USAJOBS.com.
A system maintenance notice posted while the site was down informed searchers that it would be available by Jan. 4. A separate Navy Web site, however, still contains two older notices stating that the system would be working by Dec. 17 and Dec. 27 respectively.
Becker said the Navy considered hosting CHART on another server to keep the system running during the transition, but "it was determined not to be a viable option because of technical considerations." The Navy would not provide details on this decision.
This is not the government's first technical difficulty with a hiring Web site. In April, job search Web sites at the Health and Human Services and Homeland Security departments were down for more than a month. Those difficulties were caused by problems with software provided by Virginia-based Monster Government Solutions.
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