OPM issues contracts to upgrade recruitment, training

The Office of Personnel Management awarded two sets of contracts over the past two weeks aimed at improving the agency's training and recruitment endeavors.

Monster Government Solutions, part of the larger Monster online career group, will run the government's job Web site, USAJOBS.gov. The one-year contract includes four one-year renewal options, which could net the company up to $27 million over five years, according to OPM. Monster also will manage Studentjobs.gov and OPM's career phone line.

Monster was responsible for the August 2003 overhaul of USAJOBS. OPM said the company's improvements raised traffic from 27,000 to 250,000 visitors a day, for a total of 1.5 billion hits. Monster has been managing the website since the revamp, but OPM opened the contract up to competition.

"MGS has a track record of success," OPM Director Linda Springer said in a statement on the award. "Its management team has committed the expert resources required to serve the American public's ever-growing interest in federal jobs."

Monster said its previous work on the Web site included developing a resume-building function, enhancing the presentation of vacancy announcements, and integrating individual agency's hiring systems into the site. The company said more than 1 million resumes have been posted on the site by job-seekers since that option became available.

Dan DeMaioNewton, USAJOBS' program manager, said the contract is set up so that OPM can opt for any innovations they see on the general job Web site Monster.com, assuming they do not require a high degree of customization, and then simply pay for what they want.

"OPM is benefiting from any industry changes," DeMaioNewton said. "They don't have to take the risk of inventing the wheel."

DeMaioNewton also said that Monster will redesign the look of both USAJOBS and Studentjobs.gov as well as give job seekers the ability to search by job title and sort results by salary, "so they can get to the sweet spot right away."

Another focus for Monster, according to DeMaioNewton, is enhancing job seekers' ability to know the status of their application. Monster's improvements "will allow job seekers to go to one location and see [the status of] all the jobs they've applied to," he said. "That's the Holy Grail and that's at the heart of what this is about."

OPM also awarded 17 companies an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract to provide employee training products. The contract is for one year and potentially renewable for another four years, but OPM guarantees only a minimum of $25,000 a year to each company because the IDIQ contract gives individual agencies the final decision on what company to use.

Thomson NETg, which bills itself as a provider of "knowledge on demand," is one of the companies with the IDIQ contract. Its parent company is the information technology and textbook publisher giant Thomson Corp.

Thomson NETg said it will provide Web-based training on topics such as professional development and technology that can last up to seven hours. It also will offer real-time online mentorship and reference materials.

Jerry Neri, Thomson NETg's vice president of sales for the Eastern Division and Government, said the company expects to bring in about $4 million a year with this contract.

The group also will provide capability for online meetings, virtual classrooms, collaborative whiteboards and chat capabilities for federal employees.

Thomson NETg's president, Joe Dougherty, called his company's offerings a "complete range of relevant, targeted instruction" which includes "powerful learning empowerment tools." He said the contract will "help government agencies of all sizes meet their critical missions by moving their people right where they need them: onto the cutting edge."