NASA For Hire

This column has been updated. NASA and the Office of Personnel Management are asking agencies to do their part in considering NASA's highly skilled technical workforce for open jobs across the federal government. The effort is to assist aerospace contractors at Kennedy Space Center who are impacted by the end of the Space Shuttle program. In a memo to agency chief human capital officers, OPM Director John Berry directed agencies to a new NASA website where agencies can register, post summaries of job descriptions and find additional information about the skills of the available workforce. The skill sets available in the pool of more than 6,000 contract workers include information technology, particularly in areas like systems, software and programming. Other skill sets include engineering, analysis, technical and administrative, Berry noted. HR specialists at NASA will hold "support labs" to help the 6,000 workers at Kennedy Space Center to apply for federal jobs. The agency will then hold a job fair at Kennedy where participating agencies can travel to interview qualified candidates. The effort also includes a virtual job fair that will run through March 31. The deadline for agencies to post their vacancies on USAJOBS and post the summaries to NASA's website is May 16. More than two years ago, I wrote a cover story on NASA's transition of the workforce from the Space Shuttle program to its planned moon and Mars program, Constellation. But in October 2010, Constellation was officially canceled when Obama signed NASA reauthorization legislation into law. Correction: An earlier version of this story contained incorrect dates for agencies to register on NASA's website.