Michelle Earley: Inside the USAJobs Revamp

The federal government's USAJOBS platform, designed for job seekers hoping to find a position in the public sector, has been maligned for its user-unfriendliness.

Fortunately, the website started to receive much-needed upgrades earlier this year. In fact, on February 24, 2016, the Office of Personnel Management announced that it had rolled out the first group of changes to the job-seeking platform. These updates included a five-step tracker that guides applicants through the process, saving progress automatically and forwarding information to the correct agency. It also contained the capability for applicants to upload a resume and other personal files and view those files seamlessly during the application process. 

The Public Manager recently interviewed Michelle Earley, the program manager for USAJobs. She told TPM that she will continue to lead six- to eight-week development scrums designed to roll out various fixes to the platform, explaining that this sort of agile development “reduces risk by incrementally building and testing the solution with the end users over time.” 

For more on the improvements, check out the May Spotlight article.