Senator: OPM Should Have a Special Office for Veterans
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
The idea came up during a discussion of USAJobs.gov.
The Office of Personnel Management should have a special office dedicated to helping disabled veterans apply for jobs, according to Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.
During a Senate discussion about USAJobs.gov, the OPM-managed federal job-search website, Heitkamp suggested that disabled veterans might need extra help navigating the process.
“They should have somebody within the system who is their advocate,” to look at applicants’ skill sets and connect them to jobs for which they are qualified, “as opposed to a system that automatically assumes qualification,” she said during the discussion, which was hosted by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“Why don’t we create an office within OPM of advocacy for disabled veterans so that those professionals would be looking for opportunities not just to give somebody a job, but to give them a job that they can be . . . enriched in?” Heitkamp said.
There have been other efforts in the past year to improve online benefits for veterans. In November, the Veterans Affairs Department unveiled Vets.gov, a website eventually aiming to link to more than 1,000 veteran-related services.