Half of the USDA's 113,000 employees will be eligible to retire when President Obama leaves office. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack has tapped Assistant Secretary for Departmental Management Pearlie Reed to head up a USDA succession planning and action team. "We are well on our way to figuring out the things that we need to do to prepare to bring people into the workforce as some of the older workers transition out," Reed said. "It's a bigger job than just the recruiting; you've got the hiring, you've got all the cultural issues that you have to deal with in today's society. We think we are up to the task and we hope that we can do this in such a way that USDA doesn't miss a beat."
Calling it a key component of the re-staffing effort, Reed says USDA is scouring college campuses for prospective new employees.
"We now have our target of 8,000 interns we are going to hire between now and August," Reed said. "Probably about 25% of those will be people who will come in as permanent employees in intern type programs, where they will come in at entry level and be able to work their way up to the full performance level. A lot of the others will be students that we want to come back in the years ahead."
Not all vacancies will be filled. Secretary Vilsack told Congress recently that Reed's team is looking at restructuring USDA's supervisor-to-worker ratio because of budget cutbacks.
Powered by iNet Solutions Group ©2011 All Rights Reserved.