Certain spouses of military personnel will soon be allowed to bypass the traditional competitive hiring process when applying for federal government jobs, under a new regulation just announced by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The new regulation, published in the August 12 Federal Register, will apply to:
- Spouses of active duty service members who have received PCS (Permanent Change of Station) relocation and re-assignment orders;
- Spouses of 100 percent disabled service members whose disability resulted from active duty in the armed forces; and,
- The un-remarried widows or widowers of service members who were killed while on active duty in the armed forces.
The new regulation, which goes into effect in September, gives the federal agencies the option of hiring military spouses meeting the any of the above criteria without requiring them to compete for the job.
While the non-competitive hiring is optional to the federal agencies, the new rule could benefit hundreds of thousands of military spouses, since about half of the 400,000 to 500,000 military personnel issued relocation and re-assignment orders annually are married, according to the Pentagon.
Also See: About the DD-214: Requesting Military Service Records
Comments