More on that ISCD Job Posting

I’ve gotten some feedback on my blog post about the USAJobs.gov listing for a Supervisory Chemical Security Inspector, but you’ll have to pardon me for not naming the sources for fairly obvious reasons.

The Job

First off it appears that there has been a reorganization of job titles at ISCD. This ‘Supervisory Chemical Security Inspector’ used to be called Branch Chief for the Field Operations Branch, or maybe it still is (more on that later). That means that the person holding this position would be responsible for all of the inspectors in the field.

That certainly means that the November job posting and this job posting were positively for the same position; you can only have one person holding that position. With the short time frame between the two postings (just about six weeks from the close of the original post and the opening of the second), it would seem that there were either no qualified applicants or the qualified applicants already had gotten other jobs by the time they were contacted for interviews.

Shenanigans

Actually I have heard rumblings of a potentially different reason; instead of a lack of qualified candidates, there was the lack of a submission by ‘the’ qualified candidate; the one that was preselected for the job. Now I have heard similar complaints about other hiring shenanigans like this over the years at ISCD, but this would be the first such suggestion I have heard under Director Wulf.

One supporting indicator for that accusation is the apparent fact that the my blog post about the position caught a number of people in ISCD by surprise; they were unaware that the position had been re-advertised. Since the experience requirements almost eliminate the possibility that someone outside of ISCD would be ‘qualified’ for the post, it would seem odd that there wasn’t a higher level of awareness of the job post.

The other side of that narrowly defined level of experience necessary for a successful application is that it would discourage applicants from other federal government agencies from applying. Any such potential applicant would read the various CFATS background requirements and conclude that there would be no chance of getting the position.

It is hard for an outsider like myself to verify such claims; application data is protected by various privacy protection rules and statutes. It would take an Inspector General’s investigation to tell for sure, but the circumstances would certainly be explained by the accusation.

Expanding the Experience Pool

I did hear an interesting comment from an NPPD insider about another reason why it might not have been a good idea to so narrowly define the experience requirements. With the problems that ISCD has had with their implementation of  the CFATS inspection process, it might be a good idea to get someone into the Division that had experience in a ‘successful regulatory program’. That’s an idea worthy of consideration.