Hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee's Management, Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee- Examining DHS's Efforts to Recruit Veterans

Statement

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REP. MIKE ROGERS (R-AL): Thank you, Chairman Carney, for holding this hearing and the witnesses for participating in our effort to review the progress that the Department of Homeland Security is making to recruit, hire and retain veterans. It's timely since our nation just honored Veterans Day that we honor the bravery and sacrifice of those men and women who served in uniform.

I would like to also welcome back to the subcommittee Ms. Marta Perez, director of DHS (sic). I know that it is not your new title yet, but we are still hoping the Senate makes up the legislation Chairman Carney and I worked to on your new title.

The employment of veterans by the government, especially DHS, is a critically important issue. Veterans employed at DHS bring a wealth of experience from the specialized training their received in the military. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I'm especially aware of the sacrifices our brave men and women in uniform make every day in keeping our country safe.

During the committee's site visits to Iraq, we see firsthand the major challenges our troops are facing. We also see how well-trained they are and what special skills they can bring to their future employers. My own state of Alabama has over 412,000 veterans. Out of all the civilian DHS employees living in Alabama, 263, or 28 percent, are veterans.

According to the Department of Personnel Management, in fiscal year 2006 DHS ranked seventh in the percentage of veterans in the federal agencies' work force, and according to DHS, veterans constitute 24 percent of its work force. This percentage compares to the governmentwide average of employed veterans, which DHS states to be 26.3 percent. These numbers appear to indicate that folks at DHS are doing a good job in hiring veterans to support the department's mission.

In addition to hiring veterans, it's also important to have programs in place to retain them. In the last Congress and earlier this year, this subcommittee held hearings on personnel challenges facing the Department of Homeland Security, including the retention of its valued employees. Last month, an OPM official testified before the House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee that DHS has one of the highest retention rates of veterans throughout the federal government.

We look forward to hearing more about DHS's efforts in these areas, as well as more that might be done to recruit those soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And with that, I yield back.

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REP. ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to ask Ms. Perez -- if you can answer this with some specificity; it may be a little bit too narrow a question, I don't know. You made reference to the fact that ICE and CBP have been able to turn to veterans as an applicant pool. One of my concerns and criticisms about CBP and their effort to grow their ranks to roughly 19,000 agents is they don't seem to be able to attract a large enough pool of qualified applicants to go into the academy in New Mexico in order to turn out that number by the end of next year.

And when I went out and toured the facility and asked the folks at the department exactly what they were doing to recruit this number of people, they couldn't tell me exactly how they thought they were going to be able to get these numbers.

Can you tell me specifically how you're trying to recruit? It seems like the veterans are such a great match for that institution -- what you're doing, with some specificity, to recruit those veterans for CBP?

MS. PEREZ: Yeah. Well, first of all, I would acknowledge with my colleagues with CBP that the numbers that they have to hire are staggering numbers. I am pleased to report that for at least for '07, we just completed our annual report, and they met their targets for '07, which were a little over 3,000 agents. And their outreach -- and I have actually been very involved and briefed numerous times, because this is a priority, obviously, of the administration, it's a priority of Secretary Chertoff, so we've been briefed numerous times on the outreach efforts.

And I may be -- if I'm wrong, I'll come back to you and correct myself, but my understanding is almost 30 to one: They have to process 30 individuals in order to get one individual into the academy, which is if you were at the academy, and I have been to the academy, the academy staff would not be as aware of all of the -- they have basically decentralized their hiring efforts. They're doing a lot of regional hiring. They've reduced the time that it takes to hire. Part of the problems that we have in government, sometimes it takes us -- it's a long time between when you first get a notice that they're interested in you, and then by the time the applicant, you know, gets actually notified that they're hired. CBP has made incredible progress in actually doing what is called high-touch recruiting, where we actually stay in touch with the applicants through the process.

So the department, I think, is poised to meet the requirements, but you're right in that the numbers are staggering, and then putting them through the academy is more complex.

The veterans, certainly my experience has been that they're doing a great deal of outreach to the veterans community. But I will go back; if there's a perception on your part that we're not doing enough in that regard, I will go back. I think I mentioned over 27 percent of our agents are in fact veterans. For us, it's absolutely an applicant pool that is a fabulous resource.

So we agree with you, it is challenging. We think we're going to -- we met it in '07; I think we'll continue to meet the hiring targets and commitments that we have made to the administration.

REP. ROGERS: Do you know exactly how that outreach is being made to veterans for CBP in particular? I mean, what methodology do you use to contact them? And if one of the other -- one of you know, I'd love to hear from you.

MS. PEREZ: Yeah, I'll have to come back to you, sir, with specific information in terms of we do a lot of outreach with the actual veterans services organizations, the TAP programs, the transition programs and so forth. But my preference would be, Mr. Rogers, to come back with a more specific, from the department, from the component, specific on veterans outreach rather than guess.

REP. ROGERS: Thank you.

And Mr. Hilleman, you made reference to the fact that you would like to see better notice to veterans about preference programs. What could we do better in DHS to make veterans aware of those preference programs?

MR. HILLEMAN: Thank you for your question, sir.

There are a number of avenues available to DHS as well as federal government to make the employment practices and bonuses -- or excuse me, the hiring preferences known to veterans. DHS has a program for 30-percent-disabled veterans to fast-track their recruitment effort. It allows them to forgo some of the cumbersome hiring processes to other -- that all the government agencies are bound by but that other veterans with only a five or 10 -- a five-point preference or a lesser disability do not qualify for. Making things like this known in the community is very important.

I first came in contact with a member of DHS at a recruiting fair, and he was very proactive. He came up to me, introduced himself. He explained what they were doing, he talked highly about how they've been able to attract more and more disabled veterans. It was very heartening to me.

So every disabled veteran that I've come in contact with, just as word of mouth, I let them know that DHS is hiring. Publicizing something like the fast-track authority that they're able to apply in hiring disabled veterans is huge. It means a lot to young men and women who are trying to figure out how they're going to get their life back together.

REP. ROGERS: But are you aware of any exit package that's presented to a disabled veteran when they're looking at the horizon of their opportunities that might include in there these kind of preference programs?

MR. HILLEMAN: A number of veterans are made aware of the different avenues for employment after service disability. Typically, when a veteran is disabled they are eligible for vocational rehabilitation, they get special preferences. Veterans get special preference when it comes to, like, employment offices.

There are a number of means to explore publication. I would be remiss if I sat here and said I could come up with all of them. The Department of Homeland Security's done a good job in bringing together some experts in an advisory setting, and I know from attending the advisory meeting a number of ideas have been discussed, some of which are making veterans-centric pamphlets, catering videos, hiring videos towards veterans.

In terms of getting that information before them, I would suggest using Department of Labor's DVOPs and LVER program, which is employment outreach as well as VA's vocational rehabilitation. Those are the two that make immediate contact with veterans on a regular basis.

REP. ROGERS: Okay, thank you.

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REP. ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Arsht, you made reference to the fact that in Operation Warfighter you had 376 placements of veterans that -- I took it, and maybe I'm assuming wrong, these were people who were either in Walter Reed or Bethesda. Is that the pool that you're working with?

MS. ARSHT: Correct.

REP. ROGERS: This 376, is that -- what -- is that drawn from a -- how many potentially could you have worked with? Is that half, is that 75 percent of them, is that 100 percent of the people that would be eligible for this program?

MS. ARSHT: No, the issue of eligibility really has to do with readiness of the service member and the recovery period. So the Medical Command has to have medically cleared the service member to take the outside assignment. And that, obviously, is very individual. So some service members are eager earlier and capable of doing it and they get right on board; others, it takes longer. And so it's hard to say --

REP. ROGERS: But does this 376 represent all of the people who want to participate that are medically cleared and otherwise eligible?

MS. ARSHT: Yes. There are -- there's probably a group -- every week we add more service members who come to the every-other-week meetings to see what it's about and whether they're ready and to talk to employers. Some will start to pursue it right then, some will wait another month or two, and so it's very individual, both the placement and the desire to get involved.

REP. ROGERS: The same thing with 40 permanent post-separation placements: Does that represent pretty much most everybody that was trying to get post-separation placements?

MS. ARSHT: Yes, and we've had other placements outside of Operation Warfighter. Someone left Operation Warfighter and went to a nongovernment positions. We have many of those.

REP. ROGERS: Okay.

MS. ARSHT: And I don't have those numbers with me today. But we actually seek to serve the service members, so if he or she wants to stay in the agency they're in, that employer -- we'll work with that employer. If they're looking for a local job back home in another activity but the same line of work, the Department of Labor would step in and start to help with that.

REP. ROGERS: Thank you.

Ms. Perez, I want to visit this process of vets applying. As a member who has the largest employer in his district being the DOD facility, I hear complaints all the time from folks applying, particularly veterans, that they have to apply online, that the computer, what I've learned, is basically scans their application for keywords. And then those people who know how to post their application in the correct wording get on the eligible list. The same thing happens with promotion. For a veteran, or for that matter anybody else who wants to come to work with DHS, what's the process, mechanically, to apply? Is it all online?

MS. PEREZ: The processes are pretty much online, and in fact there's a requirement in the federal government that any competitive promotion, any competitive advertisement has to be done through the Office of Personnel Management USAJOBS, which is an online service. And frankly, it's a way to provide access to thousands of individuals outside of the area -- the immediate area of recruitment and so forth. So for the most part it's really probably a good thing.

The problem becomes when you submit an application that is either incomplete or -- one of the problems that we have found, and the reason why we've incorporated into the website that we have now for helping veterans apply is that sometimes they would submit the application -- when I was at OPM I did a lot of auditing of what agencies were doing relative to veterans hire as well as work with the hospital in helping, you know, veterans who wanted to find employment. But what some of the problems that we encounter were that when they submitted their application, they would use a lot of the terminology they used in the military that didn't really have any application in the civilian world.

So we're helping them with kind of -- do translating, if you will -- converting, what we call the "converter," converting the jargon to civilian jargon. So that's one way that we're helping them. We're also looking to actually improve our outreach across the board, veterans and non-veterans.

REP. ROGERS: Let me interrupt you just a minute. When you say you're helping them convert the jargon, is this a live person who's helping them?

MS. PEREZ: No, it's actually -- it's an online -- it's a tool that the online website -- you can go to a place that says "converter," and you can key in whatever the numbers are. And we tested, and when we had our meeting last week with the -- two weeks ago when we were with the veterans organizations -- you put in whatever job, you know, you did in the military that might've had a number or something associated, and it actually converts it to civilian jobs of that for which you're now eligible to apply or at least have competencies and skills. So that's --

REP. ROGERS: Can I get one of those for my CPA? Because she and I talk in completely different languages.

MS. PEREZ: (Laughs.) We can work on that.

REP. ROGERS: All right.

MS. PEREZ: Yeah.

REP. ROGERS: So I interrupted you --

MS. PEREZ: No, no, that -- I was going to say -- so that's -- we are in actually at also trying to improve our recruitment period. And have engaged with organizations to help us to allow more of the outreach. We -- I think that the high touch, it's in a way that we're going to -- when we go to the applicants and you survey applicants relative to federal process, time and time again the biggest complaint is that we never hear back. So what we're trying to do is say okay, we want to make sure that we respond to the applicants, that we stay in touch with them. If we're not interested, that we notify them, you know right away that we're not interested in them. If we think that even if it's a protracted process if -- you know, we just keep them involved or at least knowledgeable.

We're also hoping to get available online our e-recruitment system, which we're in the process of implementing -- we hope to have something in the beginning of the year. You can actually as an applicant -- you can go online and figure out -- find out where you are in the applicant -- application process. So we're trying to get there; we're not there yet.

REP. ROGERS: Specifically, a veteran's interested in going to work for DHS, where do they go on the Internet to --

MS. PEREZ: Right now you can go to DHS.gov, and there's a veterans link, so that's -- it's a all-inclusive, one-stop shop. You can go there, and from there you can actually connect with DOD, you know, Department of Labor, OPM and all the other sites that have veterans' information. We think it's quite a helpful site.

REP. ROGERS: Okay.

My last question is you all are roughly 25 percent -- ranked seventh in federal agencies in veteran hiring. What is your target goal, or do you have a target goal that you're trying to achieve?

MS. PEREZ: Yeah, for -- we have targeting -- target goals to reach across the board in terms of our hiring period. Meeting all of our targets is our goal. Meeting -- leveraging the veterans population allows us to meet those targets much quicker because we have access to individuals. We don't have a number per se -- it's got to be 25, it's got to be 35 or whatever it's got to be. We got to meet the targets, and veterans is a place that we can go and meet them.

REP. ROGERS: Okay. Thank you very much.

REP. CARNEY: Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

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