The Federal government’s primary online hiring resource is expected to undergo a major renovation in early and mid October, according to the Office of Personnel Management. USAJobs.gov, which is used by thousands of applicants for federal jobs every year, will close its doors from October 6th to 12th. During the overhaul, visitors to the site will not be able to search or apply for avaliable positions. USAJobs.gov is working with federal agencies to extend the deadlines of job listings affected by the closure.
Despite shutting its doors for a full week, the new website will feel very similar to applicants when it relaunches on October 13th. In fact, most visitors will not notice the change. The front-end of the USAJobs.gov website will remain largely the same, with the most important renovations being behind the scenes. The biggest change is the migration of five billion rows of data from private to government servers. Currently, USAJobs.gov’s data is managed by the online employment company Monster.com. During the renovation, all of this data will be migrated to servers owned by the Office of Personnel Management. It is hoped that the data migration and overhaul will help protect private and personel information from cyberattacks. Monster.com has been a target of online attacks in the past. In 2009 USAJobs.gov and Monster.com were hacked, allowing the perpetrators to gain access to the login names, passwords, emails addresses, names, phone, numbers and other data of users. After the attack, millions of USAJobs.gov users had to be contacted about changing their passwords.
The change, however, is not just about improving the digital security of the website’s data. The new website is being built to allow other agencies and organizations to build on and expand the new design. Furthermore, the change will making searching for a job easier. Job applicants will see improved search results with new filters based on occupation, pay, and other criteria. Furthermore, the new design will reduce the amount of times applicants are asked to input the same information. Finally, the renovation will help agencies looking for good candidates by making it easier for them to filter applicants based on a variety of characteristics.
