FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
The Defense Logistics Agency’s Human Resources recruitment team is ramping up its use of direct hire authority to fill critical civilian roles within the agency.
DHA’s are generally used to expedite hiring for agencies by eliminating certain candidate ranking and rating procedures. Traditionally, agencies use DHA’s to fill vacancies when a critical hiring need or severe shortage of candidates exists, according to the Office of Personnel Management website.
The authorities are applicable to incoming federal employees and covers positions to the competitive service using career, career-conditional, term, and temporary appointments.
“In [fiscal year 2024], DLA hired over 4800 personnel, with 36.8% of them appointed by DHA,” said Supervisory HR Specialist Drema Sergent. “The employees were hired in a variety of roles to include, but not limited to: contracting specialists, police officers, general engineers, accountants, and students and recent graduates.”
Agency’s use of DHAs
Sergent says there are several DHAs available, but typically DLA uses three authorities to conduct its hiring: the DHA for Certain Personnel of the DoD, the DHA for Domestic Defense Industrial Base Facilities and the Major Range and Test Facilities Base in the DoD, or the DHA for Post-Secondary Students and Recent Graduates.
“For police officers, we typically use the DHA for Certain Personnel of the DOD, because it specifically addresses our critical need to hire positions in support of safety of the public, law enforcement, or first response within the agency,” she said.
To facilitate hiring in the DLA Pathways to Career Excellence program, the agency’s recruitment team will use any of the previously mentioned DHAs.
The DLA PACE program is a two-year training program designed for participants to begin their career at GS-7 level, with the ability to advance to GS-11 or GS-12 in professional, administrative and technological career fields. This is accomplished through on-the-job assignments, cross-training and formal training such as classroom, distance learning, web-based training, conferences and seminars.
Benefits of DHAs
Using DHAs can speed up the hiring process for applicants who have no prior government or military experience or are not married to active duty personnel. As another benefit to the agency, Sergent said DHAs offer a wider talent pool of candidates because they are open to the public.
“Benefits for the candidate may be an equal opportunity to apply, a reduction of the documents to submit, and a reduction in time it takes to complete the application,” Sergent said
However, Sergent said that although DHAs reduce the number of required documents for submission, it’s still important for all applicants to review the announcement and submit all required documents to ensure proper consideration for the role by the hiring manager.
“Over the past three fiscal years, using DHAs has historically reduced the time to onboard by an average of seven days,” Sergent said.
Sergent challenged all DLA employees to not only tell their friends and family members about DLA, but encourage them to visit and follow DLA Careers on LinkedIn. She noted that both DHA positions and other agency positions are posted there as well as information about upcoming career events.
“The more that our employees and job applicants talk about DLA to their friends and family, to include people in their professional networks, the more we can potentially hire qualified candidates to work at the agency to accomplish our mission,” Sergent said.