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Post by 71stretch on Dec 18, 2014 6:57:26 GMT -5
Agreed. Cinder, if you even THINK you might be available in the the spring for a move, then get yourself back on the interview list and get yourself an interview with everyone else after the holidays. It can't hurt any worse than the position you are potentially in (envision shot in the foot here). Thanks for your suggestions. I did reach out to Bob and the upshot is that I got the California cities restored to my GAL. Also, my references were contacted last night and today. I'm not sure there's a cause and effect there, but maybe so. I still haven't been called to schedule an interview. But the fact that my references are being called suggests that they may be hiring in at least one of the cities on my GAL--L.A., Pasadena, Norwalk, and SLC. We'll see. They call references for everyone on the cert. They ship all the paperwork to the contractor at the beginning of the process and don't keep telling them who to pull out of the pile because they have decided not to hire in the cities that person has on their list. Good news is, you got those cities back on for the future.
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Post by hondo35 on Dec 18, 2014 10:54:24 GMT -5
Thanks for your suggestions. I did reach out to Bob and the upshot is that I got the California cities restored to my GAL. Also, my references were contacted last night and today. I'm not sure there's a cause and effect there, but maybe so. I still haven't been called to schedule an interview. But the fact that my references are being called suggests that they may be hiring in at least one of the cities on my GAL--L.A., Pasadena, Norwalk, and SLC. We'll see. They call references for everyone on the cert. They ship all the paperwork to the contractor at the beginning of the process and don't keep telling them who to pull out of the pile because they have decided not to hire in the cities that person has on their list. Good news is, you got those cities back on for the future. Are you certain of this, observer (not the 'good news' part, lol)? It seems a little too coincidental that both ok and I (and others) were told our cities weren't being filled in this first round and we didn't get called for an interview, but they began to call our references after the interviews were complete. Did anyone report their references being contacted prior to the Nov-Dec interviews, but they didn't get called for an interview? I am not an insider--really know very little about the process--but I think they must have some system in place that prioritized reference checks for people who were going to be interviewed first. BTW...still waiting for the call to schedule an interview (hopefully in January), but I'm pretty sure they're just busy with the offers going out now and probably won't get around to that until next week at the earliest, possibly after the holidays.
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Post by JudgeRatty on Dec 18, 2014 11:13:59 GMT -5
They call references for everyone on the cert. They ship all the paperwork to the contractor at the beginning of the process and don't keep telling them who to pull out of the pile because they have decided not to hire in the cities that person has on their list. Good news is, you got those cities back on for the future. Are you certain of this, observer (not the 'good news' part, lol)? It seems a little too coincidental that both ok and I (and others) were told our cities weren't being filled in this first round and we didn't get called for an interview, but they began to call our references after the interviews were complete. Did anyone report their references being contacted prior to the Nov-Dec interviews, but they didn't get called for an interview? I am not an insider--really know very little about the process--but I think they must have some system in place that prioritized reference checks for people who were going to be interviewed first. BTW...still waiting for the call to schedule an interview (hopefully in January), but I'm pretty sure they're just busy with the offers going out now and probably won't get around to that until next week at the earliest, possibly after the holidays. Observer is right. The two processes are distinctly separate and once on a cert, the references go to the contractors to start. They don't pull them from the contractors simply because there was a change in cities.
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Post by 71stretch on Dec 18, 2014 11:40:43 GMT -5
They call references for everyone on the cert. They ship all the paperwork to the contractor at the beginning of the process and don't keep telling them who to pull out of the pile because they have decided not to hire in the cities that person has on their list. Good news is, you got those cities back on for the future. Are you certain of this, observer (not the 'good news' part, lol)? It seems a little too coincidental that both ok and I (and others) were told our cities weren't being filled in this first round and we didn't get called for an interview, but they began to call our references after the interviews were complete. Did anyone report their references being contacted prior to the Nov-Dec interviews, but they didn't get called for an interview? I am not an insider--really know very little about the process--but I think they must have some system in place that prioritized reference checks for people who were going to be interviewed first. BTW...still waiting for the call to schedule an interview (hopefully in January), but I'm pretty sure they're just busy with the offers going out now and probably won't get around to that until next week at the earliest, possibly after the holidays. It made your interview less of a priority, but the reference process wasn't affected. The timing of your reference checks is coincidental, I think. Mine were done late in the process too, long after I interviewed. And all my cities are apparently off the table.
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Post by ok1956 on Dec 18, 2014 13:16:39 GMT -5
I have to admit that I don't believe in coincidences....and if no one communicates after the list is sent for references to be checked, then how does the contractor know that those who aren't being interviewed in 2014 (i.e. those who are on the cert but been told they will be interviewed after the first of the year) can be done at the end? It would appear that, at a minimum, before the lists were sent someone must have made a decision to prioritize for the contractor - those on certs for cities where hiring is urgent (i.e. this first round on the second set of certs) and those where it is not (those on cities who will not be hired for, for sure, until early 2015. The process just gets curiouser and curiouser as Alice would say.
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Post by sealaw90 on Dec 18, 2014 13:46:43 GMT -5
I don't want to disagree with your theory 'cause I'm a 'glass half full' kind of Jedi, but here's the problem. One candidate who was selected for an interview for a city that is being hired for in January got called for an interview for the first week in December. Unfortunately for them, they were in a trial in the other part of the world and could not get out of it and could not make the interview with SSA. So be it.
Lo and Behold, the contractors were calling their references - for the last 2 weeks. Stupid, no? This person will not be interviewing this go-around. They only made this cert for this one city. Shouldn't someone turn off the contract? No, whoever wrote the statement of work did not contemplate these contingencies.
Based on the various tales being told here, the conclusion I can draw here is this: there is a service contract that was awarded by SSA with a company (or several) to provide background reference check services as part of the hiring process (as opposed to SSBIs or other security clearance checks - a different animal). This contract has been in place for awhile and is nothing new.
Once ODAR sends the emails to all candidates that they are being considered and will be interviewed for an ALJ position, they send a host of attachments for each person to fill out. Once you, as a candidate fill out the past employment history and reference checks form and submit that info to ODAR, it gets sent to the contractor. At that point, your list of references is essentially out of ODAR's hands and in the contractors hands. The contractor must, according to their contract with SSA, being processing your form and start checking your references. There is no vetting. There is no double-checking with the agency. Unless the contract was written in such a way to take care of those contingencies.
Some of you have said you sent in your forms right away and your references were being called a week later, others, it took much longer. I think a week or so later, when the giant mass of forms from the 150 or so remaining candidates hit the contractor, all h*ll broke loose and they couldn't contact references fast enough. That's when things really slowed down, they pulled other contractors off of other contracts to help out, and perhaps at THAT point, SSA gave the contractor a list of ALJ candidates who they had to check references first, then get to everyone else.
That would make the most sense in terms of why references for folks who have not been interviewed yet, either because their city has not come up for consideration just yet, or like my friend, their city came up but they couldn't get to the interview, their references were dropped to the bottom of the pile to be checked now.
The only reason I say all of this is because in my current job I spend 75% of my time doing government contracting, and this is how some government contracts seems to work - contracts are written based on fantasy, then reality hits and we have contort the terms of the contract to get what we need because no one really though reality would actually happen!!
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Post by Propmaster on Dec 18, 2014 15:52:05 GMT -5
Thanks Sealaw90 - that's a useful analysis.
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Post by hondo35 on Dec 19, 2014 9:53:25 GMT -5
Given, Sealaw's explanation, I think we're all saying essentially the same thing. I don't think they necessarily pulled our forms back. They gave all the forms to the contractors, said check them all, but at some point--relatively early, I think-- had to have gone back and said, "if you haven't checked these yet, check them now" which pushed us low priority people to the rear. I can't believe the committee would have left to chance that references they needed for this week's round of hiring had not been called yet.
Neither here nor there...this is all just a mental exercise at this point (and trying to figure out these government hiring practices are mental gymnastics of the highest order.) The process is what it is, and I'll just ride it out to the end!
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Post by moopigsdad on Dec 19, 2014 10:05:15 GMT -5
No, there is no correlation as to when things were checked. Some with low NORs were checked early and some with high NORs were checked late. Others who had a wide open GAL were checked late and some with a single GAL were checked early. There was no rhyme or reason. It was done randomly without any action by SSA to control who was checked when, IMHO.
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