8 Career Paths That Work: MyCareer@VA

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

As with most human capital initiatives, career development is difficult to define because so many drivers influence human behavior. When looking for a new job, a person might ask himself questions like: “What jobs match my skills?” “Where do I want to live?” “What type of organization do I want to be a part of?” “How much will I get paid?” In thinking about a career, which is the compilation of a series of jobs, an individual’s questions become more numerous and complex. Figuring out how and where to find answers can be daunting, especially in an organization that has over 300,000 employees operating in more than 1,400 offices across the United States.

That is the challenge the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) faced. The second largest of the 15 cabinet departments, VA operates nationwide programs for health care, financial assistance, and burial benefits to U.S. veterans. VA has the responsibility and the honor to fulfill President Lincoln’s promise, “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.” With more than 1,600 distinct job titles in occupations ranging from registered nurse to cemetery caretaker to financial management specialist, VA needed to offer career development tools and resources that would meet the unique needs of diverse populations. Rather than pursue a singular career development solution, VA wanted to empower employees to take their career development into their own hands, define their own path, and make thoughtful, informed career choices. The successful end result of VA’s endeavor is MyCareer@VA.

There wasn’t one single “aha” moment when the idea of MyCareer@VA was conceived. The organization’s long-term strategy, leadership’s driving vision, and employee feedback all culminated in VA’s laser focus on career development. First, VA recognized that the anticipated growth in the veteran population would mean greater demands on the department and its employees. During testimony before the House Armed Services and Veterans Affairs Committees in July 2012, Secretary Eric K. Shinseki stated, “Our history suggests that VA’s requirements will continue growing for a decade or more after the operational missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are ended. Over the next five years, there is the potential for one million serving men and women to either leave military service or demobilize from active duty. The newest of our nation’s Veterans are relying on VA at unprecedented levels. Most recent data indicate that, of the approximately 1.4 million Veterans who returned from deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, roughly 67 percent are using some VA benefit or service.”

VA undertook an ambitious plan to improve the service it provides to our nation’s veterans by attracting, developing, and retraining its employees. Through the Transformation 21 Initiative, Secretary Shinseki challenged the department to become more people-centric, results-driven, and forward-looking. In VA’s FY2010 strategic plan, Secretary Shinseki clearly identified the need for effective talent management as a top priority: “Together, VA employees will build a first-rate Department, committed to strategic human capital management including the attraction, deployment, retention, and development of our people. We will create a culture and an expectation of continual improvement in cost, productivity, response times, and firsttime quality. At the heart of our organizational effort will lie the training and development of our people, so that they, in turn, can better serve Veterans. We will work to improve the management systems that enable top performance.”

Another significant driver behind MyCareer@VA was the senior leaders at Veterans Affairs Learning University (VALU), who had a vision to take career development at VA to an entirely different level. Recognizing that many VA leaders are veterans themselves, they wanted to emulate the way the military provides soldiers clear guidance on what they need to do and how they need to do it effectively to move forward. The leaders’ vision, at its core, was to provide current and future VA employees all that they need to explore career opportunities within the department.

The final driver that led to MyCareer@VA was employee opinion survey results indicating that VA employees were unsure of the career opportunities within VA and unclear on how to advance in the organization (Table 8-1). This feedback from employees got the attention of VA leadership, who realized that the organization needed to develop an easy-to-understand and integrated approach to career development.

Table 8-1. Federal Viewpoint Survey Data (2010)

The MyCareer@VA Experience

The “why” behind the creation of a comprehensive career development system for VA is clear and compelling. So what exactly was the solution? MyCareer@VA (http://MyCareerAtVA.VA.gov) is an online resource that offers current and potential employees a one-stop shop for career planning and exploration at VA. The portal provides easy, centralized access to career development programs and resources from across the department.

MyCareer@VA is innovative because it provides users with what they need when they need it. The purpose is to provide current and potential employees enough information to get them started and a framework to guide them on their journey. Recognizing that one size does not fit all in career development, the team focused on developing a program and supporting tools that can be individualized. Also, MyCareer@VA challenged the notion that career development is solely about upward mobility. The MyCareer@VA program team decided to emphasize knowledge- and skill-building rather than simply getting that next promotion. The portal shows employees how they can build and expand their capabilities anywhere and anytime. Users find guidance on the career planning process and tools (e.g., career fit tool, career mapping tool, occupational family career guides) to help them make informed decisions about their career path.

The career planning process consists of four major steps. In the first step, individuals assess themselves (e.g., strengths, interests, qualifications) to gauge their starting point. Second, individuals examine the environment around them in terms of career opportunities at VA. Once they identify the careers that are most appealing to them, they are encouraged to develop a plan to get from where they are to where they want to be. Last, they may implement their plan through training and developmental experiences that will better equip them to take the next step in their career. Within the site, users can access the MyCareer@VA workbook to document and track progress toward their goals (Figure 8-1).

The career fit tool allows users to see what careers fit their personal preferences through a better understanding of themselves and the jobs they might enjoy at VA. After taking a short survey on their work interests and the type of job environment they prefer, users immediately see their tailored results in the form of a rank-ordered list of careers that fit their preferences. “Work interests” refers to the types of work activities that appeal to them, such as interacting with people, thinking of new ideas, or working with their hands. “Work environment” refers to the setting in which they like to work, such as inside or outside, in a competitive or supportive environment, or in an environment with a little or a lot of time pressure.

FIGURE 8-1 MyCareer@VA Workbook

A key capability of the portal is a robust career mapping tool, which allows users to explore career possibilities by either selecting a career path within their current occupation or exploring other occupations (Figure 8-2). The tool provides users guidance on how to progress from their current position to their desired position through recommended training and education to position themselves as a qualified candidate. A unique and especially helpful feature is the real-time job feed, which allows users to apply directly from the site to active job openings within VA. Since this tool is housed on the internet, potential VA employees are also able to take advantage of the resources, identifying VA jobs in which they may be interested through instant access to active vacancy announcements. They can then apply immediately via MyCareer@VA.

FIGURE 8-2 MyCareer@VA Career Mapping Tool

An additional feature of MyCareer@VA is the career guides, which provide a wealth of information, data, and statistics about each occupation. The guides include recommended developmental experiences that a current or potential employee may explore to prepare for a new career. They also provide information on position distributions across the country, recommended professional association affiliations, and specific job requirements. Users can learn how to develop their knowledge, broaden their skills, and expand their experiences to put their plan into action.

Successful Strategies

MyCareer@VA was more than a year in the making before it launched in October 2011. VALU was charged with designing, developing, and implementing the comprehensive career development portal. With buy-in from senior leadership, VALU set out to build the system in a highly inclusive and collaborative manner, leveraging the best of what already existed and building new elements to fill gaps. Despite numerous challenges, this innovative and far-reaching effort succeeded by taking several approaches:

• Getting buy-in from across the organization

• Maximizing and integrating available resources

• Never losing sight of the bigger picture for the organization.

Getting Buy-in

One of VALU’s first steps was to gain leadership and stakeholder buy-in for this initiative. A challenge for VALU was that it was a new organization without a past performance track record of managing an endeavor of this magnitude. Understandably, VA’s leaders asked a lot of tough questions and were cautious with their support; they wanted to be absolutely sure that the project outcome would meet the career development needs of the organization and employees. They understood the need to build a more effective workforce, but they had to be convinced that MyCareer@VA was the way to go and would be able to achieve this result. Furthermore, they wanted to be certain that VALU would be able to steward the project effectively from beginning to end.

VALU understood that MyCareer@VA would succeed only with deep and widespread support from every area in VA. Stakeholder buy-in was viewed not as a check-the-box exercise, but as an opportunity to get meaningful input to develop an optimal end product. That meant really understanding the concerns of critics and adjusting course to incorporate their feedback. In addition, expectations had to be carefully managed; the biggest MyCareer@VA fans offered valuable ideas and wanted the program to go even further.

The VALU MyCareer@VA team spent countless hours sharing the concept with stakeholders all across VA and promoting the benefits to the VA workforce. For example, well before the live portal had been developed, the MyCareer@VA team developed mock-ups of pages to show the “look and feel” and flow of the portal. Although the data hadn’t been finalized and the ultimate structure hadn’t been determined, the mock-ups provided stakeholders with something tangible to which they could react and provide specific input. They could literally see the tool’s anticipated capabilities and how it would appear. The project progressed rapidly, and the MyCareer@VA team regularly looped back to interested parties to let them know that they had been heard and what was changed as a result.

Another successful tactic was gathering feedback from employees on the prototypes and content being collected. VALU’s goal was not just to tell employees about the project, but also to provide them as full an experience as possible to mirror what it would be like to use the site. During the demonstrations, employees were invited to articulate their concerns and recommendations. The team recognized that candor was the only way to make absolutely sure that program resources would be dedicated to the highest career development priorities of VA employees rather than the “nice-to-have” features that added little value. Before the site launched, close to 100 demonstrations were conducted for a wide variety of audiences across VA. Every demonstration added to the MyCareer@VA team’s knowledge of how employees would use this portal and what information would be most beneficial to them. When this feedback was shared with VALU’s stakeholders, leaders were pleased to hear about how excited employees were about the future portal. The positive “buzz” had begun to spread, and with it came high expectations for what MyCareer@VA would deliver.

In addition to approaching diverse stakeholder and employee populations, it was essential for VALU to identify key influencers who saw real potential in the MyCareer@VA concept and could engage the right people in the most critical project activities. With a population of over 330,000 employees, it was neither feasible nor practical to put out a general call for volunteers. The MyCareer@VA project team needed specifically skilled individuals such as occupational subject matter experts to review and approve the job data in the tools, discerning employees to provide detailed feedback on iterations of the portal content and tools, and highly enthusiastic employees to attend launch events and participate in training. These key influencers, or “early adopters” of the MyCareer@VA concept, were essential in creating partnerships between the MyCareer@VA project team and offices and facilities across VA.

Maximizing and Integrating Resources

Before setting out to design anything for MyCareer@VA, VALU’s first goal was to make sure that the team understood and accounted for the wealth of existing resources related to career development, especially in online environments, and any VA-specific tools and resources. This meant extensive data-gathering from VA contacts, reports, articles, books, databases, and websites. The team reviewed all information about online options for the development and achievement of career development goals. Even information that gave the team ideas about what not to do was useful in the idea-generation process.

VALU was well aware that many initiatives that were complete or in development at VA would support or inform MyCareer@ VA. Specifically, some efforts were underway that focused on development in a specific occupation; the MyCareer@VA portal would leverage and integrate this relevant information. For example, if an occupation had already developed a competency model, the project team considered that the starting point for its efforts. In most cases, these different initiatives used different methodologies and included different information; VALU developed solutions that would account for all these unique situations. For example, when many pieces of information described a job within a career (e.g., knowledge needed, education/experience requirements, training and development opportunities), the MyCareer@VA project team created rules for how to handle this information as well as how to gather new information. This ensured standardized information across the portal while effectively leveraging all previous work.

VALU made a conscious decision early on to gather as much information as possible about VA occupations from other souces. The occupations (e.g., nursing, finance, human resources) weren’t unique to VA and substantial external research had already been done. External resources such as the Department of Labor’s occupational information network (O*NET), OPM’s qualification standards, and ERIC’s electronic dictionary of occupational titles were used to define the occupations broadly. Then, VALU used VA-specific information to begin tailoring the draft VA occupational materials. The best source of information was historical vacancy announcements. The MyCareer@VA project team compiled three years’ worth of vacancy announcements, which highlighted the functions performed by job title. All these pieces of information helped the team form a broad understanding of how various occupations contributed to the overall mission of the organization.

Understanding the Bigger Picture

MyCareer@VA was one of many concurrent projects that shared Secretary Shinseki’s strategic imperative for VA to become more people-centric, results-driven, and forward-looking. VALU quickly realized that building connections between MyCareer@ VA and these other important endeavors was critical. Skipping this essential step could potentially lead to redundancies, mixed messages to employees, and less than optimal use of precious resources.

It is human nature to want to be perceived as in control and confident. But when implementing a new, far-reaching program within a complex organization, it is impossible to be in control and confident at every step of the process. VALU’s MyCareer@ VA team made a conscious decision at its inception to make their processes and project transparent to others. By widely and proactively communicating with other VA initiatives, VALU allowed others to poke holes in MyCareer@VA—and they did; the openness allowed the team to gather different perspectives and thereby stay one step ahead of most problems. By consistently sharing status, being up front about concerns, asking for help, and previewing future plans for the project, VALU was able to collaborate with other project teams to identify shared risks and formulate solutions before going too far down a path of no return. On occasion, a point would be raised that VALU simply hadn’t taken into account. Being honest about what the MyCareer@VA team didn’t know and asking for assistance from others outside the team no doubt led to a better quality final product.

MyCareer@VA is one of many IT tools that current and potential future VA employees use. Therefore, it was essential for VALU to fully understand the many internal technology systems that relate to MyCareer@VA and formulate integration strategies. For some systems, it was as straightforward as exchanging content and links to the respective sites. For others, it required understanding the complex contextual and structural nature of the systems to provide a fluid user experience. Across the board, all VA parties shared the goal of making the online experience easy and efficient to the user; many solutions were developed collaboratively. Understanding the goals and vision of the other VA IT systems enabled the VALU team to prepare for changes and future integration.

MyCareer@VA Launch

After more than a year of hard work, focus, and sometimes sheer will, the MyCareer@VA portal was ready to be launched in October 2011. Activities included a press release, a senior leadership press conference, and a series of rollout events in VA facilities around the country. These events included live presentations and interactive demonstrations by the MyCareer@VA team. The sites were chosen based on points of contact established during the development of the site who had become avid champions for the effort. This ensured that events were well attended, maximizing the impact for VA. VALU immediately began hearing from employees who were enthusiastic about the tools and the potential benefits that MyCareer@VA offered.

After the official launch, VALU implemented cost-savings outreach efforts by taking advantage of the social networks that had been developed and the virtual conferencing capability available at VA. To support the continued training of VA employees on MyCareer@VA, VALU implemented an ongoing series of live, interactive virtual training sessions. Numerous VA employees have self-selected to be “super users” and serve as ambassadors for MyCareer@VA at their facilities across the country. These super users support the program by hosting their own MyCareer@VA training events. These in-person facility-based events focus on career development within the context of that particular facility and often integrate the virtual training sessions into the event.

The Final Step: Evaluation

The final challenge was to determine if the site is meeting its goals and how to continue gathering feedback and incorporating improvements and enhancements. VALU developed and implemented a comprehensive evaluation framework to assess both the function and organizational impact of MyCareer@VA. To ensure that the portal provides the best possible career development products, evaluation efforts were conducted throughout the lifecycle of the project. Evaluation measures included:

• User needs analyses. During the initial stages of program design, a series of focus groups was conducted with VA employees to understand career development needs and verify the MyCareer@VA concept and functionality.

• Content validation. As the program and its content were developed, several feedback sessions with VA human resource experts were conducted to ensure the accuracy and usefulness of website content.

• Usability interviews. One-on-one usability interviews were conducted with potential users of the site to evaluate user-friendliness and initial reactions to the program and its tools.

• User focus groups. Upon program launch, several user focus groups were conducted with employees across VA to evaluate usage of and reactions to MyCareer@ VA and all associated tools.

• Experimental evaluation. An experimental study was designed to gauge the personal and professional impact of MyCareer@VA. This effort compared perceptions (e.g., perceived advancement opportunities, job satisfaction) between site users and a control group. A pre- and post- assessment design was used to examine the impact attributed specifically to career development.

• Website usage. Website usage metrics are continuously collected and tracked as part of the evaluation effort, including number of pageviews, unique visits, and time spent on the site (Figure 8-3).

• Website intercept survey. A website intercept survey was conducted to assess real-time reactions from users as they navigated the website. This survey measured the effectiveness of the web portal in meeting users’ career development needs.

• Onboarding and exit process review and integration. As part of the evaluation process, onboarding and interview processes across VA were reviewed. Recommendations were made for adding relevant career development questions to the entrance and exit surveys, allowing ongoing evaluation data for current processes to be collected.

  FIGURE 8-3 MyCareer@VA Cumulative Site Visits

  

• Organizational success metrics. To assess MyCareer@ VA’s impact on overall organizational effectivess, the project team defined, collected, and tracked a range of organizational success metrics. These included employee survey data (e.g., employee viewpoint survey) and human resource metrics (e.g., turnover, promotion rates, applicant data). Continued tracking of these metrics will enable VA to determine the site’s longer term impact on the organization and its strategic objectives.

Initial Results

Based on an initial ROI study conducted by the MyCareer@VA team, VALU has received the following feedback regarding the program:

• MyCareer@VA fills a critically important gap within the larger VA career development framework.

• Users external to VA are more likely to apply for VA career opportunities.

• MyCareer@VA has contributed to improved employee engagement through increased job satisfaction, improved employee-job fit, and increased comfort in taking control of personal career development.

• Increased retention could be a long-term effect of MyCareer@VA as the program increases employee awareness of advancement opportunities and perceptions of organizational support.

• MyCareer@VA plays an essential role in helping VA promote from within and maintain talented employees; costs associated with such retention have decreased.

• The site helps veterans and other external applicants overcome the complexity of the VA job structure and application process through transparency of job requirements and easily digestible resources.

MyCareer@VA was designed to provide career development options to VA employees by leveraging 21st century technology that is people-centric, results-driven, and forward-looking. This vision, articulated by Secretary Shinseki, led the MyCareer@VA team to create a first-of-its-kind collection of career management resources, programs, and training. The long-term goals and metrics that will demonstrate success of the program include the following:

• Improve engagement

  Improving employee survey trends (e.g., advancement opportunities, job satisfaction, overall view of organization) over time with increased use of website

  Improved attitude about the organization

• Improve retention

  Reduced turnover

  Increased intention to stay at VA

• Improve recruitment

  Increasing job applications

  Better quality of job applicants

  Enhanced quality of internal job movement.

We may not know the full benefits of the site for many years down the road, but VA is clearly at the forefront of guiding and directing career development in new and innovative ways.

MyCareer@VA is a first-of-its-kind career development website. It was developed based on VA’s strategic goals, VA leadership’s vision, and employees’ expressed needs. The portal has been lauded by VA senior leaders and thought leaders across government and has received numerous awards. But most important, VA employees now better understand how they can build and develop the right skills to provide the best service they can for our nation’s veterans.