Department of Veterans Affairs

The Challenge

The VA needed an online tool that would both engage and excite VA employees and potential applicants about the career and development opportunities available within VA, and help employees pursue a successful career within the VA.

The Solution

The FMP team designed a career development website, MyCareer@VA, to serve as a streamlined, online gateway to career planning and development at the Department. We worked with the VA to identify user requirements, design and build the website infrastructure, and develop and launch several interactive integrated career development tools and resources, including:

• A robust Career Mapping Tool that allows users to explore career possibilities, including detailed information about VA job paths
• A Career Fit Tool that helps users to self-identify their work interests and work environment preferences
• A series of Career Guides that provide users with high-level information for each Occupational Family (e.g., HR, IT, Acquisitions)

In addition to the design and development of the website infrastructure and content, FMP designed and launched an extensive campaign to raise awareness of the program and build career development skills among employees and supervisors. Through this, FMP began supporting the change management process which included blended training such as e-training, classroom training, and virtual training, as well as creating tutorial videos for each of the major MyCareer@VA tools.

The Result

The website reached over 1.5 million visitors soon after launch, with over 7 million visits coming from 96 countries all over the world. The project became a key element of the Department’s transformational efforts to improve employee recruitment, retention and engagement, and helped fulfill the Secretary’s vision of becoming more people-centric and improving service to the nation’s veterans and VA’s employees. After implementation, the project was recognized as a Bright Idea award winner by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.