After America's Job Bank: Contractor Options for Compliance After June 30, 2007

Source: Berkshire Associates Inc.

Federal contractors are required to post most open positions with the local employment service as part of their compliance regulations. Since the late 1990s, the OFCCP has allowed federal contractors to use America’s Job Bank (AJB) located at ajb.org, as a clearinghouse to meet this requirement. AJB was one part of the government’s free career resources available at www.careeronestop.org. Utilizing this website allowed covered contractors to post positions at a single location, without maintaining employment agency contacts for each local government office where they have open positions. The 2002 Jobs for Veterans Act changed the reporting requirements, and OFCCP issued proposed regulation updates in January 2006 that reflected changes in the category definitions for covered veterans, an increase in contract dollar amount thresholds, and that contractors will need to post positions with “the appropriate employment service delivery system,” which did not include AJB. In addition, AJB ceased operations as of June 30, 2007, leaving many contractors wondering what they need to do to comply with the requirements after that date.

When the changes were initially released, the contractor community hoped that the Department of Labor would define and implement a clearinghouse service that would aid in compliance with the new regulations. Under the regulations, employers will have to post openings with the local employment service offices or the “appropriate employment service delivery system”. The OFCCP is expected to release a finalized version of the new regulations shortly, and no government sponsored alternative clearinghouse is currently available. In late June, the OFCCP posted a policy update on its website stating that it will not cite contractors “ solely because it [the contractor] has failed to list all of its employment openings with the appropriate employment service delivery system or the appropriate local employment service office, provided that it continues to make good faith efforts to recruit and employ qualified covered veterans.” This policy change will remain in effect until further guidance is issued by the agency.

During audits, the OFCCP states that it will continue to examine the good faith efforts put forth by the contractor to recruit veterans. Specifically, the OFCCP states that contractors are encouraged to post positions with state employment service and are still expected to:

In the meantime, contractors who want to continue to post positions have four options: to post open positions directly with a state employment agency; to manually post positions to a third party site; to subscribe to a third party site, which allows for automatic posting; or to build automatic posting capability using in-house capabilities.

In exploring the manual options, it seems the OFCCP may allow contractors to post with the state employment service where the job is located, rather than the local employment service. While this is helpful in potentially reducing the number of contacts needed, unfortunately, it still represents a burden on large contractors who operate in multiple states. It is possible that the OFCCP may allow an email with links to the open positions on the contractor website to suffice for this notification requirement, but the agency has not yet released any exact advice on this topic. For contractors wishing to explore the manual posting route, a list of links to state employment services is available at http://careeronestop.org/ajbprsjbl.

Alternatively, contractors can explore the possibility of using a third party to update their postings. As of this writing, two providers appear to have the capacity to comply with the posting regulations, the Direct Employers Association and NaviSite. Based on our research, both sites appear to offer free manual posting of single jobs, but automated posting capability will cost contractors upwards of $10,000 - $15,000 per year.

The Direct Employers Association operates www.jobcentral.com, a job board similar to AJB. Also available is VetCentral, which is a branded search engine of the job central site billed as “job preference for veterans”. According to their website, JobCentral uses an indexing process to identify links to jobs on corporate web sites. Job seekers who click on a job title on JobCentral’s search results page are taken directly to the job listing on the company web site. Indexed jobs are included on JobCentral and distributed to the appropriate state workforce agency career sites. Jobs entered as single postings and from member companies are tracked and recorded for compliance as required by the OFCCP.

NaviSite has maintained AJB for several years and has used that experience to create a new site, America’s Job Exchange (AJE, located at www.americasjobexchange.com) that is similar in look and feel to AJB. According to their website, AJE offers a site that will minimize the transition costs and disruption for current users of AJB and attract new users as usability and functionality are improved. AJE is currently working with states, employers, and job seekers to provide a solution which will allow an easy transition for previous users of AJB. The subscription fee will be based on the number of jobs posted, and will be waived for the first year for contractors who register by July 4, 2007.

The final option for very large contractors is to build an in-house technical solution that would peruse the careers section of their website for new postings and automatically feed those listings to the appropriate state websites. This option is probably only realistic for contractors with large IT departments as it will take a significant amount of time and technical expertise to implement.

Berkshire will continue to monitor the tools available to aid contractors with their compliance efforts in this area and will notify our client base if other alternatives become available.