ANSBACH, Germany - In coordination with U.S. Army in Europe-Africa (USAREUR-AF) G1, USAG Ansbach was able to advertise six critical Directorate of Public Works (DPW) positions on StepStone.com for a technically skilled local national candidate pool.
Lynn Daniels, director of Public Works for USAG Ansbach, was excited about the new approach to find skilled technical staff through a public digital platform, “it is extremely difficult to find new team members here at DPW. The German labor market is very competitive, and quite frankly, well-educated, skilled engineering staff is in very high demand on the economy.”
She further explains, “to find a candidate with the required skill set and the needed language level in this area of Germany is extremely hard.”
StepStone is a European online job portal, founded in 1996. USAREUR-AF selected this commercial job site in a pilot project to announce local national vacancies on a professional, easily accessible public portal. The goal is to advertise vacancies on a commercial digital venue to attract qualified candidates as well as to market the U.S. Army in Germany as an employer to the non-U.S. workforce.
The StepStone project is still ongoing, but a first analysis by the Directorate of Human Resources shows following results:
There were a total of 2,989 views on the site, of which 286 viewers showed interest and 98 candidates submitted resumes in StepStone. Consequently, 44 candidate resumes were forwarded to DPW and 16 candidates were contacted and encouraged to start the application process through the U.S. Army Civilian Human Resources Agency (CHRA).
Katja Baisch, human resources specialist at USAREUR-AF, facilitates the internet presence in coordination with Uwe Wagner, workforce development specialist at USAG Ansbach.
Wagner believes that “if we can continue this program and possibly expand it to more positions, it may prove itself to be very successful. The down side is the cost of the program and the remaining requirement for a CHRA-E application process, which can take a long time.”
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