The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently announced that 31 percent of new executive branch employees hired in fiscal year 2013 were veterans, marking the fifth consecutive year that the veteran hiring rate has increased. In making this announcement, OPM highlighted how the 2013 fiscal year rate represented the “highest percentage of military veterans [hired by the executive branch] since 1974.” It is important for federal managers to be cognizant of that fact that many veterans in this current wave of new hires will be grappling with a condition that technically did not exist when that older wave rose in…

From a career advancement standpoint, sometimes one of the most important things a federal employee can do is have lunch with another federal employee. Of course, I’m not suggesting a promotion can hinge on a roast beef sandwich on rye. I’m talking about professional networking. In fact, a 2009 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that “networking behaviors can contribute to differential salary growth over time” and “[i]ndividuals who engage in networking behaviors are more satisfied with their careers.” Unfortunately, some federal employees, especially women, are missing out on various networking opportunities. They are not getting…

“I know it when I see it.” That was what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in the 1964 case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, when he declined to provide a definition for a type of sexually obscene film that is not constitutionally protected. Stewart’s justification underscores how certain materials or practices can seemingly escape adequate description and how their identification is largely a subjective matter. A recently-released Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) report on perceptions of favoritism makes clear that many federal employees are applying Stewart’s I-know-it-when-I-see-it standard to this prohibited personnel practice (PPP). The MSPB report shows just…

Putting a price tag on pain and suffering is an unpleasant task, and it was one I fortunately did not have to do very often while serving as the chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). On those not-so-common occasions where the MSPB heard a so-called “mixed case,” which touched on both discrimination and adverse action issues, statute allows the Board to consider awarding compensatory damages to appellants who proved they were victims of certain types of intentional discrimination for “emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and other nonpecuniary [i.e., non-monetary] losses.” I always…

These days, private sector employers want more information about job candidates, aside from what has been provided through normal channels, such as résumés. A 2012 CareerBuilder survey found that almost two out of five employers researched job candidates on social networking sites. While this independently-obtained, unrebutted information is generally considered fair game in the realm of private sector recruitment, it can be unlawful in the federal civil service. At the Merit Systems Protection Board, this type of information is referred to as an “ex parte” (i.e., one-sided) communication. Federal employees have a constitutional right to be notified of the reasons…

Last month marked the four-year anniversary of my departure from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which I chaired from December 2003 to November 2009. My tenure on the Board, which began with my appointment from President George W. Bush, remains a high point in my legal career. Without question, my path to the chairman’s seat of this independent quasi-judicial agency was anything but traditional. I grew up in a simple household in Trinidad and Tobago. Before coming to America to pursue a career in law, I was actually a newspaper reporter in Port of Spain. Although I am…