Working side- by- side with the military work force, civilians perform mission- critical functions such as col-lecting and analyzing intelligence information to include foreign aerospace intelligence, interfacing with peers in cabinet level agencies and international dignitaries, and even deploying to worldwide locations in support of contingency operations.
Civilians provide continuity and technical expertise in the rapidly advancing, highly technical field of information operations.
The Agency employs:
The employee must also follow the drug testing policy and may be hired at grade GS- 2 to GS- 5, ranging from high school to college graduate in skills such as computer, intelli-gence and engineering.
Mingled in with their work and training experience, the summer interns are provided mission orientation and other operational briefings, along with cross- feed sessions with the program manager. This gives them an opportunity to get a first-hand look at the intelligence commu-nity "behind- the- scenes." Because of the success of this first summer expo-sure, there are plans to enlarge the program in 1998.
A great deal of the credit for the program's success goes to command-ers, headquarters directors and first-line supervisors for providing inter-esting, meaningful work and guid-ance to these new employees.
Student employees are normally college students enrolled in accred-ited schools who work part- time while attending college and full- time during the summer and holiday breaks — generally performing clerical and other routine office duties. Summer employment is open to all applicants and offers a variety of office and laborer- type work from May through September. It provides a needed supplement when many of our permanent employees are taking their vacations.
Changing missions within AIA has resulted in a high demand for specific professional skills such as electronic engineers and computer scientists.
To meet this constantly growing demand, AIA has increased its allocation for intern positions. Job fairs, college and university recruiting visits are used to acquaint college students with AIA and its role in national security. Flexible compensation authorities are used to further attract and hire these applicants. Selected graduates are assigned to centrally funded positions and normally enter the work force as a GS- 5 or GS- 7, progress through GS- 9 and achieve the target grade of GS- 11 or GS-12 while satisfactorily completing a three- year formal training plan. After training, the intern's organization provides one of its funded billets and the centrally funded billet is used to hire another intern.
The intern program has enjoyed a high degree of success for nearly 20 years by allowing the agency to grow its own professional staff. Though hiring is done by the San Antonio, Texas, office, interns are also placed in positions at Wright- Patterson Air Force Base and Patrick Air Force Base.
well- qualified employees with diver-sified skills and experience and en-hance the quality and broaden the experience of the civilian work force.
The CCMP is managed by a 10- member Career Management Board who are responsible for evaluating and recommending candidates for entry into the program, identifying career development job assignments and nominating employees to Head-quarters U. S. Air Force for long- term training. Assignment opportunities in the CCMP span AIA organizational lines and include designated positions at grades GS- 13 through GS- 15. Occu-pations include the Intelligence Specialist, Computer Specialist, Management/ Program Analyst, Engineering, Physical Science, Operations Research Analyst, Mathematician, Computer
Science and other multidisciplinary positions. Participants may serve one or two, three- year CCMP assignments and are then reintegrated into the work force. They must sign a geographic mobility agreement as a condition for entry into the program. The Civilian Personnel Division developed AIA's Human Resources Development Guide. An agency team with civilian and military representa-tives from all major units was formed to ensure agency involvement and buy- in. In its final stage before distribution to the field, this product serves as a blueprint to guide commanders and supervisors at all levels in man-aging human resources, including a formal mentoring program. This tool is designed to help build human resource goals, objectives and metrics during the strategic planning process. The guide has five simple goals: determine requirements, recruit and hire to match requirements, develop the work force to meet requirements, use resources effectively and take care of the work force. These goals should prompt organizations to develop objectives designed to accomplish each goal within their own unique setting. The addendum to the guide provides our headquarters objectives, or those initiatives with agency- wide impact. One of these initiatives is to establish an agency- wide mentoring program for employees not covered by Air Force PD 36- 34 or Air Force Instruction 36- 3401. The guide is used to build unit- specific strategic plans to ensure units are doing their part to help shape a work force which we can say is the leader in executing information operations. New initiatives are always on the horizon in the Personnel or Human Resources world, especially in this era of downsizing or rightsizing.