The Obama administration last week launched a new program to boost veteran hiring at all agencies. The plan calls for setting up new teams at each department to promote veterans hiring, train hiring staffs on how to better assist vets applying for jobs, and track progress.

Obama officials say there are no specific hiring targets. All the agencies have to show is that more vets are employed by Veterans Day next year.

"It's a very simple metric. ... That is our base and our goal is that every one of those [agency-by-agency veteran employment] numbers increases," a year from now, said federal personnel director John Berry at a Nov. 12 news conference.

The government is already a model employer of veterans: Vets make up about a quarter of its workforce — more than 480,000 employees, according to federal statistics released last week. That far exceeds the civilian workforce of which only 8 percent is made up of vets.

Still, some agencies have particularly poor records of hiring veterans and will be more challenged than others to increase their numbers. At the National Science Foundation, for example, only 4.5 percent of the workforce is made up of veterans. At the Agency for International Development, only 6.3 percent. At the Health and Human Services Department, only 6.3 percent. At the Environmental Protection Agency, only 7 percent, and at the Education Department, only 7.5 percent.

John Wilson, an assistant national legislative director at Disabled American Veterans, said he thinks veterans hiring is low at some agencies because managers aren't aware of existing hiring tools, such as the ability to bypass competitive hiring rules and make direct job offers to veterans who are 30 percent or more disabled.

He said the government's complex hiring system could be the main barrier to increasing the number of veteran hires. "You apply for a job — that takes several months — then it takes four to six months after that to learn whether or not you've been hired," he said. Without overall hiring reforms, Wilson said he's not "optimistic that we're going to have any significant change."

Still, Wilson applauded the administration's focus on increasing veterans hiring. He said the focus should be on those agencies with comparably low veterans hiring levels and on increasing outreach to disabled veterans, where hiring rates remain low.

To help agencies along, President Barack Obama last week signed an executive order creating a new program called the Veterans Employment Initiative. It requires agencies to:

• Develop a plan to promote employment opportunities for veterans.

• Establish a Veterans Employment Program Office to develop and carry out the plan within 120 days of the order.

• Provide annual training for human resources managers to ensure they're giving veterans preference and are exercising special hiring authorities for veterans.

To oversee the initiative, Obama also established an interagency Council on Veterans Employment led by the Labor and Veterans Affairs departments and the Office of Personnel Management. The council will:

•Coordinate governmentwide recruitment and training to increase the number of veterans agencies employ.

•Serve as a forum for promoting employment opportunities to veterans.

• Establish ways to measure the effectiveness of the initiative.

The existing veterans preferences provide former service members extra points on their federal employment applications, boosting their chances of being hired. "The past system was based on … ‘Here is your five points, here is your 10 points. Good luck,'" Berry said. "That was quite frankly, in my opinion, not enough."

In September, the Labor Department reported that 11.3 percent of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are unemployed, higher than the 10 percent jobless rate nationwide.

Men and women returning from Iraq "have the highest unemployment rate ever of any veterans group and community," Berry said. "We need to go above and beyond not only for them but for all vets, but this program will begin … with a heavy focus and emphasis on those folks returning right now into this environment."

The new executive order preserves all existing preference programs and sets up new Veterans Employment Program Offices — at every agency and OPM. These staffs will act as headhunters: asking veterans what their interests, skills and long-term goals are; then, helping them navigate the federal hiring process to find appropriate jobs, Berry said.

These offices will broaden the network of assistance available to veterans through the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) run by the Defense, Veterans Affairs, Transportation and Labor departments, said Ray Jefferson, assistant Labor secretary for Veterans Employment and Training Services. TAP provides résumé building and other career development services to help veterans and retiring service members translate their military skills to civilian jobs in the public and private sectors.

Under the new Veterans Employment Initiative, TAP will not only provide assistance to service members, but also train human resource professionals and employment counselors on the federal hiring process, veterans preferences and streamlined hiring authorities, Jefferson said.

When exercising the streamlined hiring authorities, agencies must adhere to merit hiring principles in determining the best qualified candidate for a job, Berry said.

The Homeland Security Department is ahead of the game in carrying out the Veterans Employment Initiative, Berry said.

Homeland Security has efforts underway to grow its veteran ranks from 46,000 to 50,000 by 2012, said Jeffrey Neal, the department's chief human capital officer. The department also hired a full-time veterans employment coordinator and has plans to hire another full-time coordinator at headquarters and three full-time coordinators to manage veterans hiring at its three largest components, Neal said.

Veterans are ideal job candidates for Homeland Security positions because they've already proven they're capable of handling complex security tasks in their military careers, Neal said. In addition, many recently discharged service members have security clearances, which are key for Homeland Security jobs, Neal said. And they can be hired quickly through myriad streamlined hiring authorities, such as preferential hiring for service disabled veterans, he said.

"There are not a lot of excuses not to hire a veteran," Neal said.

Although DHS has taken many of the actions outlined in the Nov. 9 executive order, Neal said the order is an important document that will further highlight the importance of hiring veterans at DHS.

"When you have the president of the United States saying, ‘I want something done,' and the secretary of Homeland Security saying, ‘I want something done,' the people in leadership positions in the department … are going to listen to those leaders and do what they're asked to do," Neal said.