Overcoming Spouse Career Gaps 2026

The new policy also advised the department's hiring supervisors to prioritize military spouses for noncompetitive visits before thinking about candidates without hiring preference when hiring for roles in the competitive and the excepted service. For instance, Department of Defense Education Activity schools will now be enabled to work with military spouses as quickly as they get official change of station orders rather of waiting until 1 month before their relocation.

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"The proof remains in the pudding, it's always how they select to implement. They can make all the recommendations they desire, but unless they follow through, unless they track it, it doesn't actually have any teeth. It's going to have to be among those wait and see kind of things," Hoppin told Federal News Network.

Anything that's going to assist assist in quicker working with and less wait time is an excellent thing. It's going to all go back to how successfully they implement things," she added. And the policy's emphasis on authorizing alternative worksites may be restricted in practice, depending upon the types of functions offered to military spouses.

I think everything depends on what kind of jobs they're going to push military spouses toward, due to the fact that if they are class tasks or jobs that require you to be on site, then I do not know how that's going to help with the versatility part," Hoppin said. The memo, nevertheless, introduces a new reporting requirement that could, for the very first time, shed light on how often military spouses are thought about and chosen for jobs and why they are passed over.

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Hoppin stated the department needs to not miss out on the chance to gather more granular information, such as the number of positions provide alternative work versatilities, warning that otherwise the gathered data may not inform the complete story. "The feedback we get from military partners is we would love to see more remote work opportunities or hybrid opportunities.

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"I don't understand of a time when we have actually really had this strict reporting requirement so I believe that's heartening I hope we do not remain top line questioning. I hope that they dig a little bit much deeper and ask to report more in depth about why military spouses weren't hired and what the challenges were.

As part of this push to work with more military spouses, the department also wants hiring supervisors to make higher usage of an existing database of military spouse candidates through the Military Spouse Education and Career Opportunities site. Company talent management groups will provide working with managers with access to and training on the MySECO system.

"Military spouses first of all, need to understand about the resource. They need to know that they're supposed to sign up. They need to understand to keep their info updated. As a military spouse, you might put your info in there as soon as, however by the time you go back to it, you may have moved two or 3 times and the info might be unimportant so it's going to need a strong marketing push," Hoppin said.

The success of the policy, Hoppin stated, will depend on how efficiently the department brings several groups on board at the exact same time. Military partners will require to know what resources are readily available to them, while working with managers will need training on brand-new hiring mechanisms and how to utilize those systems to determine prospects.

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Plus, the policy is restricted to DoD it would need to be scaled across the federal government to drive meaningful modification. "I believe it's an excellent start, however it's still one company and one effort. I also do not believe that we're going to have the ability to minimize that military spouse joblessness rate unless we look at the retention problems," Hoppin stated.

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