Human Resources Specialist (Employee Benefits)

The ideal candidate for this position will have experience providing advice and counseling in all aspects of benefits, FEGLI, FEHB, eligibility and billing information due to periods of non-pay/ LWOP and retirement programs directly to FEMA managers, supervisors and full time and intermittent employees.

For specific salary information related to your location, please review the OPM salary tables.

Qualifications:

All qualifications and eligibility requirements must be met by the closing date of the announcement.

To qualify for the Human Resources Specialist (Employee Benefits) at the IC-09 level (starting salary $68, 405), you must possess one full year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the IC-07 level in the Federal government, which has equipped you with the skills needed to successfully perform the duties of the position. Experience may be obtained in the Federal or Private Sector and must demonstrate ALL of the following:

• Providing routine technical advice and assistance to agency employees on a wide variety of benefit questions referring the more complex and involved questions to higher graded staff.

OR

Masters or equivalent graduate degree OR 2 full years of progressively higher-level graduate education leading to such a degree OR LL.B. or J.D., if related

To qualify for this position at the IC-11 level (starting salary $82,764), you must possess one full year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the IC-09 level in the Federal government, which has equipped you with the skills needed to successfully perform the duties of the position. Experience may be obtained in the Federal or Private Sector and must demonstrate ALL of the following:

• Providing routine technical advice and assistance to agency employees on a wide variety of benefit questions referring the more complex and involved questions to higher graded staff.
• Providing technical advice and assistance to employees on the full range of Retirement & Benefits to include CSRS, FERS, TSP, FEGLI and FEHBP.

OR

Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree OR 3 full years of progressively higher-level graduate education leading to such a degree or LL.M., if related

To qualify for this position at the IC-12 level (starting salary $99,200), you must possess one full year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the IC-11 level in the Federal government, which has equipped you with the skills needed to successfully perform the duties of the position. Experience may be obtained in the Federal or Private Sector and must demonstrate ALL of the following:

• Providing routine technical advice and assistance to agency employees on a wide variety of benefit questions referring the more complex and involved questions to higher graded staff.
• Providing technical advice and assistance to employees on the full range of Retirement & Benefits to include CSRS, FERS, TSP, FEGLI and FEHBP.
• Planning, coordinating, implementing and monitoring the full range of Retirement & Benefits to include CSRS, FERS, TSP, FEGLI and FEHBP.

Please read the following important information to ensure we have everything we need to consider your application:

• Do not copy and paste the duties, specialized experience, or occupational assessment questionnaire from this announcement into your resume as that will not be considered a demonstration of your qualifications for this position.
• Please limit your resume to five pages. If more than five pages are submitted, only the first five pages will be reviewed to determine your eligibility and qualifications.
• Your resume serves as the basis for experience related qualification determinations, and you must highlight your most relevant and significant work experience and education (if applicable), as it relates to this job opportunity. Please use your own words, be clear, and specific when describing your work history. We cannot make assumptions regarding your experience.

Are you qualifying based on your work experience?

• Qualifications are based on your ability to demonstrate in your resume that you possess one year of the specialized experience for this announcement at a comparable scope and responsibility. To ensure all of the essential information is in your resume, we encourage you to use the USAJOBS online Resume Builder. If you choose to use your own resume, it must contain the following information organized by experience/position: (1) job title, (2) name of employer, (3) start and end dates of each period of employment (from MM/DD/YY to MM/DD/YY), (4) detailed description of duties performed, accomplishments, and related skills, and (5) hours worked per week (part-time employment will be prorated in crediting experience). Federal experience/positions must also include the occupational series, grade level, and dates in which you held each grade level.
• Are you a current or former FEMA Reservist/DAE employee? To accurately credit your experience from intermittent positions and Reservist Deployments, you must list the dates (from MM/DD/YY to MM/DD/YY) of deployments that are relevant to your qualifying experience, along with the job title and specific duties you were responsible for during each deployment.
• Determining length of General or Specialized Experience is dependent on the above information. Failure to provide the above information in your resume may result in your application being found "not qualified."
• Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional, philanthropic, religious, spiritual, community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills, and provides valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.
• For additional information on crediting experience and/or education, please reference the OPM General Schedule Qualification Standards

Responsibilities:

What will I do in this position if hired?

In this position as the Human Resources Specialist (Employee Benefits), you will serve as a Benefits and Retirement Counselor for the full range of program areas related to the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB), and the Federal Employees Group Life Insurance (FEGLI). Typical assignments include:

• Counseling employees, their survivors and management officials to provide them with accurate and timely information concerning retirement eligibility and benefits.
• Preparing estimates of benefits available under the various retirement systems and combinations (offsets).
• Acting as liaison to health benefits carriers in resolving issues, problems, disputes and discrepancies in coverage.
• Providing routine technical advice and assistance to agency employees on a wide variety of benefits questions including communicating Billing information when employees are in non-pay status/ LWOP and responding to inquiries.

What else do I need to know?

At FEMA, our mission is to help people before, during and after disasters, and every employee at FEMA has a role in emergency management. Every FEMA employee has regular and recurring emergency management responsibilities, though not every position requires routine deployment to disaster sites. All positions are subject to recall around the clock for emergency management operations, which may require irregular work hours, work at locations other than the official duty station, and may include duties other than those specified in the employee's official position description. Travel requirements in support of emergency operations may be extensive in nature (weeks to months), with little advance notice, and may require employees to relocate to emergency sites with physically austere and operationally challenging conditions.

This announcement is for a position as a CORE (Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employee). CORE employees are full-time employees hired to directly support the response and recovery efforts related to disasters. Appointments to CORE positions are typically between two years and four years in duration and may be renewed based upon workload needs and funding availability. Employees are hired under the Robert T. Stafford Act and are excluded from the provisions of title 5, United States Code, governing jobs in the competitive service. They can be hired under a streamlined process instead of a competitive process. After three years of continuous service, Stafford Act employees may be granted competitive eligibility to apply for permanent full-time positions at FEMA.

FEMA is committed to ensuring that its workforce reflects the diversity of the nation.? At FEMA, our workforce includes the many identities, races, ethnicities, backgrounds, abilities, ages, cultures, and beliefs of the people we serve. To learn about FEMA's ongoing diversity and inclusion efforts, reasonable accommodation process, and the FEMA Core Values, please visit www.fema.gov.

Salary : $64,957 - $122,459