Washington, D.C. - U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Kay Coles James deployed an employment recruitment team to represent OPM at Milwaukee's 2004 Mexican Fiesta Internacional, an event which attracted tens of thousands of Hispanics for a week of cultural and educational events.

"Bringing America's best and brightest into public service is a priority of President George W. Bush, and OPM's continuing recruitment and outreach strategies serve as a vehicle to obtain that goal," stated OPM Director Kay Coles James.

Director James, in her continuing commitment to employ aggressive recruiting efforts and promote employment opportunities for traditionally underrepresented communities, stated "This event presented a perfect opportunity for us to reach out to the citizens of the Midwest and talk about the privilege of serving their country through the federal work force."

The team from OPM met with people one-on-one and showed them where the jobs exist and how to navigate the usajobs.gov website. Workshops on how to apply for federal jobs and student employment also were conducted. In addition to OPM, several other major federal agencies were represented.

Over the past several years, governmentwide data has shown that Hispanic representation in the federal work force has increased in overall representation and, notably, increased as a percentage of new hires. In fiscal year 2003, Hispanic new hires represented nearly 10 percent of all Federal new hires, with the total number of Hispanics in the Federal workforce increasing by nearly 2 percent over fiscal year 2002. OPM has implemented several initiatives to help in its recruitment efforts that include job-information fact sheets in Spanish and an outreach strategy to Hispanic media outlets.

Our mission is to ensure the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce. OPM supports U.S. agencies with personnel services and policy leadership including staffing tools, guidance on labor-management relations and programs to improve work force performance.