First Hello. New to the forum. Have many friends in ATF and strong desire to come on myself. Currently GL11 with someone else. Been trying for a long long while for ATF. Disturbing what I read here. My name was recently submitted to the "targeted recruitment" in two different divisions. Didn't go anywhere because "I do not currently reside in either district". I had nearly 10 years experience with a state investigative agency where I had extensive experience in dope and violent crimes prior to my current gig.
I will not be posting much of anything on here as i'm not on the inside, and can't contribute as such, but I will keep lurking and reading. Thanks to ya'll on here trying to make the agency a better place.

Captian Who

I can tell you what I know about recruitment. Mr. Melson has directed every Divsion to supply ten minority applicants for consideration. He calls it targeted hiring. Now if you were around in the 90's, you were called to a mandatory meeting with a representative of counsels office. At that meeting you were advised of the outcome of the now famous minority lawsuit. A settlement that continues to effect ATF to this day at untold costs. One of the issues of that lawsuit was the use of Schedule A hiring authority to hire minority agents. It was a clever way to hire agents wihout requiring them to pass the TEA exam. The claim was that being hired as a "Schedule A" stigmatized the agent and that had a negative impat on their career. Now I know the conventional logical response was,had it not been for that hiring process, those agents would not have become agents and could not have sued. All past history, so lets fast forward to the present. Mr Melson proposes to now again target a certain population and hire them as he says, to make ATF a reflection of Amerca. I cannot help but think of that saying, if you do not learn from your mistakes you are destined to repeat them. Mr. Melson also says we have to be more businesslike. I believe that coporate America has learned that the road to success is to hire the best person for a job. Now I will concede that each and every one of the ten names submitted by each Division may be the best people for the job, but how will we know, if we eliminate a large pool of candidates. I ask, is there not a chance of these new hires claiming at some time in the future, that they are stigmatized. Mr Melson, I suggest you take the time to read the settlement documents and learn from our mistakes.