If you want to work in healthcare for the federal government, look no further than the Minneapolis VA Medical Center.
The hospital and clinics, housed in a sprawling building in Minneapolis and in nine outside clinics in Minnesota and western Wisconsin, employ more than 3,000 workers. Most patients are veterans of the Vietnam War and the Korean conflict, as well as peacetime veterans and newly returned vets from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The medical center is hiring for several positions, including medical support assistants, medical technologists, medical/surgical technicians, nurses, occupational therapists, physicians, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, psychologists and social workers, according to Kathy Besser, supervisory human resources specialist at the Minneapolis VA.
Most of the VA's nursing staff of 950 is located on campus. Nurses also work with veterans' groups in the community, in research and in home care, according to Pamela Snyder, a nurse recruiter.
Competitive salaries
"We do a survey of the local area here and we try to compete with what they're getting (paid) in private industry," Besser says. VA employees receive federal government health and life insurance benefits, and retirement benefits if they are permanent employees. Lower-income workers with children up to age 13, or disabled and under 18, may qualify for a child-care subsidy.
Go to jobsearch.usajobs.gov, where you can search jobs by location, job category, salary range, pay grade and keyword. Tips on searching keywords are available at jobsearch.usajobs.gov. Job seekers may also select a more refined search from the specialty search options.
Hiring advantages
