Yes, specific to the service, which has been my experience, the Veterans Hiring Act was a good initiative to open up all public service jobs to all veterans—great. But as Keith did, I checked with some of my friends who have been through this process recently and they reported all kinds of frustrations.
One concrete thing I thought of before coming here was that if the HR professionals in the public service had guidance on how to do this transition, that would go a lot more smoothly. All of the policy pieces, except for the one that I've noted, are in place so veterans services recognize we get vacation leave, we get sick leave, and our salary carries over. Those are all good things. The HR clerks in the public service don't know that.
I had to fight with the clerks in my department to get my sick leave granted, and it was delayed by a year and a half because it took that long to transfer my pension from the military pension to the public service pension.
I think that's one thing that would help, if the chief human resources officer produced consolidated guidance to say, “This is how we move people from the military to the public service.”