Secretary (OA)

Secretary (OA)

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): San Diego, California

Salary Range: $70507 - $91664 Per Year

Job Summary: This position is located at the VA San Diego Healthcare System (VASDHS) in the Office of the Director. The incumbent serves as the Executive Secretary to the Director and provides a wide variety of administrative and management support for the work performed in the Office of the Director.

Major Duties:

• Major duties include, but are not limited to: Serves as the Office Manager for the Executive Leadership Office and ensures that the practices and procedures used by secretaries in subordinate offices are consistent with those of the Director's Office. Recommends changes in administrative policies. Devises and installs office procedures and practices to be used by secretaries in subordinate offices. Prepares agenda for and conducts periodic secretarial training sessions for all secretaries to department heads. Responds to inquiries and administrative problems brought to the Director by members of the staff and officials of the agency's central office. Notifies the appropriate staff officials of the need for information or recommendations, and either prepares the response or follows up to ensure a timely response by others. Exercises exclusive control over the Director's appointments, with complete authority for commitments of time. Screens all calls and visitor's answering most questions and completing most business involving established policy or routine matters without referring people to the Director. Coordinates secretarial staff coverage and effectively communicates office operations information and expectations to the entire executive leadership team. Provides public contact support services such as answering the telephone, referring visitors, or providing information about the office, its functions and standard operating procedures, as well as similar information. Refers Veterans' concerns to the Patient Advocate Office and assists services under the Director with general correspondence procedures, reports, requirements and other matters necessary to implement the Director's policies, directives and instructions. Processes incoming and outgoing materials for the Director such as correspondence, reports, memoranda and other forms of written communication. Performs the following types of duties: edits letters and reports, reviews correspondence for accuracy and completeness, prepares presentation outlines and develops form letters. Appropriately uses the computer system and other office automation equipment and processes to accomplish writing, transmitting, receiving and forwarding electronic mail; writing, editing, formatting and printing word processing and spreadsheet documents to meet established timeframes provided by the Director. Serves as a liaison for several high-level councils and committees and is required to prepare agendas, accurately takes and transcribes all taped and handwritten notes and prepares meeting minutes for the Director's signature. Material presented in final form is virtually always free of typing, format, and/or assembly errors. Provides general clerical mail and correspondence services such as preparing a variety of recurring reports, reviewing outgoing correspondence for proper attachments, or consolidating/coordinating submittals of information. Advises the Director and Supervisory Health System Specialist of important office issues arising during the Director's absence, and brings significant items in reports, files and correspondence to the Director and Supervisory Health System Specialist. Independently electronically schedules and maintains appointments, coordinates meetings, V-Tels, VANTS/SKYPE calls (tele-conferences) and/or schedules conferences for the Director. Performs electronic calendar maintenance to ensure appointments are accurate and non-conflicting. Reminds the Director of subject matter prior to the meetings and makes administrative arrangements as required. Attends meetings when required, notes commitments and advise staff of their commitments in order to track actions for compliance. Coordinates all leave with the Secretaries in the Office of the Director to avoid instances of lack of Executive Leadership Office coverage. Serves as a purchase card holder for the Director's Office for supplies and services, which includes purchases and timely reconciliation of purchases. Work Schedule: Monday-Friday, 8:00am-4:30pm Compressed/Flexible: Supervisor's discretion Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Secretary (OA)/PD12825O Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not Approved Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized

Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 03/20/2026. Time-In-Grade Requirement: Applicants who are current Federal employees and have held a GS grade any time in the past 52 weeks must also meet time-in-grade requirements by the closing date of this announcement. For this GS-09 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-08. The grade may have been in any occupation, but must have been held in the Federal service. An SF-50 that shows your time-in-grade eligibility must be submitted with your application materials. If the most recent SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you possess one-year time-in-grade, as required by the announcement. In this instance, you must provide an additional SF-50 that clearly demonstrates one-year time-in-grade. Note: Time-In-Grade requirements also apply to former Federal employees applying for reinstatement as well as current employees applying for Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998 (VEOA) appointment. You may qualify based on your experience as described below: Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade, GS-08, in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: executive-level secretarial support and administrative duties, office coordination and management, public contact work (answering telephones and screening calls, referring visitors, receiving inquiries), processing incoming and outgoing materials such as correspondence, reports, memorandums, and other forms of written communication, electronically scheduling and maintaining appointments, timekeeping, and purchasing office supplies and equipment. You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Budget Administration Customer Service Reading Comprehension Technical Competence 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; religions; spiritual; community; student; social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. Note: A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. Part-time experience will be credited on the basis of time actually spent in appropriate activities. Applicants wishing to receive credit for such experience must indicate clearly the nature of their duties and responsibilities in each position and the number of hours a week spent in such employment. Physical Requirements: This work is sedentary. Typically, the employee may sit comfortably to do the work. However, there may be some walking, standing, bending and carrying of light items like papers or books. No special physical demands are required to perform the work. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.

How to Apply: All applicants are encouraged to apply online. To apply for this position, you must complete the questionnaire and submit the documentation specified in the Required Documents section below. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (ET) on 03/20/2026 to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12907597. To begin, click Apply Online to create a USA JOBS account or log in to your existing account. Follow the prompts to select your USA JOBS resume and/or other supporting documents and complete the occupational questionnaire. Click Submit My Answers to submit your application package. NOTE: It is your responsibility to ensure your responses and appropriate documentation is submitted prior to the closing date. Beginning September 27, 2025, Federal agencies will only accept resumes up to two pages in length to comply with the Merit Hiring Plan. Resumes longer than two pages will result in ineligibility for further consideration for the position. USAJOBS will not allow you to upload or build resumes longer than two pages, and you will need to update the resumes in your profile before applying for a job. Resumes should include information relevant to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies of the position to which you are applying. VA is unable to make assumptions about qualifications if not clearly listed. Resumes must be legible so they can be reviewed for eligibility, minimum qualifications and other position requirements listed in the job announcement. Your resume must be 5MB or less. We recommend saving and uploading your resume as a PDF to maintain formatting and number of pages. We also accept GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, TXT, PDF, ODT or Word (DOC or DOCX). We do not accept PDF portfolio files. We recommend using a sans-serif font size like Lato, if available. Other widely available options are Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Open San Source Sans Pro, Roboto or Noro Sans. Make your page margins 0.5 inches. Consider using 14-point size font for titles and 10-point for the main text in your resume. The resume builder can help you create a resume using these recommendations and uses the information in your USAJOBS profile to help you get started. Helpful Hints for Creating a Two-Page Resume: Prioritize most relevant and recent experience Use concise, results focused language Align language from the job announcement Focus on demonstrating skills and competencies Remove outdated or unrelated experience Use the USAJOBS resume builder Additional guidance on this new requirement and resume building tools can be found at: https://help.usajobs.gov/faq/application/documents/resume/page-limit https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-information/merit-hiring-plan-resources/applicant-guidance-on-the-two-page-resume-limit/ Special Employment Consideration: VA encourages persons with disabilities to apply, including those eligible for hiring under 5 CFR 213.3102(u), Schedule A, Appointment of persons with disabilities [i.e., intellectual disabilities, severe physical disabilities, or psychiatric disabilities], and/or Disabled veterans with a compensable service-connected disability of 30% or more. Contact the Agency Contact for information on how to apply under this appointment authority via the Selective Placement Coordinator. The Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plan (ICTAP) and Career Transition Assistance Plan (CTAP) provide eligible displaced Federal/VA competitive service employees with selection priority over other candidates for competitive service vacancies. To be qualified you must submit appropriate documentation (a copy of the agency notice, your most recent performance rating, and your most recent SF-50 noting current position, grade level, and duty location) and be found well-qualified for this vacancy. To be well-qualified: applicants must possess experience that exceeds the minimum qualifications of the position including all selective factors, and who are proficient in most of the required competencies of the job. Information about ICTAP and CTAP eligibility is on OPM's Career Transition Resources website at http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/workforce-restructuring/employee-guide-to-career-transition/. During the application process you may have an option to opt-in to make your resume available to hiring managers in the agency who have similar positions. Opting in does not impact your application for this announcement, nor does it guarantee further consideration for additional positions.

Application Deadline: 2026-03-20