Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist

Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Saint Cloud, Minnesota

Salary Range: $116038 - $150852 Per Year

Job Summary: This position is the Facility Communications Officer/Public Affairs Officer (CO/PAO), located in the Office of the Director for the St. Cloud VA Health Care System (STCVAHCS), and directs the facility Office of Communications, which provides public affairs advising and support services to facility staff and leadership; and is the Staff Advisor and Subject Matter Expert for all communications, public affairs, and related issues and functions.

Major Duties:

• Major duties include, but not limited to: Consulting with executive leadership to advise, plan, coordinate, and facilitate effective communications activities, programs, and policies. Developing communication plans and implementation strategies that ensure communications are presented clearly, concisely, persuasively, and systematically in a timely manner. Managing the facility public affairs program. Establishing short and long-term goals and objectives for facility communications and public affairs programs. Responsible for ensuring consistent messaging to Veterans, employees, and the public. Developing and evaluating communication and outreach strategies incorporating a wide variety of media. Responsible for managing facility internet and intranet content, maintaining public websites, email marketing system, and all social media and digital public email marketing systems. Collaborating with subject matter experts (SMEs) to plan communication campaigns. Coordinating news conferences, special media events, press releases, and facilitates feature stories. Establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with members of the media, Congressional and legislative representatives, Veterans Service Organizations, and other specialized groups. Responsible for supervising the facility's Office of Communications staff. Representing the facility in public and private forums and events, including federal, state, and local government agencies, private organizations, educational institutions, and other entities. Performs other related duties as assigned. Work Schedule: Monday thru Friday, 8:00am - 4:30pm Compressed/Flexible: Not Authorized Telework: Not Authorized Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist/PD905710 Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not Approved Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized The VA Midwest Health Care Network advocates for a Whole Health System of care in each of the Medical Centers. This is an approach to healthcare that empowers and equips people to take charge of their health and well-being and live their lives to the fullest. As an employee operating in a Whole Health System of care, you will operate in a model with three core elements, seeking to create a personalized health plan for each Veteran. This is done in the context of healing relationships and healing environments and a connection back to the Veteran's community. This aligns with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Mission Statement to Honor America's Veterans by providing exceptional health care that improves their health and well-being.

Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 05/11/2026. 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 a GS-13 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-12. 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 (1) year (52 weeks) of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-12 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: managing an organization's communication and public affairs program; developing long and short-term goals for a facility communications and public affairs programs; advising executive leadership on cohesive branding and marketing strategies; developing and evaluating communication and outreach strategies; managing a facility's internet and intranet content (i.e. maintenance of public websites, public email marketing, and/or social media and other digital public information platforms); supporting media needs and requests from facility education programs, training and instructional videos, publicity, marketing, and information materials; coordinating conferences, special events, and press releases; establishing and maintaining working relationships with members of the media, congressional and legislative representatives, Veteran Service Organizations and stakeholders; leading or supervising a facility's communications staff setting annual plans to be accomplished, priorities, and prepares work schedules. You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Administration and Management Customer Service Multimedia Technologies Oral Communication Writing 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. Preferred Experience: Strong written and verbal communication skills; Ability to build coalitions with internal and external stakeholders; Knowledge of Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) public relations policy; and/or Knowledge of media relations and congressional liaison. 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: Work is generally sedentary but may require some walking, standing, bending, carrying/traveling with items such as books and portable laptop. Work Environment: The work is usually performed in an office environment, meeting rooms or similar settings. Travel involves the normal risks and discomforts of automobile, bus, rail, or air transportation. 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 05/11/2026 to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12937330. 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/ 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: 2026-05-11