Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist

Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Honolulu, Hawaii

Salary Range: $111119 - $144457 Per Year

Job Summary: This position provides leadership and direction for the Public Affairs program at VA Pacific Islands Health Care System (VAPIHCS) while displaying tact, common sense, diplomacy, initiative, and solid professional judgment. The goal of the position is to increase internal and external awareness of VA programs, services, special events and projects, technologies, personnel, and research accomplishments.

Major Duties:

• The duties related to this position include but are not limited to the following: Supervisory Duties: Plans work to be accomplished by subordinates, sets, and adjusts short-term priorities, and prepares schedules. Assigns work to subordinate employees based on organization priorities and consideration of difficulty and requirements of assignments such that the experience, training, and abilities of staff are effectively utilized to meet organization and customer needs. Balances workload and provides advice, guidance, and direction on a wide range of (insert Area of Responsibility) and administrative issues. Communication: Evaluates information from a variety of sources and provides feedback to senior management on public affairs trends and stakeholder attitudes to assess program effectiveness and make improvements. Serves as agency spokesman for the facility. Handles communication efforts when controversial, high-level issues impact the VA Medical Center, often during crisis and emergency situations. Serves as Public Information Officer under Hospital Incident Command System. Outreach Planning Management: Provides guidance with the direction of all outreach initiatives of the VAPIHCS, offering authoritative advice, and technical expertise concerning health care community outreach strategies for the VAPIHCS. Plans and executes special events, coordinates high profile visits, and supports outreach to veterans not enrolled in the VA health care system. General Administrative: Plans, develops, and produces a variety of materials and publications including print, visual, Web-based, multimedia, and video materials to convey information about the VA to a variety of stakeholders. Develops budgets, writes statements of work, and directs, coordinates, and supervises activities of supporting staff and contractors, if applicable. Prepares responses to reports, surveys, requests for Information and other correspondence required by headquarters, VISN, VACO, regulatory bodies, Medical Affiliates or community organizations. Work Schedule: 7:30am - 4:00pm Telework: This position may be authorized for telework. Telework eligibility will be discussed during the interview process. Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist/PD028450 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, 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. 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-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: designing, organizing, and implementing plans for community and media relations, printing/reproduction, internal and external websites, strategic outreach initiatives, increasing internal and external awareness of VA programs, services, special events and projects, technologies, personnel, and research accomplishments. Establishing and maintaining proactive contacts with media outlets, legislative offices, veteran service organizations, and health care affiliates. You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Communications Communications and Media Customer Service 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: Assignments regularly involve extended periods of walking, standing, bending, and stooping to execute logistics for special events or to accompany media crews or other special groups. Incumbent is also required to regularly pick up loads of 15 pounds such as boxes of newspapers and other literature and to push carts of supplies. 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/12954675. 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 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 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