Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist

Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Columbus, Ohio

Salary Range: $77926 - $101309 Per Year

Job Summary: The Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist Position is located within the Vocational Rehabilitation Program under the Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences Service at the Chalmers P. Wylie VA Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. This position requires knowledge, insight, and skills for evaluating and placing individuals with disabilities in supported and competitive employment.

Major Duties:

• ***THIS IS NOT A VIRTUAL POSITION, YOU MUST LIVE WITHIN OR BE WILLING TO RELOCATE WITHIN A COMMUTABLE DISTANCE OF THE DUTY LOCATION*** Major duties include but are not limited to the following: Identifying a broad spectrum of medical, psychological, and neurological problems and their impact on vocational functioning and psychosocial needs. Developing and updating a multidisciplinary treatment plan. Facilitating individual and group job counseling to people with disabilities and other employment challenges. Counseling and guiding employees through difficult transitions or rough spots of adjusting to the new position. Documenting treatment objectives and progression through identified goals and objectives. Providing ongoing support with problem solving, developing interpersonal work relationships, maintaining work performance and quality, and life management activities. Determining areas of vocational interests, training needs, and career development for clients to reach success in obtaining suitable employment. Planning and arranging for the client to study or train for job placements. Creating job plans for patients/clients to help them achieve their employment goals. Serving as liaison between the patient and the employment agency. Observing the client at the placement site and obtaining feedback on performance from the placement site supervisor. Ensuring the program participant is aware of employer expectations and has the skills and support to meet those expectations. Helping the employer understand the nature of the client's limitations while maintaining a positive impression of the client's capability to succeed. Negotiating any work site accommodations that may be needed. Connecting the participant with appropriate resources to facilitate ongoing employment in a community setting. Networking with community employers, agencies, and businesses to develop professional relationships to place participants in suitable community employment. Considering and responding appropriately to the needs, feelings, and capabilities of others and adjusting approaches to suit different people and situations. Understanding the roles and functions of interdisciplinary team members. Performing other related duties as assigned. Work Schedule: Monday - Friday, 8:00am - 4:30pm Recruitment & Relocation Incentives: Not authorized Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not authorized Telework: This position may be authorized for telework. Telework eligibility will be discussed during the interview process.

Qualifications: IN ORDER TO QUALIFY FOR THIS POSITION AT THE GS-11 LEVEL YOU MUST MEET THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA: DRIVER'S LICENSE REQUIREMENT: This position requires a current, valid state-issued driver's license. NOTE: We cannot accept photographs, therefore; please do not submit a copy of your license with your application package. If an interview is requested, you may be required to provide a copy of your current, valid, and unrestricted state-issued driver's license. IN ADDITION TO MEETING THE DRIIVER'S LICENCE REQUIREMENT, TO QUALIFY FOR THIS POSITION AT THE GS-11 GRADE LEVEL, YOU MUST MEET ONE OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA: INDIVIDUAL OCCUPATIONAL REQUIREMENTS & SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE GS-11: You must have at least one (1) full year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade level (GS-9) in the Federal Service that has given you the particular knowledge, skills and abilities required to successfully perform the duties of a Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist and that is typically in or related to the work of the position to be filled. Specialized experience includes: Work that required obtaining and applying occupational information for people with disabilities, knowledge of the interrelationships of the involved professional and specialist services, and skill in employing the methodology and techniques of counseling to motivate and encourage individuals served by the program. Experience that demonstrated knowledge of the vocational rehabilitation problems characteristic of the disabled, including familiarity with available resources and skill in identifying, evaluating, and making effective use of such resources to serve individuals with disabilities; or of the disadvantaged, including knowledge of adjustment problems of the educationally or culturally disadvantaged, familiarity with available adult education and training resources, and ability to recognize problem areas needing special attention. Experience in vocational guidance or teaching in a recognized vocational rehabilitation program or school, developmental or supervisory work in programs of vocational rehabilitation or training programs for the disadvantaged, or personnel or employment placement work that provided extensive knowledge of the training and adjustment requirements necessary to place persons having disabilities or social adjustment problems. NOTE: Experience must be fully documented on your resume and must include job title, duties, month and year start/end dates AND hours worked per week. A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. ~OR~ SUBSTITUTION OF EDUCATION FOR EXPERIENCE GS-11: You must have successfully completed a Ph.D., equivalent doctoral degree, 3 full years of progressively higher-level graduate education leading to such a degree, or an LL.M. with a major study in vocational rehabilitation, vocational or educational counseling, or other fields related to the position. Education must have been obtained from an accredited college or university. NOTE: Transcripts (unofficial or official) must be submitted with your application materials. Education cannot be credited without documentation. ~OR~ COMBINATION OF EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION GS-11: You must have equivalent combinations of successfully completed graduate level education (beyond the second year) and specialized experience, as described above, which may be used to meet total experience requirements for this grade level. The education must have been obtained in an accredited college or university. NOTE: Experience must be fully documented on your resume and must include job title, duties, month and year start/end dates AND hours worked per week. A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. Transcripts (unofficial or official) must be submitted with your application materials. Education cannot be credited without documentation. 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: Please read the entire announcement and all the instructions before you begin an application. To apply for this position, you must complete the initial online application, to include the initial online assessment and submission of the required documentation specified in the Required Documents section above. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (ET) on the closing date of the announcement to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire, click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12912388. The application process is as follows: 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. Answer the questions presented in the application and attach all necessary supporting documentation. Click the Submit Application button prior to 11:59 PM (ET) on the announcement closing date, 03/26/2026. After submitting the online application, you will be notified whether or not you are required to take additional online assessments through the USA Hire Competency Based Assessment system. This message will be delivered to you via email notification. The email may be routed to your "Spam" or "Junk" folder. IMPORTANT: If you are asked to take the USA Hire Competency Based Assessments, you will be presented with a unique URL to access the USA Hire system. Access to USA Hire is granted through your USAJOBS login credentials. Be sure to review all instructions prior to beginning your USA Hire Assessments. Click here for Computer System Requirements. Set aside at least 3 hours to take the USA Hire assessments; however, most applicants complete the assessments in less time. If you need to stop the assessments and continue at a later time, you can re-use the URL sent to you via email and also found in your USAJOBS account under the "Track my application" link for the corresponding application. Your responses to the USA Hire Assessments will be reused for one year (in most cases) from the date you complete an assessment. If future applications you submit require completion of the same assessments, your responses will be automatically reused. Visit the USA Hire Applicant Resource Center for practice assessments and assessment preparation resources at https://support-usahire.opm.gov/hc/en-us. To view the announcement status or your application status: https://help.usajobs.gov/how-to. Your application status page is where you can view your application status, USA Hire assessment completion status, and review your notifications sent by the hiring agency regarding your application. 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.

Application Deadline: 2026-03-26