Social Security Atlanta Presidential Management Fellows Program

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is one of the most recognized public and social service agencies in the world. SSA employees strive to provide a very noble service--to promote and guarantee the economic security of millions of disabled, retired, and dependent beneficiaries.

The Atlanta Region is the largest of 10 regions and encompasses eight southern states, including Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Georgia. Each month, we pay over 10 million beneficiaries and nearly 7 billion dollars in benefits. And as the largest region in the nation, we are responsible for performing 25% of all the nation's Social Security workload and are often involved in high profile national pilots, initiatives, conferences, meetings, and visits by high-level agency officials.

In the Atlanta Region of the Social Security Administration (SSA), our Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program is structured so as to provide interns with maximum exposure to the administration's local, regional, and national issues, initiatives, and leadership as much as possible.

To facilitate this concept, we have designed the program so that our interns will be performing their two-year internship in the metropolitan Atlanta area. Being stationed in the metropolitan Atlanta area during the intensive two-year internship allows interns easy access to the Atlanta Regional Office of SSA, where Executive Staff meetings, special conferences, training sessions and meetings with SSA leadership are held.

After PMFs complete their internships, they must be mobile in order to be placed in an SSA field office where their skills, and talents are most needed and where they will gain experiences that will contribute to their career growth. Prior to the end of the internship, regional management determines the PMFs' geographical interests and balances their interests with the needs of SSA to find the best location for placement, within the eight states in our region.

PMFs embark on a 2-year internship that includes developmental, rotational assignments and which provide experience in applying skills and previous academic background to agency management issues.

Work assignments are individually tailored to prepare the GS-09 Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) to satisfactorily perform at the GS-12 target position level. Therefore, their assignments are designed to broaden their knowledge of programs administered and managed by SSA and to improve their management skills in the operational environment. Assignments are individually planned to ensure progressively more independence, responsibility and accountability. Work assignments also require increasingly greater initiative, completed staff work and greater complexity in problem analysis.

Developmental work assignments are individually tailored to ensure PMFs achieve the following objectives:

To understand the role of the public manager in the American constitutional system;
To assist creativity and risk-taking in problem solving;
To foster sensitive, responsive, and effective leadership, managerial, and executive competencies;
To operate effectively as a career manager in a political environment; and
To encourage a commitment to personal, and professional development, adaptability and continued learning.

PMFs will participate in selected orientation sessions, seminars and training programs as required by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and SSA, or as recommended by his or her selected mentor, supervisor, or PMF program coordinator. PMFs will find the training sessions beneficial for both learning and networking with PMFs all over the nation both at SSA and other federal agencies.

During the course of the internship, PMFs will have various assignment supervisors who will monitor their progress in a particular developmental assignment. For example, if a PMF performs a Claims Representative assignment in a field office (FO), the FO manager or Operations Supervisor is considered the assignment supervisor and will evaluate the PMF's progress in the assignment.

After PMFs successfully complete their internships, they will be converted to their post-internship assignment--a career conditional/career permanent assignment, the Management Support Specialist (MSS) position, wherein the PMF will:

Assist Field Office managers by preparing analytical reports.
Research data for use in a variety of meetings, office visits and other functions.
Evaluate administrative training needs of field office staff.
Prepare and provide training.
Coordinate recruitment efforts and develop orientation for new employees.
Plan, develop and monitor activities in support of SSA public service initiatives.
Coordinate labor relations activities.
Conduct periodic reviews of administrative, operations and remittance processes.
Serve as a liaison with the Regional Security Officer, integrity staff, Office of Inspector General and central office on suspected fraud cases; and, as directed.
Handle key technical and operational contacts in and out-of office with representatives of significant organizations and agencies.

We welcome you to interview with us. To schedule an interview, please contact PMF Coordinator, Jan Keith at 404-562-1391 or at jan.keith@ssa.gov .

For formal eligibility requirements for the PMF Program, please visit the Office of Personnel Management's web site at www.pmf.opm.gov.


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