Washington, D.C. - U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Kay Coles James said today that OPM's USAJOBS website continues to receive significant amounts of interest from federal job seekers and those who are interested in helping Afghanistan and Iraq develop democracies.

"Since its launch on August 4, 2003, the USAJOBS website has had more than 37 million visits, 366 million page views, and 354,107 resumes created and posted to its resume bank," said Director James. "And recently, we added a direct link to the Department of Defense's (DoD) Support Our Friends in Iraq and Afghanistan (SOFIA) website in an effort to help our friends at DoD in their efforts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan."

Two weeks ago, OPM added a link on its USAJOBS website to DoD's SOFIA website. Since that addition, the SOFIA site has attracted nearly 67,000 visits, making it one of the most visited links on the USAJOBS website. The DoD SOFIA link is one way OPM is assisting DoD's efforts to recruit Americans interested in serving their Nation in reconstructing Iraq and Afghanistan.

"At OPM, we're committed to do anything we can to aid in the development of democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan and our teammates at DoD in their reconstruction efforts," said OPM Director Kay Coles James. "The USAJOBS website, with a prominent SOFIA link, will help in the recruitment of America's best and brightest who wish to serve their nation abroad."

During the first two weeks of the collaboration of the OPM and DoD recruitment websites, USAJOBS and SOFIA respectively, outstanding results were seen with an increase of up to four times as many visitors compared to SOFIA's previous weekly averages.

The USAJOBS/SOFIA linkage, designed to leverage the recruiting powers of both websites to fill critical specialized vacancies in Iraq and Afghanistan, became active with a prominent SOFIA link being placed on the USAJOBS website on Monday, February 2. Since its revamp in August, the USAJOBS site has reported over 31 million unique visitors, 37 million visits, and 366 million page views. In addition, individuals created more than 354,000 online resumes. The link connects these job seekers from usajobs.gov to SOFIA, the DoD website established in 2003 to hire exceptional temporary federal employees to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority to assist in the rebuilding of the two developing nations.

The USAJOBS/SOFIA linkage found on www.usajobs.gov is one of many initiatives developed to attract the best and brightest to the federal work force. Part of President Bush's Management Agenda e-Government initiative - Recruitment One-Stop - USAJOBS consolidates federal jobs in one place, allowing users to spend more time applying for jobs rather than just trying to locate them.

Our mission is to ensure the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce. OPM supports U.S. agencies with personnel services and policy leadership including staffing tools, guidance on labor-management relations and programs to improve work force performance.