At Tidewater Community College, federal police officers, firefighters and other first responders interviewed applicants throughout the morning and afternoon on Wednesday.
“They get to speak with the actual hiring managers from the installations,” said Melanie Hall, who is in charge of hiring for the Navy Mid-Atlantic Region.”If the hiring managers want to hire them, they let us know we work with the HR piece, and they actually get a job offer before they leave.”
Hall said she has heard about President Donald Trump’s freeze put in place for hiring federal workers, but the Navy hasn’t told her to stop making job offers.
“We haven't had any implementation guidance, and so we don't know what's going to be going forward,” Hall said. “We are continuing with the direction we've been given.”
The Trump administration declared a 90-day freeze on federal hiring in one of the President’s executive orders signed on his first day in office. Since the order took effect, the Defense Department announced it will continue to hire civilian workers.
The freeze is not across the board. Other federal agencies have rescinded hiring offers as they await further guidance, including the Internal Revenue Service.
The acting administrator of the Department of Veterans Affairs announced that 300,000 positions would be exempt from the freeze, which is nearly two-thirds of the department's total workforce.
LaQuan Sutton is a former corrections officer who hoped to get a job in security at one of the local bases. He drove two hours to Portsmouth and he said he was worried the hiring fair might be called off.
“I mean, it comes with the territory, because it does happen all over,” he said. ”It is all about preparing yourself.”
Navy Mid-Atlantic Region covers an area from Virginia to Maine west to Indiana. Barring a change in policy, the hiring fairs happen roughly once every two months, Hall said.
