The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Nunya wrote:Everything Guest said is accurate with the exception of the one-year rule. If you're hired off the street, you have the one year probationary period. However, the hiring authority for SMART specifically states two years (no way around unless your SF messes up and converts you early). On your question, you want to be career/career conditional. That is the "regular" employee pool. The "conditional" merely pertains to things like maintaining a security clearance, or passing drug screenings.

Disregard that last sentence. Career-conditional converts to career after three years of credible service according to OPM regulations. Your time as excepted service would still be considered credible service, so I see no reason why is wouldn't apply.

Everything Guest said is accurate with the exception of the one-year rule. If you're hired off the street, you have the one year probationary period. However, the hiring authority for SMART specifically states two years (no way around unless your SF messes up and converts you early). On your question, you want to be career/career conditional. That is the "regular" employee pool. The "conditional" merely pertains to things like maintaining a security clearance, or passing drug screenings.

I am not HR, so take what I have to say at face value.

Usually you are transitioned after 1 year. It looks that in your case they will wait until you are finished with your SMART commitment to transition you.

Career and career conditional employees are EXCEPTIONALLY hard to terminate. Most new government hires get a 1 year probationary period and when the time comes to transition them to career or career conditional service, the manager is asked "do you wish to retain this employee?" If the manager says no, that's all that's needed to fire the person. If the manager says yes, they are converted and now they're pretty hard to fire.

It appears as though your SF recognizes you have a two year service commitment and that they can delay converting you until that time is over. So your probationary period is longer than a normal hire's would be. This allows them to fire you any time throughout your service commitment and delay any decisions about whether to keep you onboard until the end of your commitment.

This is a simple question to people with experience. I just entered phase two and it went off without a hitch - I was quite fortunate I suppose!!

That being said, my offer letter states that my hire is to fulfill my two year service obligation at which time, I will be converted non competitively to career or career conditional.

That is all great, but do the first two years which serve to fulfill my SMART contract count as years towards getting out of conditional?

Just curious if anyone has thought about this or has had any experience with it. I asked my supervisor and a few people in HR and they seem to think that the two years WILL count, but they did not seem certain and did not list specific examples where they had observed similar cases in the past.