SWA Site Outages

By: Lauren Ray

Anything that interrupts recruitment can be a headache. Our team does their best to lessen the impact of unexpected situations like SWA outages. Through this post, you’ll get a glimpse of how Park deals with these situations.

What are SWAs?

State Workforce Agency websites are run by each individual state. Job openings are posted and advertised on these platforms. As a part of the PERM process, it is required by the DOL to post on a SWA site for a minimum of 30 days.

What does it mean when a SWA site is down?

When a SWA site goes down, it means that it is inaccessible. Sometimes the site is down for maintenance, other times they’ve gone down due to cyber attacks or other technological issues. Due to this, the Park team is not able to log in to post and/or take screenshots of ads.

How does Park handle these situations?

Park notifies clients as soon as the team realizes that the site will impact case processes. The Park team tries to gather as much information as possible so that clients can make an informed decision. When a site is down for maintenance, there can be a notification ahead of time that the team uses to warn affected clients. Other times, there is no warning, like in the case of the WorkSource outage from Summer 2022 due to a cyber attack at a third party company. In these cases, in addition to reaching out to clients, Park checks the site daily to verify if it is back up. The team also contacts the state agencies for more information. It is important to have the most up-to-date information to communicate with our clients. Once the site is back up and accessible again, Park puts together solutions to present to each client.

What solutions has Park presented to clients?

In recent years, there have been a number of SWA site issues that Park has learned from. There is a general formula to make sure clients get the information they need after a SWA site goes down:

SWA’s that have been posted:

Clients can choose to:

• Extend the ad duration to accommodate the days the site was down.
• Proceed as if the site was never down (take screenshots as scheduled)

SWA’s that have not been posted:

• Once the site is back up, our clients are notified and the site is posted as normal.

SWA’s on hold:

• If the posting is live after the outage, the end date of the posting will be extended, and the day 1 screenshot will be sent to the client.
• If the posting is not live, clients will be informed and the posting will be checked daily.

SWAs missing the ending screenshot:

If an ad expired during the outage, clients can choose to:

• Repost for the full 30-day duration
• Repost for the time the site was down to make up for the missed days
• Tell us how they’d like to proceed

Each situation is unique, so Park adapts as needed. Some examples of how the Park team handled past SWA site situations are below:

Example 1:

The first time Park experienced an extended SWA outage was back in 2022, when a cyber-attack took down many sites like California’s and Texas’. The team reached out to various contacts at SWA sites to get information before it was announced to the general public. Clients also came to Park with both questions and information. At the time, everyone was learning how to deal with the situation together. After a few weeks, when the first sites started to come back up, the team got together to decide the best methods to offer clients to save any SWA ads. Initially, clients were offered options to repost ads for the full duration of the ad or partial duration, depending on the length of time the site was down. Park also asked client to provide any feedback they had so that the team could accommodate any requests.  These requests were used to influence our procedures surrounding future outages.

Example 2:

The New York/Kentucky/New Jersey/Puerto Rico SWA sites went down for an unknown reason back in October 2023, and no one had access to the site for a week and a half. When the sites came back up, every account was required to reset their password to gain access to the site. While Park waited for updated passwords, the team took screenshots from the job seekers view for ads that were still live. Unfortunately, some ads were removed from the site or expired during the outage. Due to this, the team worked with to repost the ads for the missing durations or start over.

Example 3:

The Texas SWA site was down for maintenance in April 2024. Since there was a notification on their site ahead of time, Park was able to prepare in advance. The team was able to make sure most ads did not expire in the middle of the outage. Clients were advised of their options to either extend the ads or wait to post after the outage. Park continued to monitor the situation during the scheduled time frame. As soon as the site was back up, we let clients know and continued on with the ads as normal.

If you’re interested in more information on how Park can make your next recruitment a walk in the Park, reach out to [email protected]