Post and Pursue: Improving Federal Hiring Using Data and Targeted Recruitment

In this time of tight budgets and the Trump administration’s call for workforce reductions, it is more critical than ever for agencies to fill vacancies with the most highly skilled and qualified individuals available. However, the cumbersome federal hiring process can be a deterrent for agencies attempting to bring top talent into public service.

In an annual federal survey, a large number of employees responded that government is falling short when it comes to recruiting the best people. Only 41 percent of federal employees said their agencies and work units were recruiting individuals with the right skills, according to the 2016 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings compiled by the Partnership for Public Service.

The Partnership and LinkedIn set out to understand how agencies can overcome the hiring barriers through the use of data analysis and targeting–also known as data-driven recruitment—to recruit talent more effectively.

Through interviews and workshops with agency human resources staff and human capital managers, we identified three key elements for improving hiring: using data to find talent; encouraging collaboration between hiring managers and human resources staff; and relying on special hiring authorities. [For the rest of this report, click here.]

What of the data provided by this report most surprised you? How would you use the data in this report (or similar data for your organization) to improve hiring at your agency?

When Hiring a Particular Candidate Might Constitute a Prohibited Personnel Practice

Perhaps over the past several months, hiring officials have contemplated how they would advertise a vacancy on USAJOBS and may even have a particular candidate in mind whom they believe would be “perfect for the job.”

This article discusses an area of law not widely known to federal managers—specifically, the prohibited personnel practice that can result from defining the scope or manner of competition or requirements for a particular position in a way that favors certain candidates, or disfavors others.

Picture this scenario: an agency hired an employee for a four (4)-year term position to fill a critical need for a linguist in a remote area. That employee was not veteran’s preference-eligible, but at the time he competed for the term position was the best qualified linguist among all non-preference eligible applicants and, therefore, got the job.

The agency’s linguist requirement continued longer than expected, so the agency received… [For the rest of the article, click here.]

Before reading the article, would you have considered the linguist scenario to have constituted a prohibited personnel practice? Did your opinion change after reading the article?

MSPB: Improving Federal Hiring through Better Assessment

The Federal Government has spent extensive time and resources trying to reform the overall competitive hiring process. However, little attention has been paid specifically to how agencies assess their applicants. Past research by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) indicates that agencies often use assessment tools that are not the best predictors of future performance. In addition, recent hiring reforms have made it easier for applicants to apply, increasing the volume of applicants. MSPB has long recommended that agencies improve their applicant assessment processes and that Congress appropriate funding for Governmentwide assessments. This perspectives brief summarizes MSPB research on applicant assessment and identifies 10 factors for agencies to consider when investing in better assessment:

  • Consider how to improve the process more than merely automate it
  • Aim for a high return on investment rather than the cheapest assessments
  • Ensure assessments are valid, reliable, fair, and appropriate to the situation
  • Develop processes that are applicant friendly, easy to understand, and related to the job
  • Use a combination of assessments that provide a comprehensive evaluation of applicants’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors necessary to successfully perform the job
  • Use a set of assessments successively to manage and narrow the candidate pool, thereby making efficient use of agency resources
  • Ensure the agency has assessments that cover a wide variety of positions and grade levels
  • Determine the mode of delivery (e.g., computer-based, pan and paper, interactive) that best meets the agency’s needs
  • Determine whether proctored assessments, or a combination of the two are most appropriate’Ensure assessments easily integrate with the agency’s recruitment and staffing system

This brief also reiterates the business case for Congress to appropriate funds to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for the development, validation, and administration of Governmentwide applicant assessments… [For the rest of the report, click here]

Which of the ten factors do you think would be most helpful when it comes to improving the overall competitive hiring process? Why?

Data: Public Servants Are Older Than Almost Everyone in the American Workforce

As many of our readers have complained, the stereotypes of civil servants run the gamut from “slow” to “lazy” to, increasingly, “old.” Unfortunately, that third stereotype seems to be rooted in truth.

According to an analysis by data scientist and blogger Randal Olson, the oldest profession in the U.S. workforce is funeral home employee and the youngest is shoe salesperson. Olson looked at 2017 Bureau of Labor Statistics data and found that the average age of someone working in shoe sales is 25.6 years old and the average age of a funeral home worker is 53.1.

What does this have to do with the government workforce getting older? Public servants’ median age (45.6) is closer to the embalming and casket industry than it is to the boot and sandal industry and public finance employees have the eighth-oldest median age of all workers in the labor force.

With the caveat that BLS doesn’t break down public administration into state, local and federal, the statistics show that no category of public administration job notches a median age younger than 42.6 (“Justice, public order, and safety activities”). In addition to quinquagenarian public finance employees, “administration of economic programs and space research” workers have a median age of 48.8.  [For the rest of this article, click here.]

How do you think your agency measures up as related to age of federal workers? Does your agency have programs in place to recruit and hire younger workers? What are the advantages/disadvantages of a workforce of older workers?

Changing the Language in Job Ads Could Help Bring More Women Into Tech

Over 90 companies, including HP, Accenture, Cisco, and Dell, have signed up to a collective Tech Talent Charter, which aims to promote greater gender diversity in the UK’s tech workforce. The charter, which has also received funding from the British government, pledges to bring companies together to address the industry’s diversity problem—only 17% of tech and telecom workers in Britain are women.

To that end, charter members promise to make tangible changes in how they recruit, retrain, and retain women, by liaising with other firms and getting help from non-profit organizations like Code First Girls.

One simple but effective way to attract more women to tech jobs is to change the language in job ads (pdf). (For more, click here.)

The language used in vacancy announcements can make a huge difference in who ends up in the candidate pool for any given job. What have you seen done to help ensure that the vacancy announcement is a help, not a hindrance, to finding the best quality employees for your agency?

How to Bridge the Generation Gap

If there is one common challenge facing public sector organizations today, it’s this: A growing crisis in staffing levels due to accelerating retirement rates and continued tight budgets.

Two statistics show the significance of these factors:

  • As of mid-2014, there were 500,000 fewer local government employees nationwide than in 2008.
  • In some state agencies, it is estimated that more than 40 percent of the workforce will be eligible for retirement by 2017.

With 8,000 baby boomers retiring each day, managing a multigenerational workplace is becoming even more crucial for government agencies. But while businesses, schools and health care organizations have made progress attracting younger employees, governments are falling behind. Less than 6 percent of college graduates surveyed in 2014 report interest in federal, state or local service compared with 37 percent for private industry and 20 percent for health care.

Millennials (born from 1981-1997) have some distinct differences from other generations. Millennials grew up in the information age with constant connection to social media. They are highly social and impatient, always looking for entertainment, connectivity and technology. To this group, experience is priceless. They are used to … (For more, click here.)

How have you seen the  “immediate things government agencies can do to attract millennial worker” implemented in your agency’s staffing plans? Which of the practices discussed in “bridging the gap with technology” do you think could be applied to your human capital strategies to improve your candidate pools and employee retention?

Why Millennials Spurn Government Jobs

Phillip Sheridan, a 34-year-old government technology contractor, believes his federal security clearance raises his earning power in the Washington metropolitan area by $30,000. “But it makes you insecure because you think you don’t have skills to compete in Silicon Valley,” he said. In his heart of hearts, he “wants to be around people who’re excited about their job every day and absorb that energy from them.”

In government, Sheridan added, the only place you get that excitement is at “the tip of spear,” such as serving in other countries or helping agency cyber-teams fend off hackers. Plus, “government undertrains its employees, and contractors [are] even worse because their companies don’t have extra funds for training,” he said.

Not being able to travel to cybersecurity industry conferences like his private-sector counterparts is a burden because they’re “mandatory for career advancement,” Sheridan told Government Executive. “You have to be able to learn what’s going on in the world.”

The obstacles agency recruiters face in attracting the digitally-absorbed millennial generation (generally considered to be the 18-34 cohort) are by now a well-discussed litany of stereotypes: … (For more, click here.)

Do you agree with the observations discussed in this article? Has your agency implemented the approaches described by OPM officials? What other ideas do you have for recruiting millennials for your agency’s vacant positions?

Closing the Federal Millennial Hiring Gap

After a boom, there doesn’t have to be a bust. Federal agencies have a real opportunity to increase the number of millennials in their workforce as more and more baby boomers retire.

When baby boomers—the largest generation of its time—entered the job market, their traditional roots landed them seamlessly in the federal workforce. But agencies have had a difficult time getting the now-larger-in-number millennials on board. Despite making up about one-third of the private sector labor force, the under-30 crowd represented only 7 percent of federal employees in 2015—the lowest that figure has been in nearly a decade.

It’s not for lack of open positions. By 2017, 31 percent of federal workers will be eligible to retire. Many of those jobs are in areas where millennials are comfortable. (For more, click here.)

How has your agency incorporated the three steps described in this article in their recruiting practices? If they have not, which do you think would be most essential to implement immediately?

What Are Some of the Biggest Red Flags in a Job Candidate?

I rarely give candidates feedback on red flags they give off during interviews, mostly because it is really hard to deliver this feedback without offending them. I spent 10 years as a recruiter and interviewed thousands of candidates. Now as Co-Founder of Betterteam, a recruitment platform for small businesses, I have access to real world data across many industries on why candidates fail interviews.

These are the top 7 that I see most often in why our clients reject candidates. (For more, click here.)

Which of these red flags have you noticed in your work in the federal HR field? Which do you think most influence the hiring decision?

What Employees Value More than Salary, According to Glassdoor

Salary is important, but it’s not the only thing that contributes to job satisfaction. New research from Glassdoor reveals what makes people happiest at their jobs and how it varies depending on income.

Glassdoor wanted to see how employee values change as their income changes. What workplace factors do employees workers value overall, and how does it change with salary increases? To answer this, Glassdoor looked at their own data: salary reports and company reviews from over 600,000 users. They looked at six different factors: culture & values, senior leadership, career opportunities, business outlook, work-life balance and compensation & benefits.

They used the “Shapley Value” analysis method to see how various factors change the overall outlook. They explain: (For more, click here.)

How does your job satisfaction track with the six workplace factors described in this article? How could this data be applied to deal with employee retention and turnover at your organization?