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Human resources professionals play a vital role in supporting agency missions across government. Spanning the full employee life cycle—from hiring to training to performance management—senior executives and managers rely on HR experts to support the most important asset in government: its employees.

However, it can be overwhelming for new government leaders—especially those who worked outside the public sector—to navigate federal policies and regulations. To make this transition easier, we have tapped into our extensive Rolodex of current and former government HR experts to dispel certain myths about federal human resources and enlighten new managers about what is possible when they partner with HR specialists.

Here is one common myth about federal HR that Michael Cushing, former vice president for resource and information management at the Export-Import Bank corrected:

Myth: HR can neither compensate high performers nor create incentives to reward high-performing employees.
 

Reality: Managers can offer both financial and non-compensation incentives to reward high-performing employees.

As a senior executive, you can offer the three R’s—substantial recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives—as well as student loan repayments and other perks to reward good performance. These strategies can also help you recruit new staff and retain your high performing employees, particularly younger ones. 

For more examples, see this Office of Personnel Management resource and be sure to check with your human capital specialist about other options, including maximum payable rate, superior qualifications appointment and a position reclassification that can support career ladder promotion to a higher grade. Other avenues can help you explore direct hire authorities, internships and more. 

Non-monetary compensation may also be available, such as remote and flexible work schedules, temporary cross-boundary or detail assignments, opportunities to shadow specific programs or meet senior leaders, and selection for training and mentorship programs.  

Senior executives and leaders at all levels should rely on their HR departments when making decisions relating to employee management. These individuals understand the laws and regulations and will provide the guidance needed in areas of rewarding high performers and more.

Follow our upcoming blog series as we uncover the realities of other common HR myths across government.

Attracting and hiring job seekers without four-year degrees would benefit our federal government and our nation. A recent report, written by the Partnership in collaboration with the James Irvine Foundation, outlines the barriers that prevent individuals without four-year degrees from attaining federal work and offers recommendations to address these barriers.

Federal agencies should offer more accessible internships to raise awareness of federal jobs and benefits.

Job seekers without four-year degrees often do not know what people in government do on a day-to-day basis. As a result, they remain largely unaware of federal job opportunities and the benefits they offer.

Federal agencies should offer more paid internships, especially in regional offices or with a remote option to encourage accessibility.

Internships can help job seekers better understand what federal work entails and provide a pathway to a government career. The Virtual Student Federal Service, run by the State Department, has taken the lead in supporting nearly 9,000 virtual, unpaid internships in more than 70 federal agencies since 2009. Offering more accessible internships will enable the federal government to increase the likelihood that job seekers will consider civil service careers in the future.

Hiring managers should collaborate with workforce development boards and community colleges to clarify the federal hiring process.

Job seekers—both with and without a four-year degree—face a confusing and lengthy hiring process. USAJOBS is notoriously difficult to navigate and resumes for federal positions need to be structured differently than they do for those in the private sector.

Federal hiring managers should work with representatives from community colleges and workforce development boards to demystify the federal hiring process for those lacking a four-year degree. Representatives from those organizations could connect job seekers with federal agencies and provide training sessions on how to apply for a federal job. These efforts would reduce the barriers to a federal career for job seekers without four-year degrees.

Hiring managers should evaluate applicants using skills-based assessments to reduce bias for applicants with higher education degrees.

When job seekers who do not have four-year degrees find and apply for federal positions, they are often at a disadvantage in the competitive hiring process—even if they possess the knowledge, skills and competencies to succeed in a new role.  

To rectify this situation, the Office of Personnel Management is laying the groundwork for agencies to develop and use skills-based assessments. In April, OPM conducted a survey of federal employees that will inform the factors on which employees are selected, evaluated and trained across the federal government.

Recent evidence suggests that skills-based hiring can help agencies tackle big challenges. To distribute COVID-19 relief funds, for example, the Small Business Administration opened many new marketing positions to applicants without a four-year degree. Victor Parker, a deputy associate administrator at the SBA, explained that the agency sought individuals based on their interpersonal and communication skills rather than a particular degree.

Other agencies should follow suit to achieve similar results for the people they serve. Candidates without four-year degrees are untapped resources that would help government fill critical talent gaps and work better. To learn more, read “Opening Doors, Building Ladders: How Federal Agencies Can Hire and Retain Californians Who Do Not Have a Four-year Degree” and our latest blog post on this research.

Federal agencies must rapidly grow their workforce to tackle both external and internal challenges, such as national emergencies, large-scale attrition, new mission requirements or the need for talent in emerging fields. When these challenges arise, however, agencies tend to “post and pray,” or list job announcements on USAJOBS without making additional efforts to recruit applicants. This standard federal hiring practice makes it difficult for agencies to quickly hire large numbers of candidates—or implement surge hiring.

Last year, the Partnership for Public Service examined federal surge hiring in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With support from the Democracy Fund, the Partnership conducted in-depth research—including a literature review, and interviews with current and former federal HR leaders and other agency officials—to identify the most effective and widely applicable strategies for surge hiring.

These findings were distilled into a report titled “Rapid Reinforcements: Strategies for Federal Surge Hiring.” The report outlined three surge hiring strategies that agencies can implement without additional authority from Congress: 

  1. Determine which government-wide or agency-specific hiring authorities best meet the needs of the hiring surge. 
  2. Develop a foundation for recruitment by hosting recruiting events, using data to monitor talent pools and the candidate experience, and by hiring recruiters or training current staff on how to attract candidates and guide them through the hiring process.  
  3. Apply a project management approach through which a project manager coordinates the hiring process and collaborates with HR specialists and hiring managers during recruitment. This increases the efficiency of surge hiring by ensuring all steps in the recruitment process are connected.

While a single individual should manage and oversee the surge hiring process, developing and implementing these strategies should not fall on the shoulders of one person. Clear accountability for generating and maintaining the strategy must be made clear at the very beginning. HR professionals and offices, hiring managers, subject matter experts and perhaps affinity groups and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Councils should participate in designing and executing the hiring surge.

Leaders and employees across the organization should feel like they collectively own the strategy and played a role in hiring key personnel as a result. If they do not, agencies will waver in their commitment to recruit the best talent to tackle big challenges. 

Our new tool serves as both a recruitment guide and project management template for developing a strategic recruitment plan for surge hiring.

The Small Business Administration more than doubled its number of employees in 2020. The need for this hiring surge arose when the agency was tasked with administering the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program amid a rapidly spreading pandemic in late March. At the time, the SBA only had about 4,200 employees. The agency required a larger staff to manage the program effectively and provide small businesses with the relief they needed. 

The SBA used various methods to implement a successful hiring surge including: 

  • Tapping other hiring authorities—like Schedule A, which permits agencies to hire people with disabilities through a noncompetitive process—to fill positions more quickly. 
  • Targeting specific populations for recruitment. 
  • Creating a hiring toolkit and related training for staff on how to best use hiring options. 

The SBA’s success in expanding its workforce led the agency to identify a set of general best practices for federal surge hiring: 

Communication and collaboration are key 

According to Elias Hernandez, the SBA’s chief human capital officer, “Open communication allowed the agency to identify potential barriers or bottlenecks early in the process, pivot when new efficiencies were identified and share resources to improve strategic operations.” For example, the SBA’s Office of Human Resources Solutions and the Office of the Chief Information Officer worked collaboratively to send computers and other equipment to new staff who onboarded remotely.  

The SBA also recommended that human resources offices develop and implement hiring strategies in collaboration with key agency leaders and stakeholders. Their input is critical for agencies to identify hiring needs, barriers and resources. Additionally, the SBA noted that continuously communicating to staff through various means, from email alerts to agencywide meetings, would help make hiring surges successful.  

Be flexible and provide training to help with change 

Massive hiring surges require flexibility. Agency leaders and staff should be willing to shift internal resources and evolve processes to hire staff more quickly, even if it means disregarding institutional norms. The SBA recommended that agencies should also provide training for supervisors and hiring managers that enable them to help staff adapt and implement changes necessary for effective surge hiring.  

Leverage technology 

The SBA used existing technologies, such as government hiring websites, to overcome the challenge of launching and coordinating a hiring surge. Additionally, the agency conducted virtual information sessions with agency partners, and shifted onboarding and orientation sessions online to create a more efficient hiring process and solve logistical challenges presented by the pandemic. 

Seek staff feedback 

The SBA also found that it is essential for those leading a hiring surge to seek feedback from HR specialists, hiring managers and other stakeholders about how to make the process more efficient and avoid potential roadblocks. Increased communication—through agencywide “town hall” meetings or smaller communities of practice like “HR cafes,” for example—has helped the SBA gain staff feedback on surge hiring initiatives. 

The SBA’s hiring surge arose from highly specific circumstances, but the agency’s advice could apply to any federal department—even after the pandemic subsides. Government leaders can use SBA strategies to quickly address staff shortages, and vastly improve the federal hiring and recruiting process. 

For more details about the SBA’s hiring methods—along with other stories of how federal agencies used surge hiring to meet the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic—read the Partnership’s research report, “Rapid Reinforcements: Strategies for Federal Surge Hiring.” 

Federal agencies need top talent to achieve their missions, but highly qualified candidates often struggle to make it through the hiring process.

A new look at federal hiring data from the past two years suggests why. The Hiring Assessment and Selection Outcome Dashboard, released this year reveals that agencies often use only multiple-choice assessment questionnaires completed by the applicant to evaluate candidates for open positions across government. The dashboard shows that hiring managers did not extend job offers to applicants for roughly one-half of the competitive, open-to-the-public federal job announcements in fiscal year 2020.

The dashboard is the first-of-its-kind tool to share publicly available federal hiring data from USAJOBS, and is a collaboration between the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Digital Service, the General Services Administration and other agency partners. The underlying data set of every job posted to USAJOBS over the past two years is also available and accessible in a machine readable format with an API endpoint for developers.

The tool compares assessment types to selection outcomes and enables users to analyze job announcement and hiring assessment data by job series, title, GS level, agency and bureau, and may help hiring managers use more effective hiring assessments in the future.

A chart from the dashboard looks at the types of assessments hiring managers are using and which most frequently led to a selection.

“At a time when the government urgently needs highly qualified professionals to address the many challenges our nation is facing, the hiring process is failing skilled applicants,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. “Implementing more effective hiring practices is time-intensive but necessary to ensure our government recruits the brightest talent with the right technical skills. The dashboard makes this possible by sharing critical hiring data for all of government in an easy-to-use tool.”

The state of federal hiring

Data from the dashboard shows that hiring managers relied solely on self-assessment questionnaires and HR resume reviews to determine applicants’ eligibility for 90% of competitive, open-to-the-public federal job announcements in fiscal 2020. However, hiring managers extended job offers to candidates for only 53% of those announcements.

Why are these hiring assessments so ineffective?

One reason is that candidates tend to either overrate or underrate their own skills when filling out self-assessment questionnaires. Additionally, HR specialists who review federal resumes­—which can be up to 20 pages long—are typically not technical experts in the applicant’s field. Applicants who can figure out the best answer and how to create a federal style resume tend to do the best in the process over those who are really qualified.

The dashboard also shows that some of the most frequently announced jobs left vacant were quite critical. For example, agencies posted more than 8,800 announcements for nurses in 2020 and only 59% of these announcements led to a job offer.

Using a new tool to make better hiring decisions

The dashboard was created to be a central resource with easy-to-analyze data for HR teams who are often overworked and understaffed, and need to fill critical positions quickly.

Hiring specialists can look at this tool and see that instead of posting 60 announcements in a year for an IT specialist with no selections, it’s better to do one high-quality hiring action with higher quality assessment hurdles like is done for the Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessments hiring actions, which use both subject matter experts and HR teams to review candidates.

Given a law approved by Congress to allow agencies to share competitive certificates, agencies could issue higher quality certificates and share them to place as many applicants from a hiring action as possible, saving time for hiring managers, HR and applicants. This strategy was recently piloted using Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessments to bring in more than 20 customer experience specialists across the government in 2020.

New data will be added to the dashboard each month, and the team is looking at additional data fields, such as the number of job offers made using technical versus behavioral assessments, to improve this hiring tool.

View the Hiring Assessment and Selection Outcome Dashboard here.

Are you an entry-level job seeker with a passion for public service and an interest in finance? The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation hires roughly 200 entry-level bank examiners each year, staffing nearly 80 offices nationwide. To hire new entry-level talent, the FDIC uses two key recruiting initiatives: the Pathways Programs and agency hiring events. Over the past six years, about 40% of entry-level examiners were former FDIC interns. And often at each hiring event, more than 40 attendees receive job offers from the agency.

Pathways internship programs

Pathways Programs are a government-wide initiative designed to help agencies recruit and hire qualified students and recent graduates. The program aims to provide applicants clear paths to federal internships and full-time positions, and offers training, mentoring and career-development opportunities.

The FDIC offers two Pathways internship programs:

  • The Financial Management Scholars Program is a 12-week paid summer internship for college students earning degrees in finance and business-related majors. The interns participate in a week-long orientation at an FDIC center in Virginia and are then placed at one of the agency’s  field offices. The program also pairs interns with full-time employees who serve as mentors and provide additional training. At the end of the internship, the students return to Virginia to present their work and complete a skills assessment test. The agency will then extend full-time offers to interns based on their performance.
  • The Financial Institution Intern Program is a year-round internship that places college students at nearby field offices to work in part-time or full-time positions. Interns often work for up to 1 ½  years and may be offered a permanent position once they graduate. Between 2014 and 2018, the program hired 46% of its interns as full-time examiners.

Innovative entry-level talent hiring events

Every year, the FDIC hosts several events to identify and hire entry-level examiners. After posting open positions on USAJOBS, the HR team identifies qualified applicants and screens them through a writing assessment. The agency then invites the strongest candidates to participate in a hiring event at FDIC headquarters.

At the event, candidates meet with hiring managers, learn more about the position, attend agency overview sessions, complete assessments in math and financial analysis, and give an oral presentation. The hiring staff compares notes and assessments scores for each candidate and shares them with agency executives who review the candidates’ performance and extend job offers.

Amid the pandemic, the FDIC has continued to bring entry-level bank examiners on board by moving many of its hiring events online.

For more information on how agencies can fill their critical talent needs, read A Time for Talent: Improving Federal Recruiting and Hiring. To learn more about working in the government and starting a federal career, visit gogovernment.org.

The Department of Homeland Security, like many agencies, often struggles to recruit high-quality candidates into government service. DHS recently developed a new digital tool to address this challenge: the Strategic Marketing, Outreach, and Recruiting Engagement platform. This in-house platform, which DHS calls SMORE, enables the agency to use data analytics to recruit and hire new personnel more effectively, providing important statistics on who, where, how and why applicants join the applicant pool and, eventually the agency.

What is it and how does it use data?

The department launched its platform in early 2020, enabling the organization and its components to track their recruitment activities and successes in real time.

The tool has a master calendar DHS can use to predict the composition of an applicant pool based on the location of a recruitment activity, its target audience and the type of event. After the activity, DHS’ components enter additional information into the platform, including the event cost, attendance and promotional material distributed, using drop-down menus and predetermined response options. This method helps DHS minimize data entry errors and ensure standardization.

Importantly, interactive and user-friendly dashboards present the information as data visualizations, providing DHS employees with access to advanced recruitment analytics and promoting knowledge sharing across the agency.

“It’s all about analytics,” said Angela Bailey, the chief human capital officer at DHS. “You can urge components not to limit recruiting to Texas and California, but it can fall on deaf ears. But showing them a map with Texas and California colored dark blue [indicating heavy recruiting] and the rest of the country very pale blue [indicating light recruiting] really drives the point home.”

How does DHS use the platform to improve recruiting?

The marketing, outreach and recruiting platform has made the DHS recruitment process more transparent, efficient, cost-effective and user-friendly. The master calendar, along with snapshots and analytics of recruitment events throughout the fiscal year, enable DHS’ components to stay informed about new recruitment opportunities. For example, if Customs and Border Protection is registered to attend a career fair in San Diego, the Secret Service might notice it on the calendar and ask to join.

“Eventually, we’ll be able to say things like, ‘When we recruit and hire from X university, people stay five years. But when we recruit and hire from Y university, they only stay three months,” Bailey said. “Then we can dig in and find out why. Maybe we’re sending the wrong recruiters or maybe we’re targeting the wrong talent pool.”

Use the platform’s framework to improve talent recruitment at your agency

The Strategic Marketing, Outreach, and Recruiting Engagement platform is a powerful recruiting tool for critical talent. For more information on federal talent acquisition, read “A Time for Talent: Improving Federal Recruiting and Hiring.” You can also visit the DHS website for more information on the new recruiting platform.

From Medicare to stimulus funding to disability payments for veterans, the federal government and the underlying technology it uses to deliver benefits and services have a profound effect on our daily lives and communities.

There has never been a more critical time for technical leaders with a deep commitment to the country to join the federal government. The question for experts in the technology field isn’t, “How can I make this leap?” Right now, the question is “How can I not?”

Our government needs employees and leaders who understand the importance of technology and who can help provide delivery-driven policies and digital initiatives, prevent systemic failures, fix broken services, improve cybersecurity and protect privacy rights. We also need those in government who can leverage rapidly developing technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science.

The government’s need for tech-savvy leaders and employees is growing as more and more services are provided and policies implemented through the use of technology. Failing to build a high performing technology workforce could not only mean less efficient services, but it will increase the possibility of failures and inefficiencies.

Technologists should consider public service where the impact can be immense and where the need has never been greater. Technical leaders who are dedicated to the public good can help build a better digital government and lend a fresh perspective to improving or modernizing outdated processes.  

How do we know this can work? Simply put, we’ve been here before. Our government has faced similar challenges in the past and found meaningful paths forward through technology. In 2013, for example, Healthcare.gov was launched with the hope of being a one-stop-shop for Americans to register and purchase healthcare for themselves and their families. The initial enrollment for HealthCare.gov was marred by server overloads, website crashes and an overall frustrating experience. As a result, more than 2.8 million Americans visited the website on the first day, with only six people completing the sign-up process.

HealthCare.gov’s initial failures pushed the government to reassess and build a broad, sturdy technology foundation for future policies and projects. A key factor in this response was an influx of knowledgeable, talented individuals.

There are many ways technology experts can serve. The Tech Talent Project, for example, is currently developing a network of technology leaders who are ready for a tour of duty in America’s public agencies. It will not be easy or quick, but service creates opportunities to tangibly improve the lives of real people and lay the foundation for future solutions. Now, more than ever, technologists should consider answering the government’s call to service.

This post is part of the Partnership’s Ready to Serve series. Ready to Serve is a centralized resource for people who aspire to serve in a presidential administration as a political appointee.

When an employee leaves a job, it can take months to recruit and hire a replacement. And those lengthy vacancies can overwhelm staff and jeopardize an agency’s ability to deliver on its mission. Agencies can look to an FBI model to minimize how long positions remain unfilled by forecasting attrition and recruiting before a position becomes vacant.  

How the FBI forecasts job vacancies  

In December 2019, the FBI’s human resources team created a model that forecasts vacancies up to nine months out in every occupation. The model estimates how many people are likely to leave, how long it takes to bring a new employee on board, and what percentage of job offers leads to hiring a new employee. 

That information helps the bureau understand when it should start recruiting new talent and how many offers it needs to ensure it remains fully staffed. An FBI field office supervisor, for example, can check the model to see how many IT specialist positions are vacant and how many are projected to be vacant in three, six and nine months. If the model shows one vacancy now, but none in three months, it signals there are candidates completing background investigations, and the position is on its way to being filled. 

However, if the model shows vacancies in six or nine months, it tells the manager there aren’t enough candidates in the pipeline and to begin the hiring process, given how long the background investigation can take. 

The model also considers the percentage of candidates who don’t successfully pass the background investigation, helping supervisors understand how many people they need to interview and how many provisional offers they need to make to fill a position. 

Early skepticism about the model 

When the FBI’s human resources team rolled out the model, offices were slow to adopt it and didn’t always trust what it was telling them. “We put it out there and the field offices did not know how to use it,” said Peter Sursi, senior executive for recruitment and hiring at the FBI. “Hiring ahead of attrition was so alien to everybody’s experience and everything they had ever been told.” 

Gradually, the HR team gained buy-in by making the model more user-friendly, teaching the field offices how to use it, and demonstrating how it can help them keep their mission-critical positions filled—a longstanding challenge for the FBI. 

“Now divisions can look at their nine-month attrition forecast and say, ‘Well, I don’t have a vacancy now, but the model says that I’m going to need a nurse and two evidence techs and three IT specialists in nine months,” Sursi said. “So, let me conduct interviews and put those candidates in background now, and they should be landing right about the time those vacancies are being realized.” 

Use the FBI’s model to implement your own solution 

The FBI’s attrition model shows that, while it might take time for staff to buy into new innovative hiring practices, there is always room to improve how agencies find, acquire and develop new talent.  

For more information on federal talent acquisition, read the report: A Time for Talent: Improving Federal Recruiting and Hiring. 

Although the federal government has more than 2 million employees, more people are needed to address our most pressing challenges. National crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and talent gaps in emerging fields have led agencies to consider initiating rapid hiring surges.

Why should someone work in government? For many reasons.

Earlier this year, we surveyed federal employees about their work experiences to honor Public Service Recognition Week. Some 130 public servants at 45 federal agencies responded, offering insights into the benefits of working in public service and advice for a government career.

Many employees described the satisfaction that comes with making a difference.

“If you have professional pride, and a true desire to help others and contribute in a meaningful and selfless way, public service is where you belong,” said Robin W., a federal employee of 31 years working at the Department of Commerce.

For Linda S., a senior analyst at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the people and work environment make public service jobs appealing. “You will never find more dedicated co-workers.”  

Ellen D. from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation echoed Linda’s sentiment, noting, “collaboration and partnerships are critical to creating and implementing solutions that work for the public.”

Some employees described pluses such as good work-life balance, ample opportunities for advancement, strong benefits and mentorship possibilities.

“You will be given authority and responsibilities that are earned and entrusted to you. Start your career with the intent and desire to learn all you can and set your goals high!” said Tony R., a government employee for 37 years.

Some respondents offered advice on landing a federal job.

Brandon S., an intelligence specialist at the Defense Department, advised prospective candidates to use internships and volunteer opportunities to gain experience. He recommended networking at hiring events, researching the agency’s mission and history, and customizing resumes to match the exact skills outlined in a job description.

Tammy L. V. K., executive director at the Federal Aviation Administration, encouraged applicants to contact current federal employees. “There are a number of paths that someone can take to obtain a position and advance their careers in the federal government; you just need to ask.”

Some respondents shared advice on how to succeed in a government career.

Steve C., with 26 years of service across four agencies, said employees aren’t always recognized for their work by the public or within the workforce, but should “take a great deal of satisfaction from knowing that you have done the right thing, and that what you do truly matters in the long run.”

Professionalism is important, according to several respondents. Lolita D. of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said, “You have to set aside your biases, judgments and stereotypical views of others.” Mark R. of the Social Security Administration noted “the needs of the clients are an important aspect to what we do [so] always stick to policy and procedure.”

A public service career comes with many benefits, including exciting work in many fields, and the opportunity to drive change and innovation for the greater good—making a federal career a significant and worthwhile endeavor.

To share your own experiences of working in the federal government, take the #WhyIServe survey. You can also visit gogovernment.org for more information on federal jobs.