 |
|
|
|
Government Leader home > news stories
10/11/06
OPM revives strategy to attract college grads
By Stephen Barr
Special to Government Leader
During the 1990s, the Clinton administration and Congress agreed to downsize the government by about 400,000 employees, and, with most hiring frozen, many agencies gave up on recruiting at college campuses.
Now, agencies are trying to rebuild their recruiting pipelines and streamline their hiring procedures in hopes of attracting top-notch college graduates into the government. They may face a tough sell, given the government’s image problems and competition from Fortune 500 companies.
Many agencies also are rethinking their recruitment efforts with some sense of urgency, since they are facing a wave of baby-boom retirements. John M. Palguta, vice president for policy at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, estimates that about 900,000 employees in the 1.8 million federal workforce could leave through retirements and resignations in the next six years.
To look at steps that agencies can take to improve hiring practices, the partnership recently held a federal recruiting summit. The group’s research shows that most college graduates do not understand what agencies do, don’t know what types of jobs exist in government and don’t know how to apply for jobs.
Dan Blair, deputy director at OPM, told agency officials attending the summit that OPM has developed a three-part strategy for attracting top-notch college graduates into the government.
OPM has started running television advertisements in about a dozen cities featuring federal employees who help predict the weather, protect the environment and conduct tests to make cars safer. OPM hopes the TV ads will promote awareness of federal job opportunities, Blair said.
The outreach effort also includes Federal Career Days being held on college campuses, including Ohio State University and Carnegie-Mellon University, to recruit graduates in the fields of medicine, engineering and foreign languages — areas where the government has critical jobs to fill.
The second part of OPM’s strategy calls on agencies to set up new “career patterns,” because research suggests that young people are not interested in the traditional model — a 30-year career that leads to a pension.
OPM believes the next generation of employees will be more likely to come and go from the government every few years and will want jobs that let them work from home or at odd hours. Agencies will likely manage more part-time jobs, more project-based jobs and even recall retirees for short periods.
Lastly, OPM is renewing efforts to help agencies improve their hiring procedures. That means turning around hiring decisions in 30 days and 45 days, providing timely feedback to job applicants and streamlining job announcements. One commonly used federal job application asks for answers to 156 questions, and OPM would like to see the questions reduced by half.
Getting a handle on federal hiring “is not just a human resources issue, but should be an agency leadership priority,” Blair told the summit, held at the Ronald Reagan building.
To help agencies, OPM posted a “hiring toolkit” on the agency’s Web site this week, with what Blair called examples of how to recruit top talent, select the best and measure recruitment success.
Despite the attention being paid to federal hiring, agencies have a tough road ahead, according to a survey conducted by the Partnership.
Max Stier, president of the Partnership, reminded officials at the summit that the government’s long-standing image problem, reinforced by the sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina, makes it hard to market federal service as a brand.
In the survey, 53 percent of college students cited “bureaucracy” as the reason they would not consider federal service, and Stier noted that today’s cumbersome and complex federal hiring system probably reinforces that perception.
Still, the government fares well against the private sector when students are asked about their employment interests. But the survey also found that students don’t know how to get into government — they are not aware of the variety of agencies, the jobs that exist or how to apply for those jobs, he said.
Most college graduates, Stier said, are willing to wait only four weeks to hear back about their job application. Many students face deadlines to begin repaying educational loans, and they want feedback on when they will go to work and what kind of training they will receive, participants in a panel discussion at the summit said.
A four-week turnaround could be a challenge for some agencies, especially those that are used to taking from six months to a year to make job offers, conduct background checks and obtain medical or other fitness information.
The Partnership’s research found that federal agencies need to rebuild their networks on college campuses, in part because 96 percent of faculty members advise students about where to look for work. Tapping into alumni groups also can help agencies recruit, Stier said.
Students want job information tailored to their college major and do not want to be told to go to a Web site to learn about federal careers, the Partnership found. In contrast, the Partnership found, private-sector companies typically meet with students on campuses and even take their recruiting information into classrooms.
Perhaps more important, Stier suggested, the government could pay more attention to internship programs as a way to recruit and evaluate college students. He noted that 15 percent of federal interns are eventually hired by the agency where they have worked, while the private sector hires about 35 percent of interns with experience in their workplace.
“That’s something where the government can improve,” Stier said.
Stephen Barr writes the Federal Diary column at The Washington Post and hosts a weekly discussion, Federal Diary Live, at washingtonpost.com.
|
|
|
![Government Leader[justice]](/images/govleader_smlogo.gif "Government Leader [justice]"){kind=small}
