GovernmentExecutive.com

Job mobility may be the most critical feature federal agencies can offer to recruit talented young people to science and technology positions, panelists said Tuesday at an event hosted by the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government and the Gallup Organization.

"I like to think of the government as a big company," said Daniel Kolenich, a computer engineer with the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center. "You find yourself in a position where you may not have your right match or you're not being tested enough, and you can feel free to move around."

Kolenich and two other young federal employees on the panel -- Theresa Valentine Clark, a reliability and risk engineer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Jason Hyland, lead mechanical design engineer for the James Webb space telescope at NASA -- said the ability to move among jobs within the government influenced their decision to enter and remain in the federal workforce.

Clark noted that the NRC has a professional development program that allows employees to work several types of jobs to "get a feel for the agency" before settling on a specific position. She said she worked different jobs within NRC for two years before finally choosing her current one last year.

The government is eager to establish sound practices for recruiting and retaining skilled employees, especially as it faces a potential loss of 60 percent of its workforce from retirements over the next decade. One of the greatest challenges may be ensuring that government can compete with the private sector in recruiting employees with science and technology expertise.

"We're facing tough competition around the world in this area," said Patricia McGinnis, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government. "The number of graduates and those choosing careers in science and technology in this country are not all that encouraging."

In a recent Gallup poll, 49 percent of the Generation Y workforce placed intellectual challenges before compensation and job security as a top workplace value.

Mary Ellen Beach, deputy director of human resources at NRC, said her agency has focused on ensuring that employees are consistently engaged and intellectually challenged. To address that, she said, NRC has increased its level of supervisory training. "We need to give supervisors the tools to harness all of this energy and ideas," she said.

McGinnis noted that funding for training and development is often the first to go when agency budgets are cut. But Beach said NRC made a commitment early on to place a long-term value on training and investing in employees.

Kolenich said educational incentives and student loan repayment programs are critical to attracting younger workers. He said his agency allows him to go to school for 10 hours and work 30 hours each week, while still getting paid for a 40-hour work week.

An additional challenge in recruiting, according to several panelists, is the lengthy hiring process. The government promotes a 45-day goal for hiring new workers, though that is not a requirement. "Some agencies hit that [goal] routinely," said Office of Personnel Management Director Linda Springer. "Others have more of a challenge in doing that and in operating consistently."

An Environmental Protection Agency employee commented that OPM must work to ensure that all agencies have the hiring flexibilities needed. Springer said OPM is trying to extend to competitive service agencies flexibilities in such areas as emergency hiring, pay banding and pay for performance.

"It's about striking the right balance between merit and a fair process and being able to compete with the private sector in terms of pay and time," Springer said.

COMMENTS

• How about extending mobility to ALL positions in government, not just technical? Unfortunately, most agencies look at themselves as individual islands that require unique skills rather than as one piece of a larger overall "company". Changing jobs, especially between agencies, in the Federal service is a nightmare. It once took me a year and a half! It's a slow, cumbersome process that discourages current employees and new hires alike. How many times do people have to wait months with no word about a job position? I posted a resume once on a contractor job site for kicks. I got three phone calls within a week. Government HR must speed it's process to have any chance of competing. Flexibility and mobility equate to efficiency in HR actions plus a Federal mindset that is not as static as it is today. I can't wait for 60% of the workforce to retire. Maybe then things can change. Allen Posted July 11, 2007 11:15 PM
• I do think mobility -- throughout a person's career -- is important to attracting people. Sure, you may go from young and mobile to stationary and responsible, but it sure is nice knowing that if I need to move there's a good chance that there will be a federal agency nearby that I can work for. Or if I change career tracks 10 times, I can still find satisfying work at agencies I know and respect and can be proud of. One somewhat related comment: I have been both a federal employee (doing clerical/admin support, earlier in my career) and a contract employee (doing science). People in government are perpetually complaining about having a hard time finding people "with science and technology expertise" to fill federal positions. Honestly, I don't know what the problem is. There was a time when I dearly wanted to have a federal science position, but all the applications I sent out (over a period of 5 years) were rejected. Ironically, while I was waiting for federal positions to open up during that time span, I ended up working at a federal agency as a contract employee doing the same thing that I would have done as a federal employee. (And costing the government and the taxpayers more in the process.) Us young folks (I'm a Gen-Xer) with science and technical expertise are out there and we're banging on the door as loudly as we can! We're ready and willing to serve, but for some reason you just don't see us! Janet Posted May 11, 2007 6:53 PM
• Are you kidding? After 30 years and many moves, I wouldn't tell anyone to work for the government. So that you know, I did work my way up the ladder, but still, this is a joke. PD Posted May 11, 2007 12:57 PM