Feds urged to treat senior execs as 'free agents'

In the world of sports, free agents can hop from team to team. But it's not as easy for federal executives to take their skills to a new playing field, according to a new report.

Comparing recent developments in the federal job market to the advent of free agents and salary caps in sports, the report calls for fundamental changes in recruitment and hiring practices for Senior Executive Service positions that would pave the way for a more fluid managerial workforce.

"Worker mobility in our society is becoming more widespread, and the federal workforce is not exempt. A quarter of a century ago, people who changed jobs more than once or twice in a decade were derisively referred to as 'job hoppers,'" the report said. "Today, anyone who stays in the same job for ten years is likely to be suspect."

"Reflections on Mobility: Case Studies of Six Federal Executives," was written by former federal executive Michael D. Serlin under a grant from the PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government. Serlin offers career tips from a half-dozen unusually mobile and highly successful federal managers on adapting to the 21st century job environment.

Serlin also writes from his own experience. His federal career included stints at the Treasury Department, the Postal Service, the Navy, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.

The executives profiled, who have worked in 11 of the 14 cabinet departments and 12 independent agencies during their careers, demonstrate the flexibility and drive that is essential to the new breed of SES professionals, the report said. Serlin also identified interagency leadership, commitment to ongoing professional development, and an ability to earn the respect of colleagues as shared traits of the successful mobile executive.

Based on their experience, and his own, Serlin recommended that the Office of Personnel Management implement the following changes to encourage mobility:

• Modernize systems to track high-level federal managers and make their names available on the Internet to agencies seeking to fill SES positions.
• Ease the transition from the private and non-profit sectors for qualified applicants.
• Address the obstacles to mobility generated by growing interagency pay and benefit discrepancies.
• Establish an executive search office to be used by agencies seeking to fill key vacancies.
• Create a speakers series and training curriculum for government executives in which well-traveled managers lend their expertise to colleagues.
• Incubate the mobility concept by encouraging Presidential Management Interns, who often serve in several departments during their internships, to continue their involvement in interagency activities.

Agencies should try new executive search tactics, such as active solicitation of candidates from outside their own ranks, Serlin suggested. Such outreach efforts are central to broadening the candidate pool, he said.

The executives profiled are Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General June Gibbs Brown, Carson Eoyang, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, Dennis Fischer, former commissioner of the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service, Robert Knisely, director of the Office of Student Financial Assistance's Analysis Service, Eileen Powell, a finance expert at the Department of Veteran Affairs and Myrta King Sale, an executive at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The report is available online at endowment.pwcglobal.com.