Return to Article: OPM announces plan to improve federal hiring
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73977
OPM rules no longer apply in the selection process. GS status means nothing. People from the public are being hired that have an unfair advantage after working a year or two in contracted positions, they are being selected for GS positions. A full review of the OPM hiring and selection process needs to completed and monitored on a regular basis. This "quick hire" process may be nothing more than the opportunity for manangement to select their favorite people for the available postion, regardless of status or qualifications.
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52385
It took our organization 2 1/2 months to hire a secretary. What we got was a ex military college graduate who thinks that being a government secretary is like being in the military. Go to medical appointments without using leave. Show up when you feel like it. Knows absolutely nothing about being a secretary, but had all the right credentials. Prior military service, college degree. She is a real go getter, going back to school to get her master's degree. Then it will take us another 2 1/2 months to get another employee. There were applicants on the list who had prior secretarial experience and worked on this installation, but they didn't get selected because the criteria today seems to be exmilitary and college degree.
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50748
It might help if they made better use of the talent they already have; for instance, doing away with time-in-grade.
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50654
Dan Ketter, that is the first thing you've written that I agree with.
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50601
Efficient OPM is an oxymoron.
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50579
"The government will never attract the best and brightest as long as quotas exist."
You are so absolutely sure that "quotas" exist, what is your evidence, are the "quotas" published anywhere? I say hogwash. GOALS are NOT quotas, and the Federal government is to be commended for recognizing the need to include ALL of it's citizens at the highest levels of employment. If everybody thought like you, minorities (and women too, probably) would all be limited to maintenance and food service.
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50511
Hiring Veterans. Selective Service regulations must be rewritten to coincide with where we are today. These regulations are outdated. Soldiers that have already served and received Honorable discharges should not have to receive waivers before being allowed to begin work; this adds to the lengthy process currently in place for Federal hiring.
We must also take a hard look at how we are conducting background investigations for ex-military personnel. If a soldier held a Top Secret level of clearance for over 20 years, then held a Top Secret clearance for additional 10 to 15 years in other civilian employment why is the Federal government wasting time and money conducting 6 to 12 month reinvestigations to hire these people into the civil service? One government yet divided? Once again, Veteran's are blocked from getting civil service employment. Is this the best we can do for those that have made the sacrifice? When they return, they must continue to be employed to support their families like all other Americans. They bring much more than the average i.e., leadership, education, discipline, and loyalty. Now, add their individual skill sets with their years of experience.
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50458
Then you have Congress mandating that white men not apply for SES positions, that they are now permanent set asides and quota driven positions
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50452
By the time a potential employee passes the security clearance (about 4 months), he has lost his/her patience or money to sustain themselves.
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50399
Everyone and everything in this process is on a "slow bell". You must already have a job/paycheck before you could even consider applying for a federal job in any agency at anything above "entry level". Either that or be independently wealthy.
Recent case in point: GS-15 Announcement in mid Dec 07. Vacancy open 21 days. First interview mid Feb 08. Second interview the last week in March, 08. No decision yet, as of 9 May 2008. That works out to over 5 months - so much for "90 days". This is typical from my experience over the past several years.
If the standard pattern holds, I will not get any feedback if not selected for the position, either from the selecting office or from the "automated" HR system, despite having to submit all information electronically and providing an e-mail address.
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50397
It sounds like Michael may have worked at Camp Pendleton ! Most all of the civillian GS and WG/WL types here are Former Marines or ex military. 99% of the time the most qualified applicant will be passed over by some recently retired ex. Gunny etc. who really hasen't got a clue. I wish DoD would put a stop to it. It hurts us all in the long run. I would like to see a 3 year ban on hiring ex. military into jobs at locations where they were on Active Duty or I would like to see these people have their Military retirement Annunity reduced by the same ammount they make if re-employeed as a Cival Servant for DoD.
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50391
The government will never attract the best and brightest as long as quotas exist. People want an opportunity to succeed based on their talents and abilities not based on skin color or sex
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50390
Mr Smith, from an insider in that agency/function, WELL SAID!!
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50388
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The impediment to the federal government' ability to hire the truly best and the brightest is not process or procedure-driven. It is of organizational culture. And the unfortunate and unvarnished truth of the matter is that largest of all federal employers - the Department of Defense - even when it purportedly recruits for the best and the brightest outside of the DoD (via federal-wide and/or all sources recruitments in the general and administrative management fields in the mid to upper salary ranges) hires almost exlusively (nearly 100% of the time) only and merely prior DoD staffers of some sort - DoD GS or recently retired activy duty or DoD contractors. Unless and until this underlying and preposterously insular "we take care of our own (at the US taxpayer's expense via sham surmised external recruitments)" organizational culture is faced and changed, adopting new processes or practices to attract non-DOD applicants to apply for DOD vacancies (in the identified series and grades) will not mean a thing. The rampant near 100% levels of self-serving and self-financial driven inbreeding within DOD will continue unabated.
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50383
I can see it now. College students gathering around a bulletin board in excitement. They twitter about how they will join the federal workforce when they graduate and make only two thirds of what they can make elsewhere. I can see the best and the brightest lining up to be federal workers so they too can be can be treated like cattle in the corral.
Those college graduates just love working for people who have no appreciation of their skills. Only the best of the best will jump at the chance to playing office politics in order to survive while they try to do their job despite their boss.
If a college graduate can't look up the pay scale and calculate the salary of the position on their own, are they a college graduate? OPM doesn't have the solution because it is most of the problem.
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50381
It would help if the process could be shortened.
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50376
Where does one go to file a greivence about hiring pratices. I believe that I have a greivence to file about possible injustice iin hiring.
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50371
OPM is going to make hiring easier while they change the rules to make RIF's more selective and targeted between pay systems.
Sounds like OPM doesn't know which direction to circle the wagons.
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50359
The plan is great in theory but in practice it will be business as usual. I waited 14 mos for a clearance (single scope). It took so long that I solicited Congressional involvement. My Congresswoman was sent a letter from an OPM official outlining the process and their actions once the field work was in. At six months the FOI Ofc. sent me a copy of the field work investigation. I assumed, according to the OPM official, that it was being sent to DOD for adjudication. I followed up with the agency HR office monthly but no word. After six months the physical security specalists with the agency contacted OPM to follow up, only to find out that OPM never sent the information for adjudication. Once it was received I was on board within 45 days. Upon arrival at the agency, I was informed that an action was being drawn up to rescind the position. IF I had not been so persistent, I would not have my current position. Not many candidates will wait this long for an opportunity. No other entity operates with such a gross lack of accountability like OPM. We can make Civil Service look as appealing as we would like on the outside. But, if the inside is broken then it is all for naught!
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50355
You can streamline the process but can you change the mindset? Just as telework is a bitter pill to swallow ... so is hiring/promoting someone who isn't currently in the position or inline/next up for a promotion within the organization. Seasoned employees are being overlooked because of the same narrowmined, old school Fed/DoD manager mentality that has kept telework from expanding. I see seasoned employees, trained at DoD expense, at the best business schools in the US, who have continually received performance awards, and recognition at the level of Meritorious Civilian Service Awards, be repeatedly passed over because they are not working in the position, or are outside the organization and not inline for the next promotion (paying their dues), or a retiring military officer gets slotted into the vacant GS/NSPS position. A travesty is occurring and the net result is less than competent employees with little or nor big picture, strategic view of the enterprise. What a shame.
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50353
I hope they take a look at the process for handling applicants. When job hunting, there are few things worse than putting together an application package, submitting and receiving acknowledgement of submission, and then hearing NOTHING. The least the Government could do is send an e-mail to let you know whether or not you have been selected for the next round. If you are a contractor and your proposal is unsuccessful, you can a request a debrief. Why can't that be the case for unsuccessful candidates for a Federal position?
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50352
I sure hope this new OPM Directive will apply to exempt agencies, such as FBI and VA, as well.
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50348
While the trend over the past decade has been to chip away at provisions of The Reform Act of 1974 that require Fair and Open Competition and statutory Veterans Preference provisions by bending and breaking the law (and sometimes at OPM's endorsement and encouragement), I truly hope that fairness principles are not further usurped by the feverish desire for expediency of hiring. The end does not always justify the means.
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50347
Federal job announcements already give the salary range in dollars. If OPM had real statistics to back the need for "improving" the Federal hiring process, they would have presented them. The fact is, most agencies have 5 times the number of applicants they need for a position. In most entry-level hiring, agencies are turning away hundreds of applicants--most applications are never even reviewed. With priority referrals like veterans preference, most applicants will never be within reach of selection. As far as improving the time to hire, much of this is bogged down in the large applicants pools, applying the "rule of three", stringent requirements for clearing potential hires in terms of security and suitability, and of course, the effort to ensure every applicant gets notification of their status. Application notification is NOT a standard feature of private-sector hiring. If you lob resumes at a company, they don't have to get back to you.
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50345
A standard resume format should be followed by each federal agency. Every agency seems to have a different method to apply for a job. Why are so many different software programs?
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50344
All lip service. OPM has spent years decentralizing all federal HR functions and giving agencies little guidance on anything.
I will be real curious to see this implemented and for OPM to actually force agencies to adopt best practices.
Nice quotes from the NRC from their Director of HR. I'd be real curious to see if the applicants who directly experienced their process had such positive things to say about the NRC recruitment process-- I doubt it.
HR Specialist
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50338
This makes a great briefing, however everyone knows that ninety nine percent of the jobs announced are pre-selected. In most cases it's a family member that the position was create to fit erroneous credentials. Nepotism and cronyism has prevented the government for hiring qualified applicants. This also prevents qualified applicants for applying. Until an unbiased system is put in place, there will always be problems recruiting qualified applicants.
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50335
The easiest and most effecient thing that OPM could do to expedite and streamline Federal hiring is to promote a two-step review process. Applicants would submit a simple resume, and a smaller stable, qualifying for more detailed consideration, would then be requested to submit a full package. Asking for a full package from all initial applicants is wasteful, abusive towards the applicants, and, ultimately, anti-competitive as it frustrates would-be applicants.
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50331
NRC has the benefit of being one of, if not the, highest graded organizations in the federal government. The mission is clear, the staff is largely college graduates or higher, with a strong focus on engineers. Higher grades are traditionally found at NRC Headquarters, and the life of a regional office inspector can be hard due to the considerable travel and report writing involved.
NRC's Human Resources Department generally does exceptional work recruiting. However, some thirty-two years ago, the deliberately allowed NRC Office of Investigations personnel to be misclassified as Series 1811. Apparently, this was done to ease recruitment, but was not necessary due to the already high NRC grade structure. this misclassification has cost millions over the intervening years.
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50326
Then you have agencies like the TSA and DHS that consistently insist on recruiting exclusively from within their own organizations instead of opening their vacancy announcements to Federal employees at other agencies who are very competitive in terms of their KSAs, but can't get a foot in the door because of TSA and DHS purposely excluding all outsiders from applying. This policy of "growing our own" prevents new blood from bringing fresh ideas and diverse perspectives to the Agency's mission, ultimately resulting in organizational stagnation and a mentality of "us vs. them" in their working relationships with other Federal departments. Until ALL Federal agencies adopt a "hire-the-best-qualified-candidate" attitude, Federal civil service will continue to be the domain of the lowest common denominator.
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