Hiring Reform by the Numbers

At a Government Executive Leadership Briefing this morning, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry provided an update on the Obama administration's hiring reform effort, one year into the initiative.

Some of the numbers he reported:

• 91 percent of federal jobs are now filled based on resumes and cover letters (without a requirement for lengthy essays), up from 39 percent in 2009.
• 96 percent of announcements no longer include a requirement to fill out knowledge, skills and abilities statements.
• 89 percent of jobs are filled using a category ranking system, rather than requiring managers to choose from among the top three highest-ranked applicants for the position.
• 86 percent of job announcements are now written in plain language, and 36 66 percent are five or fewer pages long.
• The governmentwide average time it takes to fill a position is now 105 days. (Robert Buggs, chief human capital officer at the Education Department, said that at his agency, the average is down to 65 days.)

"We've stolen third base, and we're headed for home," Berry said of the overall hiring initiative.

By the way, if you haven't read it yet, Emily Long has a great piece on the effort and where it goes from here in the current issue of Government Executive.