Recruiting Power

To increase the pool of applicants for seven vacancies in the budget office this summer, Weems asked the department's personnel shop to help him rewrite vacancy announcements to make them more understandable and appealing to people outside government. He also asked them to help him advertise the jobs in places where non-government people would see them.

Typically, a vacancy announcement for a federal budget analyst reads like this: "The position is located in the Administration Division, Finance Branch, Budget Execution. Incumbent is responsible for monitoring the results of budget execution and formulation input from the six regional budget officers in coordination with the controller in the central office and the controller of the Training Center of the Bureau of Prisons."

The HHS budget office announcement read: "For the energetic individual who wants a challenging career with growth and advancement opportunities, we have positions available that will challenge you to grow and learn. The Budget Office of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees an annual budget of over $400 billion, is on the cutting edge of the nation's health and human service policy and provides the vital information and support required by our policy-makers to address the needs of the American people."

"We did get some support from our personnel people, but we're the ones who know our jobs," Weems says. "So we had to sit down and write [the announcements]. We pushed the envelope on a number of things. They kept us within the law and regulation."

HHS' Program Support Center then helped Weems post the spiffed-up job announcements on HotJobs.com, a private sector job-search site, and in The Washington Post's employment section. The announcements generated 800 qualified applicants-more than 100 per position. In the past, traditional announcements on USAJobs garnered only 20 qualified applicants per position.