Analysis: Bring Them On

Who knows whether government can fix our many economic woes, but it can fix one thing -- the federal hiring process. Most might think this issue is on hold, given more pressing challenges. As the private sector job market has tightened, the funnel for federal jobs is overflowing. At the same time, the likely prospect of an expanded role in new areas under the Obama administration hasn't gone unnoticed by would-be feds. USAJOBS.gov, government's primary job posting Web site, is more popular than ever, with hits in the hundreds of thousands.

Even though the recession has crowded out the discussion, the federal workforce is in a demographic chokehold. Hiring freezes, reductions in force and a low attrition rate have skewed the age and service composition. The average age of feds has gone from 42 in 1976 to 47 today. A majority of civil servants are eligible for retirement, or soon will be. The stock market decline might have put off retirement for some, but the biological clock is still ticking. By 2016, about 40 percent of the entire federal workforce is expected to retire; when this group of workers walks, so does their experience and expertise. And we shouldn't kid ourselves. This recession will end -- they always do -- leaving feds once again in the back of the pack competing for talent.

The opportunity to start rebuilding the federal workforce is now. The problem is the hiring process is a mess. Applicants wade through job announcements that go on for 20 or 30 pages. They must complete the agency application and the associated KSAs, shorthand for knowledge, skills and abilities. A KSA is an essay that identifies an applicant's experience and competency. Each agency creates its own KSAs, which are idiosyncratic enough to make it difficult to apply for more than one federal job. KSAs even have spawned a cottage industry of writing coaches seeking to help candidates optimize their answers.

Once submitted, applications often fall into a black hole. Many job seekers never hear from the hiring agency on whether their application was received, reviewed, rejected or accepted. Anecdotes abound about offers made after six months of silence and the applicant has gone on to other employment. The process for many takes four months or longer. Until recently, most agencies couldn't even tell how long hiring took since they kept no records. The process rewards persistence and patience, while many of the best drift off to the private sector and not-for-profits.

Agencies blame the dog's breakfast of rules they have to follow. There are indeed requirements that make federal hiring unique. Jobs are subject to suitability standards and almost all prospective employees go through a background check, which attempts to screen out bad apples. Although the time necessary to complete a background check has gone way down -- from years to months, and for many, to just days -- it still slows the hiring process. For some positions a security clearance is required, which involves a more extensive and time-consuming background check.

In addition, Congress has mandated that veterans are entitled to additional points in the hiring process. This sometimes means that the person most desired by the hiring manager cannot be the first choice. All these factors make the world of federal hiring more complicated than that of the private or nonprofit sector.

Even with these complications, there is much room for improvement. Some agencies make relatively speedy hiring decisions and still follow all the rules. Position descriptions beg for standardization and editing. Many agencies exacerbate the security clearance process by assigning security requirements to jobs that don't need them. And more than a few positions can be filled through r ésum és, eliminating the need to slog through repetitive KSAs. But the major problem is that most agencies lack a sense of urgency when it comes to hiring.

The Bush administration began to address this issue by requiring agencies to meet a 45 business-day standard, measured from the time the job posting period closed to when an offer was made. Unfortunately, this approach left too many holes on both ends of the process to make a real dent. Congress' frustration with the hiring system resulted in the creation of direct-hire authorities for critical occupations. But in the long run they make it worse. By creating numerous exceptions to the rules, the rules themselves lose their efficacy. Government can do better.

In the fall of 2008, the Office of Personnel Management announced an end-to-end hiring process roadmap, which promises real reform. The standard requires federal employers to commit to hire for a majority of positions within 80 calendar days. Unlike the 45-day model, the period begins from the time the position is posted and ends with an applicant in the job. The new standard requires agencies to communicate with applicants during the process.

Starting this year, agencies are required to put the pieces of the new roadmap in place. OPM is issuing concise, standardized position descriptions for common federal occupations to eliminate redundancy. Not all hires have to be completed within 80 days. Some positions are just too difficult to fill. Still, the majority can and should fall within the framework set out by OPM. Results will be reported annually to OPM.

Agencies are going to have to change the way they do business. Identifying, attracting and retaining new talent is a unified function. Processes for identifying workforce needs, recruiting, hiring, onboarding and measuring -- all issues addressed in the OPM roadmap -- must be linked. Many of these functions can be supported by technology. Automated tracking, measurement and communication systems are within the reach of existing products. All it takes is a commitment from senior leaders to recognize talent acquisition as one of the most critical challenges the federal workforce faces.

The change in administration creates uncertainty, threatening agency compliance with these efforts. Recently, Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, introduced the Federal Hiring Process Improvement Act, which incorporates much of OPM's end-to-end standard. Enactment of this bill would go a long way toward sustaining the hiring initiative. But without clear direction and vigorous support from the Obama administration, it will be stillborn. It is especially important that Director John Berry and the other new leaders at OPM publicly state early on that reforming the federal hiring process is a major priority. This is one problem that can be fixed.

Howard Weizmann is a client executive with consulting firm EquaTerra Inc., and is former deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management.