AGA Today
Report Offers
Improvement Plan for Government Hiring
By Stephen
Barr, The Washington Post, Tuesday, September 26, 2006; D04
Complaints
about the federal hiring process are long-standing. Job applicants say
it takes too long and is too confusing and that they often wait for much
of a year without feedback on where their application stands.
In response,
the government has tried to speed up the hiring process. Agencies are
increasingly using computers to decrease processing time. The Office of
Personnel Management has developed a 45-day hiring model. Still, hiring
takes time, in part because many jobs require medical and security
clearances (and some background checks can take a year or longer).
The larger
question, however, is whether the government is identifying and
selecting the best applicants. Public opinion surveys suggest relatively
few college graduates see the government as a first choice when
job-hunting, and a new study by the Merit Systems Protection Board
suggests that the government needs to do a better job of selling itself.
The board is a quasi-judicial agency that oversees civil service
principles.
"The Government
does not do an adequate job of marketing itself to a labor force that
currently believes the private and non-profit sectors can provide more
rewarding, challenging and developmental experiences," the board's
report said. "To compete, the Government needs to sharpen its recruiting
skills and improve communications with potential applicants."
To address
these challenges, the report recommends that the government tighten
hiring procedures to emphasize quality and not just speed.
According to
the report, from the board's policy and evaluation office headed by
Steve Nelson , the government has some bad habits that may be
undermining its goal of hiring the best and brightest.
For example,
the report points out that many agencies base hiring decisions on grade
point averages, even though research has shown that an applicant's GPA
does not indicate whether a person will succeed in the workplace.
The
"outstanding scholar program," created in 1981, permits agencies to hire
college graduates who have a 3.5 GPA or are in the top 10 percent of
their class without requiring them to compete against other applicants
-- the traditional civil service hiring practice -- and without any
assessment of their ability to do the job.
The MSPB report
asserts that not all 3.5 GPA applicants make good employees and that
some of them are hired many years after they complete college and may
hold degrees with little relevance to their federal job.
The outstanding
scholar program was created to help bring minorities into the
government, but the report indicates that many agencies use it as a way
to bring applicants on board quickly for administrative and professional
jobs without regard to their minority status.
When hiring,
agencies should put more emphasis on giving tests that measure spatial,
verbal and math skills and on "structured interviews" that solicit
consistent types of information from job applicants, the report
recommends.
The report
urges agencies to look at hiring as a business decision to be made by
senior managers. "The actual cost of hiring the wrong person for a job
-- including wasted salary, benefits, severance pay, training costs and
hiring time -- can be up to three times the employee's salary,"
according to the report.
Agency leaders
"must acknowledge just how much impact the hiring process has on mission
accomplishment" and hold subordinates accountable when they do not make
top-notch hires, the report recommends.
The report also
urges the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees government-wide
hiring policies, to work with Congress and an interagency personnel
council to review the needs of agencies and to make it easier for job
applicants to navigate the hiring process.
© 2006 The
Washington Post Company