Dashboard Gives Insight into Federal Government Hiring Timelines
Getting qualified applicants hired into the federal government in a timely manner remains a challenge and a top priority of the Biden-Harris administration.
Now the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is publicly posting how long it takes to hire employees.
The Time to Hire (T2H) Dashboard allows the public to see the average time to hire for all federal employees for the past few fiscal years, how long it takes from job offer to start date, average time to hire for mission critical positions, and more. It’s meant to bring transparency to the hiring process.
Time to Hire Increases
Government data find that despite OPM’s emphasis on speeding up hiring, the time to get employees into the federal government is actually increasing.
It took an average of 101.2 days to hire employees in fiscal year 2023. That’s a day longer than FY 2022 and four days longer than FY 2021.
Hiring timelines for mission critical occupations are much quicker. It took an average of 94 days to hire for information technology (IT) management positions, 73 days for contracting, and 70 days for human resources (HR) management. HR and contracting positions saw about a one day improvement from 2022, while IT hiring saw a two day increase from the prior fiscal year.
OPM made the dashboard public as part of the Strengthening the Federal Workforce initiative under the President's Management Agenda
PMA Updates
The updates were part of a broader quarterly update list on President’s Management Agenda (PMA) implementation.
OPM noted it also issued guidance and competency models for AI skills and abilities. It also launched five pooled hiring efforts and kicked off the 2024 summer internship experience program.
Chance to Compete Act
Meanwhile, hiring reform legislation advanced in the Senate.
The Chance to Compete Act (S.59) cleared the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. The legislation makes it easier to hire qualified employees by requiring the government to use actual job evaluations and tests to determine if applicants can do the job. It also allows agencies to share information more easily about job candidates when they are working to fill similar positions.
“Our bill reduces unnecessary barriers to ensure Arizonans who have the ability and skill for certain federal jobs get a fair chance to compete. I’m proud our legislation earned strong bipartisan support,” said lead sponsor Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ).
A companion bill was approved by the House of Representatives in early 2023.
