Urgent Call to Action to Improve the Federal Hiring Experience
The Biden Administration released a new roadmap to help federal agencies improve the hiring process, with the goal of getting more employees in the door at a faster pace.
The joint memo from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is billed as a call to action, giving agencies an outline on how to better address traditional bottlenecks in federal recruitment. It includes steps on strategic planning and applicant/manager experience, and builds on the tenants put forth in Priority 1 of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), which is to strengthen and empower the federal workforce.
“There remain opportunities to increase efficiency, eliminate complexity, promote coordination, and embed prioritization such that highly qualified individuals can more effectively encounter, apply for, and obtain jobs in the Federal Government,” wrote OMB Director Shalanda Young and OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver in the memo.
To improve hiring, the memo focuses on making the hiring process easier for three critical groups: applicants, hiring managers, and human resources employees.
To make the process better for applicants, the memo listed a laundry list of priorities for agencies to focus on including the below:
· Provide clear communication and develop improved application processes.
· Use a job title that resonates with jobseekers, but one that is in plain language and able to be understood with jobseekers outside of government.
· Add mission critical occupation tags to job announcements.
· Send timely application updates to job applicants.
Hiring managers are encouraged to:
· Work with HR professionals to identify subject matter experts who can improve and support agency qualification processes.
· Gain more control over their hiring process by designing a ranking method for a particular job.
· Create skills-based assessments to align with a particular position.
· Limit resume reviews to a pre-determined number of pages.
To help HR managers, the memo urges agencies to:
· Create and sustain agency talent teams to look at shared hiring and other methods to attract workers in hard to fill areas. That includes designation a shared certificate coordinator who is “responsible for building agency-wide familiarity with and awareness of shared certificates.”
· Better incentivize and create expectations for collaboration between HR and hiring managers.
· Ensure that hiring managers are aware of and are empowered to use the range of hiring authorities and tools at their disposal.
· Identify positions across agencies that require critical and specialized skills.
OPM cited success stories of agencies using these practices. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has hired over 13,000 employees from shared certificates across the Department in the past four years.
“By using shared certificates, we expedite the hiring process by filling vacancies from the shared certificate of candidates who have already completed rigorous assessments and have been determined qualified,” said HHS Chief Human Capital Officer Bob Leavitt. “The use of shared certificates is an extraordinary opportunity to improve the federal hiring experience by simplifying and streamlining the hiring process,” said Leavitt.
OPM issued Fact Sheets on resources and tools to support federal agencies with the implementation of the memorandum:
"This memo is a strong step forward in improving the federal hiring experience," said Tech Talent Project Co-Founder and Executive Director Jennifer Anastasoff. "Many tech, data, and AI professionals - and beyond - are eager to serve their country. It's exciting to see the federal government looking to best-in-class recruitment and retention strategies to attract and keep folks who are critical to delivering services, enforcing laws, and protecting our country."
OMB and OPM also stressed that they will continue to be involved in the federal hiring process and will take additional steps and make changes as needed.
“We aim to continuously improve the federal government’s ability to recruit, hire, and retain a diverse and skilled workforce to strengthen the way agencies deliver on their missions for the American people,” said OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver, who added that the memo is the “culmination of years of data-driven and innovative thinking about the federal hiring experience.”
“Improving government hiring is essential to bringing onboard the next generation of leaders who reflect our mission and possess the skills needed to meet mission and serve the public,” said Volcker Alliance President Sara Mogulescu.
