As a career counselor, I get a lot of eye-rolls when I talk about self-assessment as a part of the career development planning process. And yet, when I ask my graduate students what they do best, they don’t have very descriptive words. “Multitasking” or “problem-solving” or “building strategies”—interesting concepts but not particularly useful in jobRead… Read more »
According to this recent article by Rachel Feintzeig in the Wall Street Journal, the percentage of federal employees under the age of 30 hit an eight-year low of 7% in 2013. It’s not a new problem, but it’s part of a consistent trend – the number has been steadily dropping since the late ’70s, whenRead… Read more »
I’ve been participating in a young professional women’s group. Recently we discussed and worked through Lois Frankel’s Nice Girls ^Still Don’t Get The Corner Office. Frankel’s book offers an assessment to help identify areas the reader self-identifies as performing well and areas the reader self-identifies as needing improvement. One common area improvement amongst the groupRead… Read more »
It’s well known that federal employee spirits are low, but how low? Record low? Seems like that could be the case.The Office of Personnel Management recently surveyed the 2.1 million workers across the government about their satisfaction at work and the results were troubling. The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Report foundRead… Read more »
The great truism that underlies the civic technology movement of the last several years is that governments face difficulty implementing technology, and they generally manage IT assets and projects very poorly. It can be tempting to view this lack of technology acumen as a symptom of a larger disfunction. Governments are thought to be large,Read… Read more »
Governing Magazine featured a short article today citing a new survey by InternMatch.com, an online internship matching service. The article has a slightly gloomy tone, lamenting that only 14% of college students surveyed want to intern in government, compared to 66% who want to work in for-profit businesses and 20% in non-profit organizations. I thinkRead… Read more »
Acquisition Reform – Industry experts have compared it to Groundhog Day and a complicated system of pendulums shifting between priorities. The descriptions may differ but one thing most agree on is that with federal acquisition becoming ever more complex, fixing it isn’t getting any easier. In fact, Frank Kendall, the Under Secretary of Defense forRead… Read more »
The 2013 4-12 Philadelphia Eagles were a football team in turmoil, and that’s putting it lightly. After their dismal season they changed the guard and hired college football offense virtuoso Chip Kelly from Oregon. Like all new hires he inherited a team he neither recruited, nor built. But he worked with the assets before him.Read… Read more »
Other bloggers have written some excellent articles on ways to improve government hiring practices including Donna Dyer’s excellent blogs. I see an issue regarding promoting people within the federal government and offer a suggestion for improvement from the state of California. Where’s the Promotion? On several occasions, my supervisor lamented the lack of easy, transparentRead… Read more »
Transforming talent management requires digitization and leveraging social and digital technologies to promote and enhance communication, collaboration, and engagement. This post presents some of the ways in which social and digital technologies are transforming talent management throughout the employee life cycle. All of the practices are currently possible based on available technology; however, none ofRead… Read more »