Calling all Students…the Government Wants YOU!

Originally posted on Unleash the Monster

By Erica Pierson

It’s summer time and recent grads are in the process of looking to start their careers. Well, good news. Now is the right time to consider
a job in government. There are continued steps to implementing hiring
reform across agencies in response to the recent presidential
mandate. As part of this reform, the Office of Personnel and Management
is doing its part to help agencies focus on diversity.

The first step of the reform for OPM is to reduce time-to-hire by eliminating knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) essays and replacing
them with traditional resumes and cover letters. The second step is to
improve diversity in government. One way to do this is to recruit
students and recent grads.

In a recent Government Executive article, OPM Director John Berry said that he is assembling a team of 65 people to lead an aggressive
diversity effort to “get to a place where, over the course of the summer
or early fall, we will create a program to take to the president to
recommend on how we can encourage diversity in the federal government
and do better there.”

While we are encouraged to see the OPM calling for diversity, we also recognize that there is a great deal of work that will come with this
effort, including:

• Improving the branding of federal government agencies to demonstrate the benefits to choosing a
  career in government.
• Streamlining the hiring process. Students looking for jobs want immediate feedback and are
  unwilling to wait long periods of time before hearing from an employer.
• Connecting where students group together. Facebook, Twitter and other
  social media networks are places where agencies can connect and
  recruit students while extending their own brand.

If you are a student and would like to share your story about applying for government jobs, please post and comment below. If you are
a recruiter and have implemented new methods for attracting new
students into government positions, we want to hear from you too!