The federal government is set to hire 600,000 people in the next 2 years, and to do that, they will need to make the hiring process a whole lot easier for outside (non-federal) applicants. Many job-seekers from outside the federal system have complained for years about the difficulty and complexity–not to mention the inscrutability–of the federal hiring process (the “competitive” hiring process in particular).
It is definitely not clear to nearly any non-federal job seekers I’ve met with that:
- If you put in your job seeker profile that you only want a permanent job (and don’t check of temporary or term positions), many of your applications won’t be viewed by HR at all because you are screening yourself out for many positions
- “One year experience at a GS 7 level”– has absolutely no meaning to anyone outside the system. What’s a GS level? What does GS stand for? What level am I qualified for? I have many applicants who don’t know that GS 12 is much higher than they can aim for with just a master’s degree.
- The federal government typically can’t hire for potential, but instead seems to hire only based on demonstrated experience, and you have to demonstrate it in your application clearly.
- You have to re-write your entire resume and focus on keywords in the job description– rephrasing something in your own words can mean you are not found best qualified
- You will have to write essays, and sometimes fax in your transcripts, or even mail (!) in your application
- “Status candidates” mean people who already work for the fed and/or have special hiring consideration due to recently finishing Peace Corps or AmeriCorps
- It can take months, even up to a whole year, to get through the hiring process. Take a look at this actual flowchart of HUD’s process and you can see why.
- Even if you apply and are best qualified, it is unlikely that your resume will be seen by the hiring manager unless you are a veteran, because of the rule of three–only the top 3 candidates can be forwarded
- Many jobs still aren’t posted on USAJobs, because they are federal career intern program or excepted service positions– and the name “career intern” is totally misleading because it’s a full-time job
- and on and on.
The President’s new directive is designed to (hopefully) speed up the process, get rid of the rule of three, get rid of KSA essays, get hiring managers involved in hiring, and generally make the process less cumbersome. I’m sure not all the changes are going to happen right away, but it seems promising.
What do you think? How will the hiring reform change how you do hiring?
At a certain point, I have to wonder about the quality of applcants who are having so much trouble with the federal hiring process. Why is it that current federal employees (several million at last count) somehow managed to navigate a system these applicants find so intimidating?
“If you put in your job seeker profile that you only want a permanent job (and don’t check of temporary or term positions), many of your applications won’t be viewed by HR at all because you are screening yourself out for many positions”
So what don’t they understand about fairly simple instructions?
“The federal government typically can’t hire for potential, but instead seems to hire only based on demonstrated experience, and you have to demonstrate it in your application clearly.”
Did they look into the wide range of federal intern programs including Stay-In-School, which allows them to start a federal job before finishing college?
“You have to re-write your entire resume and focus on keywords in the job description– rephrasing something in your own words can mean you are not found best qualified”
And how does this differ from dealing with the word search algorythms used in the private sector?
” You will have to write essays, and sometimes fax in your transcripts, or even mail (!) in your application”
What is it applicants find intimidating about writing essays? Are they unable to communicate in more than 140 characters? Or did they tweet all their college exams?
” “Status candidates” mean people who already work for the fed and/or have special hiring consideration due to recently finishing Peace Corps or AmeriCorps”
Can they read the FAQ page on USA-Jobs?
“It can take months, even up to a whole year, to get through the hiring process.”
Ok, here they have a point but I’ve seen major corporations who were nearly as cumbersome.
“Even if you apply and are best qualified, it is unlikely that your resume will be seen by the hiring manager unless you are a veteran, because of the rule of three–only the top 3 candidates can be forwarded”
So there is no one working in the federal government except veterans? That would come as a surprise to 6 out 8 people in my office who never wore a uniform. BTW, have they thought of serving in the military for a year or two if that is what they believe will gain them entry to a career they claim to value so much?
“Many jobs still aren’t posted on USAJobs, because they are federal career intern program or excepted service positions– and the name “career intern” is totally misleading because it’s a full-time job”
Gee you might have to look in more than one place to find all the job opportunities. Have they tried Google?
Yes the federal hiring system is different from the private sector; but having worked in both, I would say the federal system is actually easier to navigate. Many of the big tech companies, law firms and financial services corporations have intern/recruitment programs that require applicants to be wired in by the summer of their junior year in college. Private sector HR offices are legendary for wasting applicants time with job postings they never intend to fill but want to “test the market”. And, unlike many corporations in the private sector, the federal government does not have a policy of only hiring from a select list of “elite” colleges so applicants are not prescreened out by a mediocre SAT score when they are 16.
Most people, myself included, agree the federal hiring system could be improved. But if potential applicants cannot be bothered to demonstrate the job research skills, writing ability and tenacity to work through the current system; perhaps they are doing everyone a favor by avoiding federal service.
All excellent points, Peter. I’m sharing from my own experience of 12 years in higher education career services, advising some of the smartest and most dedicated students in the nation and at some top-ranked schools, including a Master of Public Administration program where students are really dying to go work for the federal government.
The unanimous answer I get from nearly all of these students is that the process is inscrutable, takes so long, and is simply so different from what any job seeker experiences in any other job search, that the federal government is literally pushing away top-notch people.
If you listen to presentations by people who have made a career out of advising job-seekers on how to get federal jobs– and the fact is, there should not be such an industry, but it is necessitated by the difficulty and differentness of the federal job search process–they themselves will tell you that special training is needed for job seekers to succeed in the federal hiring process. If you want to hire 600,000 top people, you don’t want to turn them away by making the hiring process something you need to hire a special consultant to help you through.
Heather – Your second bullet point is one of the questions I always ask!! I see some Federal jobs I’m interested in, but never know if they will consider me qualified. So frustrating to take the time to complete essays, etc. and jump through all the hoops to apply and then hear they don’t consider you qualified. Interesting to learn bullets #4 and #8 – sheds some light on the process for me.
I’ve heard that it is pretty difficult to get hired in Federal government for any jobs which are not entry level… I believe he had told me above the grade 9 it is pretty difficult. So, as a manager with education and experience, what IS the incentive for seasoned professionals to move into the Federal government arena!?
@Tricia — For what it’s worth, I was hired in as an 11 and know people who came in off the street as high as 15 and SL. No it is not as easy as coming in as a 7 but then I suspect that getting hired as a senior manager at any organization with more than 10,000 employees is somewhat more difficult than joining them as an intern. If you are interested and not already in, keep trying. You sound like you would be an asset.
BTW, I started work less than 60 days after submitting my initial application. The system is chunky but it is not impossible.
Peter – glad to hear that information on the process. Thanks!
Hello,
I hope the proposed changes will make it easier for someone such as myself who is trying to enter to federal civil service at the entry-level. How does one get information on internships? I know about FCIP designations.
Try Makingthedifference.org. The Partnernship for Public Service does a nice job of helping students find out about internships.
The problem is not the vehicle… applications, USAJOBS, programs… it is the PROCESS that is established in rule, law and regulation! Like federal purchasing, federal hiring needs to be accomplished in an objective, open, transparent and “merit-” based process that provides equal and fair consideration to everyone that applies. I use “merit” in quotes because the numerous and growing exceptions to merit hiring add layers of complication – veterans, CTAP, ICTAP, Reemployment Priority, Stopper Lists, expiring overseas asignments, veteran’s preference, spouse preference, survivor preference, federal career intern program, etc.
The current OPM reforms barely scratch the surface with most of them being just window-dressing to give the appearance of progress. Some will actually SLOW the hiring process, while providing some qustionable “relief” to applicants. For example, qualifying under OPM’s X-118 qualification standards are an imporrtant technical consideration and assessing competencies is never easy. However, agency staff must do that now with even LESS information. Most agencies used automated ATS systems to accomplish much of this in the past but now have to do it manually, like they did in the ’80s and before. This is progress? Also, OPM has decided to move USAJOBS development and maintenance in-house to OPM just months after OPM’s third failure at Retirement Systems Modernization in a two-decade long search for a fix in that vital area. USAJOBS was never broken… it is a vehicle for a cumbersome and badly flawed process that is based on hundreds of laws and Executive Orders and court decisions over 60+ years that were often in direct conflict with each other. The regulation process (especialy the Federal Personnel Manual) helped HR specialists wade through the conflicts until Clinton/Gore threw them away “to provide greater flexibility.” Changing the law is the answer but nobody seems to have the energy to face the real problem!
Wow, Ed, this is the kind of thing that I (as a “civilian” non-federal employee who has not worked in federal HR) never hear about. Even after spending time working with a former federal HR person, and having spoken to numerous federal HR folks, and managing the Partnership for Public Service’s grant on our campus to promote federal employment to students, we never hear about things like the ending of ATS systems. Why are they doing manual review? How will things slow the hiring process?
I spoke to a hiring manager at EPA just yesterday who said the move to category rating from the rule of three will mean that *all* qualified candidates will have to be interviewed. Is this true across the federal system? Or just an EPA thing, do you think? I can imagine that slowing the process considerably, especially if 50 people are found best qualified…
“Killing KSA essays” is not EXACTLY killing KSA essays or killing KSAs. KSA write-ups in manual hiring and automated KSA assessments in ATS-based hiring are functional equivalents that are among the tools that enable HR specialists to identify the best qualified for a job. This supplemental information is critical but a combination of other factors work to make them a “BURDEN on taxpayers.” For example, poorly described jobs and requirements and descriptions mired in Fed-speak and ACRONYMS don’t provide the clear information that applicants need to determine whether the job is a good fit and worth their time and effort to apply. The result is that applicants apply for large numbers of jobs that they have no chance of landing, filling out KSAs or taking KSA assessments. (CLEAR and unequivoval desriptions would lead to fewer and better quality applicants, but that has proven to be too hard.) OPMs response, “Kill KSA essays” which actually means to many HR specialists that we now have a new, “two hurdle” hiring process — step 1, HR specialists look at the Resume and Cover letter and essentially GUESS who sould be invited back into the process. Step 2, invite the select candidates to submit KSA essays or to take ATS-based KSA assessments. (One problem is that most hiring technologies have not been set up to support this manual intervention in the beginning of the process.) Other HR specialists (I guess like EPA) use Interview assessments as Step 2. (Ask an I/O psychologist about the validity and reliability of unstructured interviews as a hiring assessment.) I have gone on-and-on and could go on-and-one some more but do you get the picture? All the parts are connected and interrelated — position descriptons, job analyses, identification of differentiating competencies and KSAs, clear announcements, skilled and competent HR staff, valid and reliable assessments, good enabling technology and the participation and responsive actions of hiring managers. If any part breaks down, the process suffers. Then you get to the process itself. Hiring based on “merit” is fairly clear but the federal HR process is based on “merit, but…”
P.S. Hiring is not alone in being totally broken. Position classification has become “position justification” to support the near total perversion of the original classification principles. To support this overgrading, position descriptions (PD) are written to support pay and not describe actual jobs. As a principle artifact of the HR process, bad PDs drive bad hiring, bad training, bad discipline, etc. Then there is pay. We have two main pay laws, Title 5 and FLSA. For many employees pay is calculated twice, once under Title 5 and once under FLSA and the employee gets the highest of the two (Does that make sense to ANYBODY?? However, that is our OPM-managed system!)