How do you recruit Gen Y’s into public service? Success stories?

Kenna Walsh

Do you have any particular ways you recruit Gen Y’s into public service? How about using social media to brand government or interact with employees? Can this be a way to showcase skills of the next wave of government employees?

I’m a Ph.D. student in public policy and administration and am working on a paper for a HR course. I’ve noticed some posts about doing speed networking and utilizing FourSquare, YouTube, FaceBook and smart phones to communicate with younger employees. Does your city or agency market any of these tools to attract younger employees?

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Nicholas Charney

Hey Kenna – I can tell you that the biggest mistake made by public sector employers is wowing them on intake and them failing to provide them with the opportunities they promised them. I’ve done some interviews with new hires that you might find insightful:

http://www.cpsrenewal.ca/2008/09/cpsrenewalca-weekly-interview-with-new.html

http://www.cpsrenewal.ca/2008/07/cpsrenewalca-weekly-in-conversation.html

Cheers and Goodluck with the paper!

Ed Powell

The President’s Hiring Initiative talks about making federal employment cool again but few make the connection between that goal and some recent past and historical agency successes in building Position Brands, Career brands and Agency brands like:
— the crystal clear “Position Brand” for Agents in the Secret Service and FBI;
— the range of efforts in social networking, “Day in the Life” videos and other tasks to build NASA’s “Career Brand;”
— the “green agency” and “worklife balance” promotion done by the EPA in building their “Agency Brand,” and similar Agency Brand efforts at CIA.

The Partnership for Public Service discovered in a research project that they sponsored that the right message repeated enough times will energize current students to consider working for the government. However, with all the energy that they were able to create, the enthusiasm waned when they hit the regulation and rule bound federal hiring process.