Frank’s Career Corner, Diversity Hiring at your agency and do you lie on your resume, Linkedin? by GovLoop Insights
On today’s program for Wednesday March 28th, 2012.
- Are you happy in your career? Yes — happy and career can go together. Frank DiGiammarino will walk us through the first step of the career framework.
- Diversity in the federal workforce — does it matter? or is it just another mandate? We’ll talk to Tom Fox of the Partnership for Public Service.
- And that traditional resume… and the one people put on, say, LinkedIn. Which is more accurate? We’ll talk to the person who has actually done research to determine the answer.
The stories that impact your life… your government world in 120-seconds…
- The House is once again at a standstill on the highway bill, just days before federal funding would be shut off and Congress skips town for its two-week recess. Politico reports that Republicans pulled a bill that would have provided for a 60-day extension of highway programs yesterday — the second time in as many days that Republicans have had to abandon plans to extend highway funding. The move came after Democrats said they would withhold support for a short-term bill until Republicans agree to also pass a longer-term bill that will serve as their negotiating position in a few weeks when they conference the bill with the Senate. The big issue now is timing. House Republicans want to leave town Thursday afternoon for a two-week recess.
- A standoff over nominees is undercutting key agencies. Politico reports Senate Republicans are refusing to approve at least seven other financial regulator nominees in the wake of President Barack Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray… and that has left key agencies in limbo. Politico says the mess complicates the implementation of major aspects of the Dodd-Frank reforms. The nominations that are on hold include candidates for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Treasury Department. In January, President Obama decided to Cordray as the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, using a recess appointment.
- 130 Congressmen are urging Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to lift the DoD’s civilian workforce cap. Government Executive says the cap is part of the DoD’s current cost-saving initiative to cut the civilian workforce back to fiscal 2010 levels. The size-reduction effort was spearheaded by Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates. In July 2011, Senator Barbara Mikulski, and four other Senate Democrats co-signed a similar letter also urging Panetta to reconsider the civilian employee cap.
- The FBI’s top cyber cop offered a grim appraisal of the nation’s efforts to keep computer hackers from plundering corporate data networks. Shawn Henry says “We’re outgunned and out-maned,” The Wall Street Journal says Henry is leaving the FBI after more than two decades with the bureau. He says “the current public and private approach to fending off hackers is “unsustainable.” Computer criminals are simply too talented and defensive measures too weak to stop them.”
- Hackers broke into the database for a military dating Web site and stole passwords, e-mail addresses, and other information from nearly 171,000 accounts. CNet reports that the hack was apparently by the same group that took credit for attacks on sites belonging to Sony, PBS, the U.S. Senate, CIA, Arizona sheriffs, and others.
- The Army is focusing making energy-saving a key part of its performance contracts. Federal News Radio reports the Army is upping expected to up its spending by $800 million to $2.5 billion. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Energy and Sustainability Richard Kidd said the $800 million investment would be over the next two years. This accompanies a Dec. 2 memo from President Barack Obama directed at federal agencies and departments to take new steps toward increasing the energy efficiency of federal facilities, in part through the use of performance-based contracting.
- The EPA is implementing its first ever climate rules. Government Executive says EPA will limit greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants. This is the agency’s first major regulatory action to address climate change as promised by President Obama’s administration soon after he took office in 2009.
- Two northern virginia councils are teaming up to cut costs and add member value. The Northern Virginia Technology and the Council and Professional Services Council will extend member-level pricing to each other’s members for selected events, share legislative agendas and provide thought leadership.
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Frank’s Career Corner: The “who” in your strategy
Frank DiGiammarino
Our mission on the DorobekINSIDER can be summed up in six words: Helping you do your job better… and specifically, helping government do its job better. And one of the easiest ways to ensure you do a great job is to get you have a career that you love. That’s where Frank DiGiammarino comes in. Over the years Frank has developed this three part career framework. He has presented it at GovLoop’s NextGen Leadership Summit — and he’ll be doing that again this year… and even offering some personalized visits. And we gave you a preview two weeks ago. The framework asks you to assess the who… the why… and the what. Frank tells me that often people want to jump right to the WHAT — what job can I have. And that is where he usually starts. But the more complex question — the more far-reaching question — is WHO. I asked him to explain the who… the what… and the why…
On GovLoop: Frank’s Career Corner: The who question
If you have questions you’d like Frank to tackle, let us know.
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Why diversity in the workplace matters
Tom Fox, vice president for leadership and innovation at Partnership for Public Service
Does diversity matter? Yes, there are all kinds of rules about having a diverse workforce — and the EEOC — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — says that the federal government leads the private sector when it comes to providing a diverse workforce… don’t get much credit for that, do you? Despite those numbers, it is still a challenge. The EEOC says the percentage of women, as well as the percentage of some male minorities, is lower in the federal workforce than in the labor force overall. Tom Fox is the Vice President for Leadership and Innovation at the Partnership for Public Service. He told me why diversity matters.
On GovLoop: Is diversity hiring a priority at your agency?
Fox’s Washington Post column: Fixing diversity gaps in the federal workforce
EEOC’s Annual Report on the Federal Work Force Part II
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Which is more honest: The tradition resume or LinkedIn?
Jamie Guillory, researcher at Cornell University
Are people more honest in the resume they submit when they apply for a job… or on the details that they post on the professional network LinkedIn? Got a guess? Researchers at Cornell University actually studies that question…
Jamie Guillory is the author of the report, “The Effect of LinkedIn on Deception Resumes”
On GovLoop: Lie on your resume? Is Linkedln more honest?
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Before we finish up… a few closing items…
- The Senate yesterday voted down a motion to begin work on legislation that would have overhauled the financially ailing Postal Service. It was a measure that postal officials said did not go far enough in allowing them to cut costs, and that some postal unions said would make the post office’s financial situation even worse. The New York Times reports that the measure fell nine votes short of the 60 needed to move forward. The Senate will consider taking up the measure again in mid-April, when lawmakers return from recess. The Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has repeatedly said that the Senate’s postal reform bill did not go far enough in allowing the service to act more like a business and cut costs more aggressively. But yesterday, Postal officials said the agency would continue to work with Congress on comprehensive legislation to reform and improve the business model.
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Above, U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Reagan Lodge, Headquarters and Service Battalion, Marine Corps Base Quantico, conducts water running exercises during a physical training session in Ramer Hall, on Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia on Sept. 14. HT: Foreign Policy
And a picture is worth 1,000 words, right. Military photography… in the United States, it dates back to the Civil War. Foreign Policy magazine says that back then, President Lincoln thought documentation might be important and commissioned commissioned Mathew Brady to document the war, eventually leading to an invaluable trove of photographs used by generations of historians. Today, hundreds of U.S. military photographers, videographers, and artists continue to document armed services activities around the world. Foreign Policy has a slideshow of photos… photos selected from winners from the 2011 Military Photographer of the Year competition, which was recently judged at the Defense Information School at Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland. These photos were chosen from thousands of entries and adhere to the same standards as photojournalism (meaning no posed or electronically manipulated images).
That does it for us today. The producers of GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER are Emily Jarvis and Stephen Peteritas.