A new study shows just where the federal government is staffing up.

Last week The Partnership for Public Service released their report on where the jobs will be in the federal government over the next three years. Thirty-five federal agencies were surveyed and the top areas of openings projected are medical, security, law enforcement, legal and administrative.

So, unlike many sectors, jobs are there. The next questions: How will they get the best people for the slots? Will OPM’s strategic plan for making government the model employer help recruit the 270,000 mission-critical government jobs that will need to be filled? Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, said in a Washington Post article, “Fixing the hiring process is a key component in making it work”

Is this deja vu all over again? Check out my colleague Mark Havard’s comments in his blog, Are we finally on the road to hiring reform? “For his part, Berry’s own goal is no less than "a complete refresh of the federal government’s people policy." A lot of folks are rooting for him, including this commentator.”

In an effort to get government moving on practical hiring reforms, Office of Personnel Management chief John Berry is mandating a handful of audacious new HR measures. Berry, who calls himself "the Chief People Person for the Federal Government," has instructed all agencies and departments to shape up many of their human capital processes.                                       

We all know how complex and frustrating the process of hiring and on-boarding can be in the government. There’s been a hue-and-cry for years that the cycle has to be shortened and the process simplified. Enter John Berry, flush with the new administration’s energy, enthusiasm and optimism.

"We have, by and large, the best workers in the world," Berry told attendees in his keynote at July’s Excellence in Government conference," but we do not have the systems or policies we need to support them." His agenda for reform mandates just that, from streamlining the agency hiring process and making it more transparent to the public, to improving employee satisfaction and wellness.

Berry apparently means business with his SWAT team mandate, requiring each agency to appoint key managers and human capital staffers to their respective teams. Responsible for all aspects of the reform agenda in their agencies, the teams will address issues like mapping their hiring process, putting job announcements in plain English, notifying applicants at all stages, and involving hiring managers in the recruiting process. All agency SWAT teams were required to be in place and working by early July; they’re each on the hook for a full progress report to OPM by the end of September. To keep the teams motivated and productive, key OPM staffers have been detailed to each.

By December 15, all agencies have to submit action plans that both identify the barriers to hiring the best and brightest and also establish measurable paths to reversing these barriers and improving HR operations across the board. If you’re interested, I refer you to Berry’s June 18 memo which sets out all these mandates and goals pretty plainly.

For his part, Berry’s own goal is no less than "a complete refresh of the federal government’s people policy." A lot of folks are rooting for him, including this commentator.

As YouTube and Facebook remind us daily, cell phone and other spur-of-the-moment video has become a powerful one-to-many peer communication tool worldwide, particularly among Gen-Y populations. If you harbor any interest in recruiting members of this segment for your agency, can you convincingly deny that online video deserves an important place in your web toolset?

We’re all familiar with the swarm of nagging little reasons why an agency might shy away from web video, including rights questions, the perceived difficulty of making video clips 508-compliant, and just general institutional conservatism. But these perceived speed-bumps might just crumble as you consider—and argue for—digital video’s proven and widespread appeal to an essential recruiting demographic for your agency.

For the moment, let’s take employee-contributed clips off the table. I’ll grant you that government may not quite be ready for that, although several private sector companies—like Accenture and Deloitte—have carried this off quite successfully. Even so, this leaves lots of room for video shot simply and directly by the agency itself—stationary camera, no elaborate lighting, no A-B roll editing.

New tools mean new horizons for recruiting engagement.

Digital camcorders and desktop editing software have changed the video game entirely for the federal recruiter. Short video segments are simple and inexpensive to shoot and edit. They’re also remarkably easy to post online (even with 508-mandated subtitles). A good place to start? Short videos of individual employees describing their jobs and what it means to work at your agency. This is pure peer-to-peer engagement, personal and authentic and it’s ideally framed to appeal to the candidates you most want to reach.

USPTO Employee Profiles

 A few public sector organizations are already taking the lead in producing these employee vignettes or "realistic job profiles," as some have called them. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is one. I’m linking to their employee profiles here. You might also check out the short videos at Washington’s Metropolitan Police jobs site. Another example—this one repurposed for the web from a more elaborate video training piece—is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The TSA piece illustrates yet another advantage of digital video. Baseline footage can be easily be edited and recombined for all sorts of online uses, from custo m email and mobile engagement to social media placement.

As you can see, nobody is aspiring for spectacular cinematic effects in these productions. In fact, a glitzy approach would likely be counterproductive. Online video for recruiting has more to gain from simplicity and here-and-now authenticity. It speaks in a real-world accent that many of your most promising candidates find much more convincing than the written word. 

It may not seem like the most glamorous of federal vocations, but don’t tell me it isn’t among the most critical. The government’s acquisition workforce is collectively responsible for buying vast volumes of goods and services—from tanks and planes to computer software to office furniture to maintenance and cleaning services and well beyond.

Government contracting pros provide a cluster of essential skills. They clarify their respective agencies’ acquisition needs; they organize and referee the competition among commercial vendors to meet these needs; and they frequently manage the resulting contracts. This is big business. Last year alone they rode herd on more than $530 billion in acquisitions, up from $220 billion in FY2000 [source: Federal Times]. And please take note: this is a leap in volume that hasn’t come close to being matched by a parallel increase in full-time staff.

Bad news, good news. If you’re a federal acquisition professional, the magnitude of these government-wide numbers is probably bad news, because it likely means that you’re stressed to the limit. The good news is that administration officials feel your pain. There’s a host of innovations brewing to take the pressure off over the next few years, and most of them involve big increases in hiring. According to Federal Times, “consensus is building that the government probably needs more than 10,000 business professionals today to effectively manage its contracting burden.”

For instance, the Department of Defense is planning to bump up its full-time acquisition workforce by 15 percent—even as it moves 11,000 or so acquisition positions from outside contractors over to the government’s employment rolls. What’s more, the Navy and Air Force have acted quickly to eliminate the frustrating delays in on-boarding new acquisition hires, establishing expedited procedures that will reduce the average application-to-hire process from months to a matter of weeks and even days.

Of course all this is great news for experienced budget and procurement professionals interested in moving from private industry to the government. Entry-level candidates are also likely to benefit from expedited agency hiring and transition programs like the Federal Acquisition Institute’s Intern Coalition.

For our part, TMP Government has contributed to this timely wave of innovations through our continuing work with several DoD and civilian agencies, where our team members have analyzed workplace cultures, refined approaches to career mapping, and devised recruiting strategies for acquisition professionals.

As my TMP colleague Ellis Pines points out in a panel presentation he links to his May TALENTBREW post, the big picture is encouraging. Over the coming months and years, substantial hiring will bring relief to the overworked teams who keep the government going.

You’ve certainly seen Best Places to Work lists in business magazines like Fortune, and maybe in the niche publications that publish their own rankings for narrower constituencies. What you might not know is that Washington’s Partnership for Public Service regularly produces a similar government-wide ranking of federal departments and agencies (http://data.bestplacestowork.org/bptw/index).

It’s all based on what a couple hundred thousand government workers tell the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in its bi-annual survey. The Partnership, in concert with American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation (ISPPI) and The Hay Group--and with support from TMP Government--collates and submits OPM’s independently gathered results to strict statistical analysis. The outcome is a detailed side-by-side comparison of how federal organizations rate with their own employees across a range of criteria, from teamwork to training to perceived leadership competencies. The rankings also compare OPM’s employee responses—again agency by agency--by demographic segments, including gender, ethnicity, and age.

A benchmarking tool for agencies. If you’re looking for insight into your agency’s authentic employment value proposition, this compilation is a remarkable source, provided you’re willing to spend some time exploring its capabilities.

Both OPM’s own survey report (www.fhcs.opm.gov/) and the Partnership/ISPPI rankings allow you to see how your agency measures up in the eyes of your own workforce. But the Partnership/ISPPI compilation makes it easy to compare your results directly with those of virtually every other government agency. What’s more, the Best Places comparisons provide you with a statistically sound benchmarking tool for improving or refining key attributes in your own workplace culture. It can help immeasurably in refining your programs for employee engagement, inclusion, organizational development, succession planning, retention, and a host of other human capital focal points.

And when it comes to recruiting, is there a more resonant and authentic jumping off point for your agency’s employment brand than the characteristics where your own workforce tells you that you excel?

A resource for job seekers. For the federal job seeker, these rankings are indispensable, cutting through the recruiting noise to core workplace characteristics. While this certainly should not be the only comparative tool a candidate uses, it does represent a marvelous starting point and useful set of job search benchmarks for federal candidates at all levels of experience.

So...which agencies are the leaders of the pack? I leave that to you to discover. If you’re serious about how your team’s collective view of your workplace stacks up against other agencies, go here: http://data.bestplacestowork.org/bptw/index.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) and Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI), with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), presented a Federal Acquisition Intern Coalition (FAIC) workshop to help inform acquisition career managers and human resource professionals on how to find the right people for the future of government contracting.

The workshop, Turning the best and the brightest into America's Buyers: Finding the right people for the future of Government Contracting, included experts from OPM (Angela Bailey, Deputy Associate Director, Center for Talent and Capacity Policy) and myself (Ellis Pines, VP, Branding, TMP Government). Topics we discussed included, how to apply agency’s brand and mission identity to the contracting employment opportunities within an agency, targeting the ideal point where an agency’s needs and the job candidate marketplace intersect and proven methodology for conveying the message that government acquisition is a hot place to be in 2009 and into the future. A recorded version of the workshop is posted online: view video.

http://www.fai.gov/Videos/20090219%20FAIC%20WMV%20Sequence%2001.wmv

Because American government has been assigned a nearly unprecedented role in spurring economic recovery, many agencies are expanding their mission responsibilities. And as missions are extended into new realms of activity, Federal workers in many agencies are effectively in the hot seat. Their performance—and that of the teams they’re assembling-- will tell the tale on the government’s readiness to shepherd us all out of this crisis. Many a Department with a recovery-related mission—including Treasury, Energy, Commerce, HHS, and a long roster of other agencies--is poised to ramp up efforts to recruit new employees at all levels.

As I’ve said before, this year has provided us with an unmatched opportunity to recharge the government’s working talent—provided agencies can get 2009’s “windfall” of candidates on board expeditiously. Weakness in the general economy has brought thousands of qualified recruits to the government’s doorstep: likewise the widespread surge in enthusiasm for government careers among recent and imminent grads. And now many agencies are retooling for recovery-support responsibilities, which will in turn create more demand for qualified workers.

The key is life-cycle talent management, not just recruiting. But bringing a wealth of new talent onboard is just the beginning. Keeping employees productively engaged and enthusiastic about their work is the real key to sustained human capital success. The dispiriting truth today is that most agencies don’t devote enough attention to matching talent to task, and to keeping productive teams and individuals engaged and inspired by their work.

Recruiting programs, no matter how successful, aren’t meant to address the underlying challenge here. All employers have to respond creatively to evolving workforce needs throughout the full employment life-cycle. Otherwise, attrition drains away any human capital advantage the organization has gained while its available supply of talent was deep.

Senior leadership has to step up. If government is going to address this issue squarely, senior agency and Department executives (and not just Chief Human Capital Officers) need to step forward as vocal and proactive champions of strategic talent management. This means mandating comprehensive talent management programs at the heart of every human capital initiative, coupling life-cycle talent management with all Department or agency strategic planning, and fostering a pervasive talent “consciousness” among their key subordinates and agency populations.

If government is to gain any traction in our economic recovery, Federal executives have to take the lead in shaping realistic, long-term strategies to engage, retain, and reward the talented individuals who will sustain their newly expanded missions in the months and years to come.

They can’t fall short here. There’s just too much at stake.