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.”

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.

Speaking generally, the federal government has significantly improved its track record for hiring and retaining minorities over the last few decades. Even so, there are two minority classes that have lagged far behind: Hispanics and the disabled . Last summer our team released a white paper on recruiting and retaining the latter group; you can find it on TMPgovernment.com.

The low proportion of Hispanics in the government’s workforce is less widely known but equally troubling. In spite of being the nation’s fastest growing minority population, and in spite of comprising 12.7% of the U.S. civilian workforce, Hispanics make up only 7.8% of all federal employees. What’s more, Hispanic men and women represent only a scant 3.6% of individuals at federal senior pay levels—a proportion that drops to 2.5% when you take political appointees out of the calculation.

One more note in what could be a much longer litany of discouraging statistics: research by the Partnership for Public Service reveals that Hispanics attending college are more interested in working for the federal government than any other student segment they surveyed.

So how do we account for the government’s less-than-perfect track record on this metric? Our team at TMP Government is studying this issue in detail right now, and we will issue a white paper on the topic in just a few weeks. We won’t be delving as deeply into the why of this sad circumstance as into practical solutions for correcting the imbalance.

If you have been following my commentary in this blog, you may guess that our prescription for improvement will include niche branding, internships, mentoring, Web 2.0 approaches, workforce planning, career modeling, and a raft of other proven as well as emerging engagement techniques.

In the meantime, if you want to weigh in on this topic, suggest solutions, or point out Best Practice exemplars in government and out, don’t hesitate to contact me.

There were two sour notes amid all the apparent good news in the national research that I reported in my last post. Washington’s Partnership for Public Service, which mounted the survey, found an unnervingly unrealistic element among all undergraduate respondents. On average the students anticipated a starting salary that approached $50,000. The Partnership’s survey also exposed a comparative lack of enthusiasm for public service when it polled undergraduates studying engineering and information technology.

It’s an open question whether this widespread salary expectation—as much as five figures higher than the norm for Federal starting pay—is a real deal-breaker, or merely a naïve misconception. In the first place, the employment picture for new grads in the private sector is pretty dismal; so competitive forces make government positions comparatively attractive, even if starting salaries fall short of expectations.

At the same time, the “lifestyle” advantages of Federal employment—from relative job security to work-life balance—can tip the balance for many candidates. It’s all in how you present the employment value proposition for your agency. For the candidate motivated by other than a financial agenda, the gap in anticipated vs. real salaries may not be an insurmountable barrier if you tell your tale authentically.

The other sour note is much more disconcerting. All agencies need technologists, and particularly IT specialists. It’s difficult to imagine a single cluster of expertise that’s more critical to the government than tech talent. They’re mission-critical skills essential not just to the nation’s defense and intelligence missions, but also to the efficient operation of every agency in the federal establishment.

With the exception of NASA, the perception that government technology offers less interesting challenges appears to be widespread. I don’t have the magic bullet that will dispel these attitudes, but part of the answer may be embedded in your agency’s technical “lore” and the cognitive habits of the people you need to engage.

Think about framing your most interesting tech operations and responsibilities as narrative case studies highlighting real-world challenges and the activities of your own high-performing technologists. Use all available outreach resources--from print and online to events and ads--to tell your story concretely, featuring real people. Engineering and IT students tend to be grounded in practical, here-and-now realms. Show them role models in authentic, interesting, problem-solving environments. If you do this creatively, you should engage their initial interest.

Following up is more complex. It goes a long way if you can offer high-prestige internships and/or put your own agency technologists into relationships with promising candidates through email or even as avatars in virtual worlds. And once techies are on the job, high-responsibility assignments and proactive mentoring are valuable tools in keeping them onboard when higher salaries beckon from the private sector.

Responding to either of the survey’s big “downer” revelations won’t be easy, but the stakes are pretty high if you don’t.