Report Offers Improvement Plan for Government Hiring

Complaints about the federal hiring process are long-standing. Job applicants say it takes too long and is too confusing and that they often wait for much of a year without feedback on where their application stands.

In response, the government has tried to speed up the hiring process. Agencies are increasingly using computers to decrease processing time. The Office of Personnel Management has developed a 45-day hiring model. Still, hiring takes time, in part because many jobs require medical and security clearances (and some background checks can take a year or longer).

The larger question, however, is whether the government is identifying and selecting the best applicants. Public opinion surveys suggest relatively few college graduates see the government as a first choice when job-hunting, and a new study by the Merit Systems Protection Board suggests that the government needs to do a better job of selling itself. The board is a quasi-judicial agency that oversees civil service principles.

"The Government does not do an adequate job of marketing itself to a labor force that currently believes the private and non-profit sectors can provide more rewarding, challenging and developmental experiences," the board's report said. "To compete, the Government needs to sharpen its recruiting skills and improve communications with potential applicants."

To address these challenges, the report recommends that the government tighten hiring procedures to emphasize quality and not just speed.

According to the report, from the board's policy and evaluation office headed by Steve Nelson , the government has some bad habits that may be undermining its goal of hiring the best and brightest.

For example, the report points out that many agencies base hiring decisions on grade point averages, even though research has shown that an applicant's GPA does not indicate whether a person will succeed in the workplace.

The "outstanding scholar program," created in 1981, permits agencies to hire college graduates who have a 3.5 GPA or are in the top 10 percent of their class without requiring them to compete against other applicants -- the traditional civil service hiring practice -- and without any assessment of their ability to do the job.

The MSPB report asserts that not all 3.5 GPA applicants make good employees and that some of them are hired many years after they complete college and may hold degrees with little relevance to their federal job.

The outstanding scholar program was created to help bring minorities into the government, but the report indicates that many agencies use it as a way to bring applicants on board quickly for administrative and professional jobs without regard to their minority status.

When hiring, agencies should put more emphasis on giving tests that measure spatial, verbal and math skills and on "structured interviews" that solicit consistent types of information from job applicants, the report recommends.

The report urges agencies to look at hiring as a business decision to be made by senior managers. "The actual cost of hiring the wrong person for a job -- including wasted salary, benefits, severance pay, training costs and hiring time -- can be up to three times the employee's salary," according to the report.

Agency leaders "must acknowledge just how much impact the hiring process has on mission accomplishment" and hold subordinates accountable when they do not make top-notch hires, the report recommends.

The report also urges the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees government-wide hiring policies, to work with Congress and an interagency personnel council to review the needs of agencies and to make it easier for job applicants to navigate the hiring process.