Breaking down the recent memo on improving the federal hiring process

On Aug. 14, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management issued a long-anticipated joint memo on improving the federal hiring experience for applicants, hiring managers and human resources professionals.  

The memo is the latest attempt to tackle the government’s slow hiring process, which we unpack in our latest reform agenda.  

It takes agencies an average of roughly 101 days to hire someone, more than twice as long as the private sector, and strategic human capital management has been on Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List since 2001. 

As a result, candidates often take their talent elsewhere, leading our government to have skills gaps in fields like human resources, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, cybersecurity and acquisition that put the nation at risk.  

OMB and OPM attempt to reverse this worrisome situation with some simple actions for agencies to take.     

Speak their language  

If you peruse announcements on USAJOBS, you may notice complex job titles and job announcements that do not really tell applicants what skills they need and what the job actually entails. This is a lost opportunity to excite applicants about public service.  

Fortunately, there is an easy fix: create job titles that more closely match what applicants see in the private sector. Hiring a software engineer? Say so. Avoid the common pitfall of only referring to this type of position as an IT specialist. Functional job titles are allowed.  

Communicating with applicants? Ensure pre-generated messages are accurate, use plain language and are sent out in a reasonable timeframe. Delayed communication frustrates applicants, but mistaken messages—like generic notifications that don’t apply to an applicant’s situation—dissuade qualified talent from considering future positions in government.  

Leverage skills and talent  

Hiring managers often receive lists of unqualified applications because agencies initially assess candidates based on how they rank their own skills and abilities. As a result, many portray themselves as experts when they are not, leading hiring managers to cancel the job announcement without making a selection.  

The memo tackles this dilemma by advancing skills-first hiring principles, like asking applicants to initially showcase their relevant technical abilities through qualifying assessments.  

The hiring memo also encourages hiring managers to use the USAJOBS Agency Talent Portal to find a ready-to-use recruiting list of applicants interested in public service.  

The portal includes open certificates for government-wide pooled hiring actions run by OPM that create a list of qualified applicants for a particular job. Hiring managers can do behavioral fit interviews and hire quickly, and qualified applicants get the benefit of being assessed once and considered by many agencies. 

Designate a shared certificate coordinator  

Sharing certificates enable one agency to run a hiring action, make a selection and then share the list of remaining qualified applicants with other departments.  

While this practice has great potential to make it easier for agencies to hire qualified talent, they need to start using this strategy on a regular basis. 

Agency leadership should designate a shared certificate coordinator to oversee the process. This move would signal leadership support for this strategy and make agencies more familiar with an effective hiring tool.  

What comes next? 

Fixing the federal hiring process is not easy. But the latest memo from OMB and OPM contains some quick and easy recommendations that would make an outsized impact on this difficult issue.  

OPM, OMB and federal leaders should engage employees at all levels on the recommendations, trainings and resources included in the memo. Getting this information to front-line employees will be critical, and federal leaders need to think of different ways to get the message across, including engaging with external stakeholders and asking them to spread the news through their networks.

Ross Apter is part of the Partnership’s government affairs team, managing legislative initiatives centered on streamlining federal hiring, modernizing federal leadership requirements and improving agency use of customer experience data.