I’m early in my career, but for most of my professional life, I’ve worked at an organization renowned for understanding the inner workings of the federal government—the Partnership for Public Service. So, I should know a bit about the federal hiring system.
But given the system’s fragmented and nonsensical nature, I doubt I will ever be able to fully grasp or explain it.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been wrangling my senior colleagues, who hold a combined half-century of experience in this space, to create a true “101” curriculum to educate people totally new to federal hiring policy.
However, on every draft I wrote, one of my very smart colleagues would weigh in with, “But just one more thing! You must understand this weird caveat to understand the federal hiring system!”
One weird caveat can be handled in a footnote, but when you reach 40, 50, an infinite number of caveats that you “must” heed to understand the federal hiring system, then what you have isn’t a hiring system, it’s a tangle of systems that together make a completely unintelligible mess.
I deeply admire the experts who have passionately dedicated themselves to the thankless work of learning and trying to fix federal hiring for years.
But, if I’ve learned nothing else from my colleagues’ wisdom, it’s that the current systems are so complex that even the best and brightest experts struggle to wrap their arms around them. It’s very clear to me that the systems are not working for applicants, for agencies or for the American public, and are sorely in need of a complete overhaul—now.
Experts on the inside have known this for a long time, as these systems have creaked toward a breaking point. But they haven’t been able to build a cohesive, energized and powerful coalition to drive a comprehensive overhaul or build the buy-in to make it happen.
That shouldn’t surprise us!
Federal hiring is wonky, it’s complicated and it’s hard to know how to start fixing things because the system is so dense due to layers of regulatory and legislative work-arounds.
Still, this field sorely needs an infusion of drive and dedication from new champions to build a strategic coalition big enough to command real change.
Luckily, my peers—those of us who came into political consciousness watching our parents struggle through the Great Recession, wading through conflicting public health advice during a global pandemic and facing an adulthood with far less economic security than previous generations—are ready for big change, and we want to do the work.
But, if the only way for next-generation reformers to comprehend the system enough to reform it is to spend the next two decades tracing and untangling its snarl of weird caveats, then the energy and pace of reform will never be enough to build the federal hiring system we need now.
It’s next to impossible to get people excited about a topic they can’t grasp, whether you’re trying to recruit early-career talent into the government or explain to congressional staff or their constituents why reforming federal hiring is a critical and worthy cause.
The gurus of government reform and state capacity have many (many, many) lessons to offer those of us who are coming to this work for the first time. Those who understand the caveats and know where prior attempts at reform went wrong must serve two essential roles to guide the next era of government leaders and reformers.
First, we need you to warn us when we’re falling into old traps.
You’ve done the work to understand the system, and you’ve seen where and why reforms went wrong. We can’t afford to waste time remaking past mistakes, and you are essential in making sure that we don’t.
Second, and more importantly, we need those of you who understand the machinery of government to start untangling the parts of the hiring system that are dysfunctional.
This targeted work—done not with a sledgehammer, à la the Department of Government Efficiency, but with a scalpel—can and should be led by those experts who know exactly where the problems lie.
We need you to start the hard work of mapping root causes and streamlining the system, so that those of us who are new to the space can better understand it and help shoulder the burden of devising and advocating for reform.
We want to try new ideas, and we want to chart a path to sensical government systems: they are the foundations to the future we all deserve – one in which great talent can lead the way in serving the American public and tackling our biggest national challenges.
Help us help you do that.