This strategic recruitment plan serves as both a recruitment guide and project management template to help agencies proactively identify resources, schedule events, and align efforts across functions.

California has the highest number of federal employees outside the Washington, D.C. area, but agencies in the state still face challenges in attracting quality young talent. To address this issue, the Partnership and the James Irvine Foundation wrote a report examining how federal agencies in California can strengthen their talent pipelines by recruiting, hiring and retaining job seekers without a four-year degree.

Amid the response to COVID-19, federal agencies are moving quickly to fill the jobs needed to address new and emerging challenges. In Spring 2020, the Partnership hosted two recruiting and hiring sessions to support agencies as they sought to rapidly fill mission critical roles. This guide captures strategies and insights shared by experts at those sessions—many of which are relevant to hiring amid the pandemic and in normal operations.

Certain challenges– such as national emergencies, large-scale attrition, new mission requirements and the need for new talent– require federal agencies to rapidly grow their workforce. With support from the Democracy Fund, the Partnership for Public Service identified the most effective and widely applicable strategies for surge hiring.

To deliver for the American people and competently respond to crises, the government must recruit and hire a world-class workforce. Yet the federal recruiting and hiring process is in drastic need of repair.

In this report, the Partnership for Public Service outlines practical steps agencies can take to attract mission-critical talent while working within an existing system that is saddled by many cumbersome and complex rules and procedures.