You don’t need to look far or wide to learn what’s wrong with federal recruiting and hiring or to encounter the many challenges and barriers that impede agencies’ progress. Recruitment efforts are passive, agency leaders fail to prioritize talent issues, hiring takes too long, candidate quality is spotty and key players don’t cooperate.

For every problem area in recruiting and hiring, there also are examples of agencies that are doing things well, making progress and serving as potential models’ and in some cases inspirations’ for others. Through this project, which was made possible by Monster Government Solutions, the Partnership for Public Service set out to find and highlight a group of agencies that are making headway on key challenges related to recruiting and hiring for hard-to-fill positions and to attracting special groups.