Posted by: It’s summer time and recent grads are in the process of looking to start their careers. Well, good news. Now is the right time to consider a job in government. There are continued steps to implementing hiring reform across agencies in response to the recent presidential mandate. As part of this reform, the Office of Personnel and Management is doing its part to help agencies focus on diversity.
The first step of the reform for OPM is to reduce time-to-hire by eliminating knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) essays and replacing them with traditional resumes and cover letters. The second step is to improve diversity in government. One way to do this is to recruit students and recent grads.
In a recent Government Executive article, OPM Director John Berry said that he is assembling a team of 65 people to lead an aggressive diversity effort to “get to a place where, over the course of the summer or early fall, we will create a program to take to the president to recommend on how we can encourage diversity in the federal government and do better there.”
While we are encouraged to see the OPM calling for diversity, we also recognize that there is a great deal of work that will come with this effort, including:
- Improving the branding of federal government agencies to demonstrate the benefits to choosing a career in government.
- Streamlining the hiring process. Students looking for jobs want immediate feedback and are unwilling to wait long periods of time before hearing from an employer.
- Connecting where students group together. Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks are places where agencies can connect and recruit students while extending their own brand.
If you are a student and would like to share your story about applying for government jobs, please post and comment below. If you are a recruiter and have implemented new methods for attracting new students into government positions, we want to hear from you too!
Wed, Jul 21, 2010
Federal, State & Local