A cure for broken federal hiring process

By now, it's clear to most people would agree with John Berry, the new head of the Office of Personnel Management, that the federal hiring process is, as he puts it, "broken", and is in need of revamping if the government is to hire the tens of thousands of new feds who will replace the baby boomers who are expected to retire in large numbers over the next 10-15 years.

And yet one man who worked for Berry's predecessors suggests that the new head of OPM take a careful look at work already done in the area of improving the hiring processes of the federal government.

Today, John Salamone is senior consultant with FMP Consulting in Alexandria. Until this past January, he had an office on the top floor of the OPM headquarters on E Street NW, where he headed up the federal Chief Human Capital Officer, or CHCO Council. Salamone says, in general, President Obama and Berry should first look carefully at the ground plowed already by the previous iteration of the CHCO council.

I think it's very admirable that the new director and the President have outlined the charge to fix the federal hiring process because you hear a lot of complaints anecdotally, and specifically, that the hiring process takes too long. It's convoluted and confusing.

In a telephone interview, Salamone pointed to work done by former OPM Deputy Director Howard Weitzman on the "end-to-end hiring initiative", a roadmap unveiled last Fall which had, as one of its goals, reducing the time it took to fill any position in the federal government to 80 days.

"I think that would be a good place for the administration to start," says Salmone, "they don't have to reinvent the wheel."

In the President's budget message, there is a mandate from the White House to replace the old Bush Administration PART, or Program Assessment Rating Tool, with a new means of measuring and improving government performance. Salamone was asked how he might improve PART when it came to human capital management.

"Working with CHCO council members and the OPM director to find ways to accurately measure the hiring process would be very beneficial," he explained.

"How long does it actually take to develop a recruitment action? In a certification, how long does it take the managers to either select the individuals they want to interview or hire?"

He goes on to say that once the HR professionals can begin to have those conversations with hiring managers, then they can begin to drive change at the strategic level for human capital management.

Salamone also believes its important for OPM to focus on succession planning, insuring that an agency has highly-qualified people in all positions, as more and more feds retire during the next two decades.

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On the Web:

OPM - End-t o-end hiring initiative (pdf)

FederalNewsRadio - OPM's former CHCO lands at FMP

Federal Management Partners (FMP) - John Salamone bio

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