Execs get tips on winning the battle for new recruits

Whether their mission involves national security, Social Security or something in between, flexibility is an essential weapon for federal managers engaged in the escalating personnel war with the private sector. Fresh from the front lines, a trio of high-level federal human resource mangers convened Monday to share their experiences implementing congressionally mandated flexible human resources systems.

Richard Dunn, general counsel at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Ronald Sanders, chief human resource officer at the IRS and Robert Whalin, director of the Army Research Laboratory, addressed the topic at the 18th annual Senior Executives Association Professional Development League career executive leadership conference in Washington.

Each of the participants indicated that the prospect of increased salaries and decreased bureaucracy has gone some distance in leveling the playing field for agencies competing in a breakneck economy built on the very professions they require to function. Combined with the appeal of public service, this may be all they need to recruit and retain a new generation of the best and brightest.

"We don't need to match salaries dollar for dollar," said Dunn, whose agency is charged with ensuring that the nation's military is on the cutting edge of weapons technology. "What we do need to do is cut down on the sacrifice potential employees must make."

Early results from DARPA's pilot program, which emerged as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 1999, confirm that sentiment. Five of the eight individuals hired in the first year of the experiment signed on at salaries below their previous, private-sector wage. In addition, the average "days to hire" figure for positions in the program has dropped from between 3.5 to 10 months to just over 30 days. Dunn expects to see an expansion of the DARPA pilot from 20 to 40 slots in this year's DoD appropriations measure.

Sanders said the IRS has used payroll flexibility as a component of a sweeping overhaul called for by Congress in the wake of a series of damaging hearings on agency practices. The flexibility will allow the IRS to return to college campuses for the first time in nearly a decade, dangling signing bonuses to its recruits.

The IRS is offering pay incentives as part of an agencywide shift of focus to a dual mission of law enforcement and customer service. Now allowed to pay up to 40 employees as much as the $181,500 earned by the Vice President, the IRS has been able to coax a former vice president of Hewlett-Packard and an executive from the consulting world to head two of the four new divisions established as part of its reconstruction.

Whalin was the only participant to offer a cautionary note, claiming that he had seen the negative side of liberal bonus and incentive programs in previous years. Whalin said he feared such offers will become taken for granted and unnaturally inflate the entire pay scale without producing the desired results.

"Misuse of the retention and recruitment bonuses are going to get us in a lot of trouble," Whalin predicted. "It's got to be done responsibly."