Agencies urged to use internship programs to recruit minorities

The federal government should make better use of its student internship programs to attract more minorities to the federal workforce, according to a new study by the Partnership for Public Service. Despite the growing number of federal interns, only 5,520 of 46,000 federal interns took jobs with the government during the past five years, according to the study, "Tapping America's Potential: Expanding Student Employment and Internship Opportunities In The Federal Government." The study also found that the number of minority student interns had not increased during that same time period, and as a result, there were fewer opportunities to bring them into the federal workforce. The Partnership for Public Service, created last year, is a nonprofit group focused on improving the government's recruitment and retention record. "Interns offer federal managers an efficient way to assess the skills and capabilities that are critical to an agency's functions," said Max Stier, president and CEO of the group. "At a time when government must work especially hard to recruit the best and brightest to its ranks, it should not ignore the gold mine of talent that skilled interns provide." Researchers at the Partnership for Public Service found that Hispanics represented just 6.7 percent of the federal workforce, compared to the private sector where 11.9 percent of the workforce is Hispanic. Internship programs at some agencies are already yielding positive results. For example, at the Customs Service, eight interns joined the agency full-time last year after completing one- or two-year rotational internships in which they were trained to be special agents or import specialists. The study bolstered a January 2000 report by the Merit Systems Protection Board which concluded that agencies were using the government's Outstanding Scholar program to recruit more white employees. The government created the program in 1981 to help hire more minorities for certain jobs, but in 2000, about 71 percent of the more than 2,300 employees hired through the program were white, while only 29 percent were from minority groups, according to MSPB. "By integrating internship programs, recruiting efforts and diversity hiring, the agencies could obtain much-needed exposure to college graduates, while also creating a pool of diverse, tested and easy-to-hire recruits," the report from the Partnership for Public Service said. "With the government facing a variety of workforce challenges, it should maximize the educational needs to students and the talent needs to the federal government." To boost the number of interns moving into the permanent federal workforce, the Partnership for Public Service suggested adding student employment programs into agencies' workforce planning, and changing regulations governing internship programs so that agencies have the necessary hiring flexibilities to keep high-performing interns. Federal managers and the Office of Personnel Management should also work harder to make student interns more aware of career opportunities available within the federal government, the report said.