Unwieldy hiring process can be fixed, top personnel official says

The federal government will not face a human capital crisis because of lagging interest in public service, but because agencies refuse to reform outdated and restrictive hiring practices, says Kay Coles James, director of the Office of Personnel Management.

In an interview Tuesday, James accused agencies of holding back federal hiring reform. She rejected the notion that it is difficult to recruit high-quality workers or keep top-notch civil servants. According to James, qualified applicants want to join the public service, but agencies have not met their responsibility for improving and streamlining the hiring process.

"From the very beginning, I have never accepted the thesis that there was this huge crisis," James said. "We have no problem attracting people … the crisis is the hiring process in the middle."

James' comments reflect an OPM report, released last week, on improving hiring at federal agencies. According to the report, agency personnel chiefs are not taking full advantage of the hiring tools that are available.

"It is up to each agency to determine how best to use these hiring options strategically," the report said, "to meet their recruitment needs and eliminate those barriers to improved hiring."

James echoed those findings and noted that OPM assists agencies but does not actually conduct hiring.

"The best we can do is encourage, monitor, motivate, assist," James said. "At the end of the day, there is but so much OPM can do."

She also said that OPM is willing to discontinue some efforts if agencies do not believe they are assisting hiring. Federal job fairs, for example, could be discarded. Only some agencies come to the fairs prepared to hire personnel on the spot, a key program that OPM has encouraged.

OPM officials are going to ask agencies, is this helpful to you? according to James. "If it isn't, we won't do it."

If job fairs do continue, OPM might require agency officials to come with at least 10 jobs they are prepared to offer at the event.

When asked why agencies have not adapted to the new hiring flexibilities, James said the causes are too complex to cover in one answer. As examples, she cited entrenched hiring practices, an aversion to change, a lack of agency leadership, and concerns about litigation.

"People, out of fear, hold on to these overly cumbersome processes," she said.

In an effort to push a streamlined hiring process, James said she was encouraging agencies to hire personnel within 45 days after the closing of a vacancy announcement. According to the OPM report, 14 large federal agencies said they meet this goal. Only seven of those, however, actually have a system in place to track the time it takes to hire new personnel, the report said.

The length of time it takes agencies to hire "is difficult to pin down," the OPM report said. "What is clear is that job applicants to the federal government may experience a wide range of waiting times depending on the agency to which they apply. Agencies, with a few notable exceptions, do not yet have in place rigorous targets for time-to-hire."

James has previously said that agency personnel officials have enough tools at their disposal and that Congress does not need to enact more hiring flexibilities. She said Tuesday that it would make sense for Congress to require OPM to keep track of hiring statistics but that agencies have enough tools.

"I think the Executive Branch can take care of business," she said. "I have every confidence that this will continue to get better."