New campaign targets college students for federal jobs

This fall, students at 574 colleges and universities will return to campus and to a recruitment campaign designed to entice them into federal service.

The campaign will feature personal stories of young federal employees and will take shape in posters, college newspaper ads and a new Web site where students can exchange e-mail with the featured workers. It is funded and designed by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to attract young people to government service.

A spring survey of students on six campuses provided the impetus for the campaign. The partnership's study found that college-age students had a high level of interest in federal jobs but didn't know enough about specific opportunities and agencies to pursue them.

"That's really a huge wake-up call to all of us," said Tim McManus, the partnership's new vice president for education and outreach. "The age-old question with young college grads is 'I'm not a political science major, I'm not a government major, therefore there is not a job for me in government.' That's exactly wrong. More than anything, government needs engineers; government needs people in the health care field."

The survey showed that interest in federal service was nearly as high as that in private sector companies, and slightly higher than that for nonprofit jobs. But only 13 percent of the almost 3,000 students surveyed said they felt extremely or very knowledgeable about federal jobs.

The campaign, which is a new addition to the partnership's four-year-old Call to Serve initiative, also will include two-day job fairs at Louisiana State University and The Ohio State University.

"It's not really [a situation where we] send somebody from agency X, Y or Z to stand at a table for six hours," McManus said.

The fairs instead will include sessions on how to find federal jobs as well as workshops on federally geared resumes and interview skills. It will also help students navigate specific federal opportunities by major.

One problem the campaign hopes to tackle is students' perception of government as too bureaucratic.

"We need to put a face on government," McManus said. "That face can't be what many of these students saw as a reason not to work for government -- the bureaucratic face -- but … a face that's going to resonate with them."

The partnership's campaign will start a few months after the Office of Personnel Management unveiled the first television campaign aimed at recruiting new workers into the civil service. Both campaigns aim to fill the slots of baby boomers who are expected retire in large numbers in the coming years.

OPM's ads -- which have so far run in Colorado Springs, Colo.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Biloxi-Gulfport, Miss.; Greenville, S.C.; Flint, Mich.; Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island-Moline, Ill. -- also feature personal glimpses of federal employees on the job.