Data Is Driving STEM Recruitment

Last week, the Indian Treaty Room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building became a showcase for the Office of Personnel Management’s initiative to attract the best talent in science, technology engineering and math to federal service.

This “Datapalooza” was part of a celebration of the incredible work Federal STEM employees do now, and it was also a look to the future as we work to fulfill the president’s vision of growing a diverse, engaged and talented STEM workforce for the future.

Team leaders at OPM have forged an amazing partnership with employees from across government and from the private sector. The idea was to find ways to use OPM’s valuable data to understand our current STEM workforce and to provide the tools and resources managers need to help them attract and recruit new STEM talent.

This work is so exciting and so important. Let me tell you about just a couple of the projects.

Ray Parr, OPM’s data guru in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, developed a heat map that shows where our STEM applicants are coming from. His map showed us that the four states contributing the most applicants for federal STEM jobs are Maryland, Virginia, California and Texas. And his team produced an applicant dashboard that provides insights into the interests and experiences of job applicants.

At another demonstration, Gary Lukowski, who manages the Data Analysis Group, enhanced the rich data from OPM’s FedScope with charts and graphs to illustrate the relationships between STEM employees and their agencies. This kind of information will help hiring managers predict trends in the federal STEM workforce.

We at OPM know that the federal government is in competition with the private, nonprofit and academic sectors for key STEM personnel. One way that OPM, the Office of Management and Budget, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy are working together to close skills gaps is to remind agencies about some pay flexibilities that can help attract the best talent.

As we say in the Critical Position Pay Authority Memorandum for Chief Human Capital Officer, the critical position pay authority is a potentially underutilized flexibility that can support our efforts. We are encouraging agencies with mission critical STEM positions to better educate agency staff about this opportunity.

Go to the Pay and Leave Flexibilities for Recruitment and Retention Fact Sheet and the Students, Recent Graduates, and Pathways Fact Sheet for additional information on applying to and recruiting for federal STEM positions.

This exciting STEM event was just the beginning. I am committed to making sure that together with our partners across government, OPM will continue to innovate and expand the tools and resources we provide agencies so they can bring on board the best talent possible to serve the American people.

(Image via kangshutters/Shutterstock.com)