Federal personnel chief wants senior execs hired quickly

Office of Personnel Management Director Kay Coles James wants Senior Executive Service vacancies to be filled in less than 30 days using a new plan she introduced Thursday.

SES members administer public programs at the top levels of the federal government. Positions are primarily managerial and supervisory and candidates must undergo a rigorous selection process to be accepted. Since 1998, OPM has been encouraging mobility among the federal government's senior executives. Last year the agency unveiled a Web site, http://sesmobility.opm.gov, which aims to help agencies identify executives to fill temporary or permanent jobs quickly.

Yet, in an April 18 memo to agency and department heads, James wrote that she had received "many complaints that filling SES jobs takes too long and is too complicated." Those complaints led James to develop a plan for streamlining the SES staffing process.

"I believe we can do much better than the six month average it now takes to fill an SES vacancy," James wrote.

The timeframe outlined in James' plan provides three days for determining preliminary qualifications and convening the Executive Resources Board, another five days for evaluating applicants, three days for compiling a certificate list and referring potential candidates to selecting officials, a week for interviews, another week for preparing the candidates' files for review by OPM, and five days for OPM to review cases and for the Qualifications Review Board to make final decisions.

Senior Executives Association President Carol Bonosaro applauded the plan, saying it places the burden on agencies, where the job selection process usually gets held up.

"A number of agencies have blamed the length of time it takes to hire senior execs on OPM and all of the data that I've seen shows that, by far, the greatest amount of time is taken within the agency itself," Bonosaro said. "I think what Kay Coles James' memo does is force everyone to take a hard look at their process. She probably set the bar quite high, but they say that's how you get people's attention."

OPM is developing tools and resources to help shorten the SES application process and will begin training federal human resource specialists on the new techniques in June.

"We must demand excellence from our current executives and we must quickly recruit outstanding leaders for SES vacancies," James wrote.