Turning Students Off

COMMENTS

• I remember the first time I encountered a federal government job application when I was 18 and trying to get a paid summer job with SSA in Baltimore. The form was such a turnoff--I think it was 6 or 8 pages, and they wanted it submitted in triplicate or something, and I just thought I didn't want to work for an organization like that. Later, after finishing college with a teaching degree, I checked out teaching on Indian reservations with the Dept. of Interior. Again, the whole application process was just daunting and really made me think I didn't even want to finish the process, which I didn't. In the meantime I filled-in a 2-page application and was hired as a teacher after a short interview by a county in Maryland. I finally did become a federal bureaucrat after 10 years as a teacher--I completed a very daunting selection process for the State Dept., mainly because my zeal to live internationally overcame my distaste for the hiring process. The State Dept. has since simplified and speeded up its hiring process, recruits heavily at colleges, and is now rated one of the most desirable USG agencies for employment.

  Dennis Imwold Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 3:58 PM

• Apparently, the horse isn't dead enough as little is being done about the problem. Keep on beating it until someone in OPM starts paying attention.

  Robert M. Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007 7:15 AM

• Not only is the hiring process capricious, unreliable and difficult to manage, the internal personnel processes don't work. I have found it impossible to change job series (imperative for promotion), to apply for positions and particularly to get pre-government experience documented in my personnel file. The person who hired me cared little that I had no experience or training in the field for which he hired me (and misled me as to the particulars of the position for which he hired me and its potential for internal movement). I came in on a special hiring program which helped me realize my current pay grade quickly, but I brought with me a paid-for masters degree with many years of non-government experience. I continue to fail in my attempts to make myself attractive to supervisors in other fields (no experience in that field) as I continue to languish in a position I don't like and for which I have little affinity. I am venting, I know, and my situation may be unusual as I came to the government late but that should not factor negatively into personnel practices for me. I will probably leave the government as soon as I am financially able, knowing neither I nor the government has profited from my tenure, a loss for both of us. I think it likely that young people will also find what I found at some point in their government careers and move on before fulfilling their potential. They will leave (usually early on) the agency for which they worked with a position to fill, training the agency must pay to redo and hiring which will require cranking up the creaky, ineffective hiring machinery. Perhaps we need smaller government so the personnel departments can fine-tune their processes and we will need to hire, train and promote fewer people.

  Government employee Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007 8:31 AM

• I feel for "Government Employee." I am in the same predicament, except that I am now close to retirement having spent too many years trying for upward mobility. I work in an HR department that trains and promotes the uneducated (high school diplomas only) into specialists and management, while retaining the college graduates as clerks and assistants to do the grunt work. Plus, I watched the excellent skills I brought from the private sector which landed me my federal position, deteriorate with lack of training and little updated technology. I wouldn't recommend government service to any young person.

  Gypsy Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007 3:27 PM

• Agreed, the federal hiring process is and has been nothing more than a joke...and if you think it's any better once you are in, well forget that notion as well! The process is onerous, outdated, and filled with extreme bias as well as a non-merit promotion style that rivals any “good ol’ boy network” out there. I too entered through a special program and was able to reach a favorable pay scale quickly, but it ends there. Once you hit the ceiling of your pay scale you’re trapped, and with the “new and improved” pay banding scale, promotions come even harder than ever, regardless of merit or education. OPM has too many procedures and far too many exceptions provided to everyone but the most qualified for the position! Maybe the process would be lightened if the hiring authority was handed to the individual departments doing the hiring and kicking OPM and the indolent HR departments out of the process! It doesn’t take the private sector three to four months to hire someone…how inefficient is that!

  Fed-up! Posted Wednesday, October 31, 2007 7:53 AM

• When I see the PR about how successful the Federal Govt is becoming in recruiting recent college grads, I ask "what planet they inhabit?" I sat down with a recent Va Tech engineering grad and we plowed through USA Jobs. I kept saying to myself - now would be a great time to invent a real-time universal translater -as this young person had the glazed look we've all seen when trying to decypher the language. We are all done a disservice by a government that announces "mission accomplished" when the reality is anything but.

  Retired Fed Posted Friday, November 2, 2007 10:39 AM

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