The process of selecting candidates for federal employment
is too often “outdated and ineffective” for assessing skills
and qualifications, according to a report released by the
Partnership for Public Service.
Sponsored by the Performance Assessment Network, it said
candidate skills are commonly mismatched with jobs and
cited Office of Personnel Management statistics stating
that just 39 percent of federal employees feel their units
are hiring people with the right skills.
“Without a concentrated effort to reform the way federal
employees are selected, the government risks hiring the
wrong people, wasting resources and losing productivity
while it inadvertently overlooks some of its best job
candidates,” said Partnership for Public Service President
and CEO Max Stier.
The report noted that if just 10 percent of new professional
and administrative hires wind up leaving that would cost
the government $150 million each year, a problem that is
magnified by the “influx of applicants for federal jobs in
recent years.”
For example, in 2002, 1.7 million people tried to fit into
62,000 Transportation Security Administration screener
positions, 47,000 into FBI special agent roles, and 1,500
into intern positions at the Environmental Protection
Agency, according to the report.
It said that currently, most new hires are referred to
hiring managers based on rating established through review
of their “self-reported training and experience — a method
independent analysts have deemed as the least effective
compared to other alternatives for predicting future job
performance.”
Not only could that information be arbitrary on some level,
but such a rating system presumably leaves the door open
to inaccurate self-promotion.
The report further said the Administrative Careers with
America self-rating test — developed as an alternative to
an earlier written assessment test that was discontinued
following a discrimination lawsuit brought by applicants —
does not serve federal agencies well, as it is “cumbersome
to applicants, contains questions that do not appear to
be job-relevant, relies on self-reporting,” and focuses
on past experience, which could disadvantage some of
the best candidates just because they are recent graduates.
