As part of its ongoing “extreme hiring makeover” of the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the
Partnership for Public Service has announced that it
is helping the agency bring in individuals with
expertise in pharmaceutical contracting, disease
management and prevention, nursing home formulatory
needs, retiree benefit package structures and marketing.
The Department of Education and the National Nuclear
Security Administration are also participating in the
program, and will be assisted by private and public
sector hiring professionals from Monster Government
Solutions, the Human Capital Institute and Korn-Ferry
International.
CMS has an aging workforce with retirement on the horizon,
a lengthy hiring process that “doesn’t always effectively
engage managers,” and needs to improve its process for
assessing job candidates, said Marcia Marsh, the
partnership’s vice president, noting that most federal
agencies face similar difficulties.
A project team is trying out hiring strategies in CMS’s
families and children’s health programs group. For example,
to hire health insurance specialists, the team tried to
help officials get mangers more involved on the front end
by outlining specific skills needed for each job and
creating pre-screening questions before hiring started,
said the partnership.
It said the team combed online job boards for individuals
with the right skill sets and solicited 276 applications,
and other teams have helped agencies make vacancy
announcements more attractive, target “passive candidates
for existing openings,” direct job fair communication,
and supply interviewing guides to managers.
The teams will report the results and lessons learned in
July, are developing new hiring processes and toolkits
for managers and HR teams for recruitment planning,
screening and assessments, and are also designing
recruitment materials and training recruitment experts
in each agency, the partnership said.
