The U.S. Office of Personnel Management and a nonprofit organization, Partnership for Public Service, have joined together in an effort to help federal hiring managers.
The Hiring Toolkit provides case studies, answers to common questions, hiring guidance tools, and numerous links to help agency officials revamp the hiring process.
One of the more important elements to the site is the interactive hiring process analysis tool to help you identify the areas of your hiring process most in need of improvement.
The toolkit, with a focus on recruiting, retaining, developing, and managing talent, has four main features:
- Prepare to hire. Establishes the groundwork for the hiring process.
- Recruit top talent. Gives strategies to attract a wider pool of qualified candidates.
- Select the best. Explains how agencies identify the best candidates for a position.
- Measure success. Explains how to assess the hiring process.
From improving your hiring process to shortening the time it takes to post a position, here’s a brief rundown of the sharpest gear in the toolbox: ??
- To launch the hiring process, review this checklist to enable strategic conversations with hiring managers. It ranges from basic competency questions to more philosophical queries (i.e., describe the top-five reasons why a candidate would find your organization, and this position, of interest, including mission, great team or experts, nature of the challenge, technologies or processes, etc.).
- To establish expectations at the outset of your hiring action, there’s a sample contract between HR and hiring managers.
- This comparison “cheat sheet” may help you revise your sample screening questions. For example, rather than asking a yes/no question (i.e., “Do you have experience in project management, demonstrating ability to perform in a multi-project environment?”) the site suggests a question where a person is given the phrase “I have experience in negotiating issues or problems with officials at these levels; check all that apply” and chooses from a variety of answers (i.e., local education agencies, state education agencies, institutions of higher education, tribal governments, international organizations).
- For measuring success, this hiring process model contains a detailed checklist to help re-evaluate your newly revamped processes. ?
- The new toolbox also links to the government’s extreme hiring makeover site. With more than half of all federal employees eligible to retire within the next five years, officials decided the time was ripe for change and implemented a pilot program last year with the Education Department, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the National Nuclear Security Administration. The site lists the federal hiring process as the biggest impediment to attracting new employees. In fact, “if this were an episode of TLC’s Overhaulin’ car makeover show, the federal hiring process would be a 1976 AMC Pacer,” according to the website.
Finally, if you ever find yourself searching for the exact definition to a commonly used term, keep this glossary accessible.?