Recent findings from the Partnership for Public Service are raising cautionary flags when it comes to the government employment picture:

• Hiring for federal jobs has reached its lowest level in nearly a decade, as about 76,700 new employees entered the workforce in fiscal 2013 – a dip of more than 14.5 percent compared to 2012.
• At the same time, about 110,000 workers left – resulting in a 33,000-staffer gap with respect to incoming versus exiting personnel.

• An overwhelming two-thirds majority of new hires are entry level (ranging from GS-1s to GS-9s) and under 30. This speaks to the need to adapt recruitment practices to specifically appeal to Millennials.

Here’s what’s clear to us at NGA.NET: The government – even more so than private businesses – must adjust to the realities of the shifting economy. During the Great Recession, there were relatively few departures because of the lack of overall hiring nationwide, along with lingering fears over job security.

That equation is steadily reversing, as private organizations are increasing headcount and public sector employees are feeling more confident about their prospects within commercial industries. Toss in budgetary pressures due to sequestration – Department of Defense (DoD) agencies had to cut nearly 8 percent from their budgets last year, and civilian ones reduced spending by 5 percent – and you can see why the government faces such staffing challenges.

To respond effectively, federal hiring managers should pursue the following:

Workforce visibility. Talent Management solutions are currently available which can establish total, enterprise-wide visibility into not only what your workforce looks like now – but what it will look like in six months, a year, two years, etc. These tools can help you assess where critical vacancies (due to retirements and other factors) are likely to emerge and when they will, so you can plan for them in advance.

With that, you could take advantage of programs such as Pathways, which provide federal internships for students from high school through post-graduate school, as well as for recent college graduates. Pathways presents an opportunity for young participants to immerse themselves into an agency, gaining tremendous experience while seasoned staffers pass along highly valuable institutional knowledge.

Through programs like this, Millennials prepare themselves for a “plug and play” transition to a government career. Once they’re brought on board for fulltime positions, they won’t have to “learn the ropes” from scratch. It’s akin to a Major League Baseball team selecting and developing talented rookies with the knowledge that it will require a multi-year development program (minor league system) implemented in partnership with experienced and seasoned team members to give the best chance of long-term success for their team.

The visibility can also assist departments with their temporary hiring strategies. Tech solutions can anticipate skills demand surges which will ebb and flow over the course of a year (or several years) – while matching these shifts to an available pool of existing temp/contract workers, along with their estimated end dates. This way, managers will arm themselves with great insights, enabling them to keep high-performing temp employees to fill key roles, instead of having them walk out the door. Such measures eliminate the need for outside advertising whenever a new temp position opens up, and dramatically reduce the time required to fill the vacancy.

Open communications. The right Talent Management solution will not only establish visibility – they’ll send timely alerts to managers to assist them with the communications required to appeal to Millennials. Let’s say you’ve had a number of very promising Pathways participants complete internships with your agency. You wanted to hire these young people, but there simply weren’t enough openings, and quite a few had to depart.

With an alert-enabled visibility system, you’ll receive reminders about sending the occasional “How are you? Here’s an update on our hiring plans …” message to targeted future job candidates. You can get a read on what they’re doing, what their current goals are and whether your agency still remains a possible fit.

It’s through these and other engagement efforts – such as elevating your presence on the social media outlets where Millennials live – that you eventually build the teams your agency deserves. As a result, you prepare yourself for the entire range of hiring trends, whether they’re employee shortages or surpluses.

At NGA.NET, we’re constantly connecting with federal clients to acquire, deploy and expand the potential for the kinds of technologies we’ve just discussed. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in exploring, then please contact us.

Liam Ackland is president of NGA.NET North America.

This week the Federal Times  reported that federal hiring is now at its lowest level in almost 10 years, with just about every agency seeing drastic drops in new employees. The Times also reported that the federal government has shrunk by nearly 70,000 employees over the same time period, as more employees quit or retire.

A Challenge — But An Opportunity Too

The issue is large, with many underlying causes and contributing factors. Many changes – including large institutional ones – will have to take place across the board to address the problem. However, there are more immediate undertakings that can be made that will allow agencies to help their cause. In fact, forward-thinking agencies can use this budget-constrained period as an opportunity, as illogical as that may seem.

As an example, take a look at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Federal Times article reported that the DHS has seen its new hires fall from more than 14,000 in fiscal year 2009 to about 4,000 in fiscal year 2013 – a 75% drop, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Budget constraints mean that the DHS simply can’t hire permanent workers as much as in the past.

Temporary Hiring And Surges — Getting Analytical

One way it copes is through temporary hiring. The agency hires temporary employees to meet emergency needs such as disaster relief. But temporary hiring, like pretty much anything, is much less effective if done haphazardly and without some sense of foresight behind the process. Through the use of talent analytics, temporary hiring surges that agencies find themselves in can be much more effective than otherwise, and actually lead to better hires that have long term positive benefits to the agency.

Analytical tools can help provide insight to the talent pool, the recruitment process, retention, onboarding and training. Because timing is critical in these situations, the need for better hires and better talent is even more important than in the standard course of operations, and analytics can help an agency attract, find and retain better employees.

“Surge” does not need to be synonymous with careless or hasty.

Additional insight can be gained from analytics with regards to talent gaps – where the biggest gaps are and why they exist, so they gaps can be closed and shrunk in the future. Temporary hires today can be permanent employees tomorrow. Similarly, you can gain more insight on where your top talent comes from.

A smaller federal workforce appears to be the reality for the foreseeable future. That means managing the workforce in place, as well as the recruitment of what hiring is acceptable, are more important than ever. While there are major issues to be addressed over time, agencies can take action today, with the proper analytical tools, to manage talent in the best possible way, and improve their efficiency and talent pool at the same time.

Organizations seem to be understanding that identifying their critical talent is important to achieving business goals. However, there is often still a lack of organizational focus on implementing processes for true talent identification.

Part of the problem rests in the fact that many companies are not sure about how to go about identifying critical talent – and that includes being able to identify what talent is actually critical. Nearly two thirds of respondents in a recent Mercer survey (Mercer 2014 Critical Talent Practices Survey) indicated that managing critical talent is vital to the execution of their business and talent strategies; however, only 30 percent rated their critical talent programs as being extremely effective.

With the global economic outlook improving, more organizations are recognizing that talent acquisition and talent retention are very important to their organizational success. But talent shortages remain and adequate talent pipelines and succession processes are often not in place. The Mercer study found that organizations do believe their talent management programs are strategically important, yet many of these same organizations don’t have adequate talent management programs in place that really help the organization as much as possible. For example:

• Only 49 percent notify critical talent of their status
• Only 34 per cent track critical talent
• About a third don’t forecast critical talent needs.

Part of the solution to this problem is for senior management to be in sync with what talent is actually critical. More needs to be done at identifying the real skills and talent that are critical, and not merely leaving it to organizational titles, which is done too often. Broad definitions such as “Engineering” or “Finance,” coupled with management levels such as “senior vice president” or “director” will often lead to gaps in what skill sets are truly needed, which are in place and which are on the bench or in the pipeline.

Today’s sophisticated and automated talent management systems can help. But even with them, organizations need to dig into what their true talent needs are and what talent have. Once they do this, they will then be in a position to leverage the power of these systems to much more quickly identify their critical talent and take the necessary steps to retain that talent. Beyond that, they can then more easily identify critical talent gaps and take the imperative actions to fill the gaps. All these steps will help improve an organization’s talent management and help it achieve its goals.

How do you identify critical talent in your organization?

Even before President Obama’s 2010 initiative to remove the obstacles in the federal government’s antiquated hiring process, agencies’ HR departments looked for ways to improve the assessment process to enhance both the applicant experience and the agencies’ chance of identifying top talent. With the OPM’s Hiring Reform in place, the intent is to create a process for job seekers that is more streamlined, easier to navigate and much faster.

Now, agencies can further help themselves and position themselves for talent acquisition success by focusing on processes and systems that can truly help them compete in the cutthroat hunt for top quality talent that exists today.

The Assessment Process in Federal Talent Acquisition

Candidate assessment in the federal work space typically involves HR developing occupational questionnaires based off position descriptions and job analysis. These questionnaires are intended to measure candidates’ knowledge of and competence in job relevant skills. Candidates are scored based upon self-ratings provided during the initial online application process. Those candidates with the highest self-assessment scores are sometimes invited to complete additional assessments, while most commonly this is the only assessment process prior to the interview.

How a particular agency goes about this assessment is defined by the agency. Specific processes and workflows need to be established considering the type of position, difficulty to fill and resources available to create and conduct the assessments. For example, a high-level mission critical position may not need a costly, in-depth assessment process.

Even with Hiring Reform – Problems Remain

While Hiring Reform set out to make the agencies’ and candidates’ lives easier, the reality is not quite so wonderful. Several problems remain with the talent assessment discipline in the federal space, including:

• Unnecessarily high burdens on candidates due to the length of questionnaires. This often discourages the very people that the government is trying to attract.
• Low predictive validity, as candidates are often smarter than they score on assessment tests or not as qualified as a score may indicate. This leads to promising candidates getting buried in the middle of the pack, while lesser-qualified candidates often rise to the top of the candidate list.
• Significant time is required by HR personnel to review candidates properly and identify better candidates.
• Assessment programs are commonly comprised of items with no distinguishing value (e.g. incredibly, answering a phone is a commonly used question in occupational questionnaires given how commonly it is a required skill across jobs.  However, it has no value to distinguish among potential high or low performers given everyone regularly answers a phone).
• Multi-hurdle highly predictive assessment processes take longer and cost considerably more to create and utilize.
• Multi-hurdle processes are complex and often not supported by acquisition technology.

The Future of Federal Candidate Assessment

Even with all the seemingly ingrained challenges in assessment of candidates throughout agencies, the future is promising in light of new technology available today. As with any technology, the answer and way out of the problems cannot be solved with technology alone. It will take discipline, planning and renewed dedication to the higher goals. But with that attention, technology can be exploited to relieve much of the burdens on both the candidates and the HR departments.

Talent acquisition systems that encompass full assessment capabilities include capabilities such as:

• Reporting tool that will analyze questions used in the past to best predict quality candidates, thereby allowing an agency to create smarter and shorter assessments, processed with only useful questions in the future.
• Flexible questioning that reduces the obvious nature of the “correct/highest scored” responses.
• Question libraries where items are labeled by the competency, position and skill level intended to measure, thereby ensuring items used will be of distinguishing value.
• Ability to incorporate multiple assessment and interview hurdles to increase predictive validity.
• Reporting tool that will identify the positions that have proven to yield a high volume of candidates requiring substantial evaluation processes.
• Open interface allowing interconnections to external assessment systems.

Providing these capabilities to HR users also lowers the likelihood that inappropriate questions are used, while allowing them the flexibility to determine items directly related to their specific vacancy. It further enhances the process by allowing HR to implement workflows that result in first-level assessments, automatically triggering a secondary assessment based on the outcome of making the initial cut, whether internally or via an external assessment.

While many agencies remain bogged down in the burden of traditional candidate assessment, others are moving ahead, into a new era that is not only automated, but with the flexibility and openness to adapt to the realities demanded by today’s candidates and available from today’s external systems.

Organizations looking to strengthen the talent acquisition discipline of the human resource function need to look at both the quality and the speed of how they handle recruitment. The competition for top talent is becoming more heated by the day as the labor market tightens. Yes, recruiters need to be sure they are doing everything as thoroughly and completely as possible, but if this results in further delays, the business will still suffer, as the potential of hiring the best available applicants can quickly vanish.

There are typically numerous tasks that need to be completed for a candidate. In other words, there is a process – a workflow – which HR organizations work their way through to ensure the right questions are being asked of candidates, along with appropriate follow-up procedures. Following these well-defined steps bests ensures all the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted in the selection process.

However, common problems in this scenario negatively impact the process, including missed steps and delays waiting for people for their input. Either of these can lead to ultimately losing out on hiring a possible top performer for your business or agency.

The good news is that there are now more efficient, time-saving and productive ways to go about performing all the operations needed for the pre-recruitment steps in the talent acquisition process. Automated systems that reduce recruiters’ time spent on these tasks and eliminate delays and human error can be exploited to accelerate the organization’s talent acquisition and lead to improved operational results – hiring top talent that improves the organization’s bottom line and reduces wasted resources.

These systems allow HR to create a pre-recruitment checklist. These are organization-specific tasks and procedures that need to be followed for each possible candidate. By populating the system with each clearly defined step, the system then assumes the responsibility of ensuring each step is completed, in the required order. Clear checks and alerts to specific people within the organization mean the tedious task of hunting down someone to do their piece is now done by the automated talent acquisition system.

For example, if a particular document (resume, application, questionnaire, etc.) is part of the process but does not exist in a common area, the system can be built to encompass the document. Therefore, everyone that needs to have access to the particular document has that access – and it’s in a common area, rather than a place where access might be difficult (e.g. Sharepoint). A library of questions can be built and maintained, and input to the system so that they must be answered before moving along the hiring procedure (e.g. degree, certification, years of experience, etc.). Questions can even be weighted for importance and dynamically linked to other questions, based on answers to initial questions, resulting in an automated process with no possibility of any step being skipped.

The result is a better-functioning talent acquisition process:

• Faster
• More thorough
• More efficient
• More accurate.

With the pressure on HR to reduce vacancies and deliver candidates that will move the organization forward, slow, error-prone manual steps in the pre-recruitment process should be eliminated.

How are you handling the pre-recruitment process for talent acquisition?

As Federal agencies grapple with multiple challenges, from finding top talent in the face of rising competition from the private sector, to the retirement tsunami and budget challenges, an emphasis is typically, and not unexpectedly, placed on talent acquisition. The challenges in this process are not trivial, and without coming to grips with improving this function of HR, chances for success in acquiring top or even adequate talent are severely minimized.

At the same time, it is still imperative for HR to move beyond this initial “first phase” of the talent management spectrum and carry the mission through to ensuring that great talent found remains engaged, valuable and in a partnership that both employer and employee find rewarding. At the crux of this challenge is employee performance management, and ensuring attention to this element of talent management will help ensure investments made in talent acquisition are not wasted due to poor follow-up.

An automated system can maximize the benefits of forward-thinking business processes designed to better engage employees and ensure both sides of the manager-employee relationship are on the same page. A thoughtful performance management system can also help your organization quickly identify top performers, allowing for better-informed decisions about employee performance, as well as succession planning. In addition, as Federal agencies face another hurdle in hiring and retaining millennials, performance management systems can help HR better engage this important demographic.

While having top talent acquisition and performance management systems in place can help elevate your entire talent management environment, further economies and efficiencies can be realized with a common and integrated platform that encompasses each of these categories. Time-saving capabilities such as single sign-on and common user interfaces across multiple systems help HR professionals, managerial staff, employees and candidates-turned employees function better and more efficiently in the talent management ecosystem. It can help foster the mindset of bringing the various pieces together and forming an ongoing commitment to serving the organization’s talent management needs.

Is your agency handling the recruitment and performance management processes separately or as an integrated solution?

1.        Drill down capabilities

Talent analytics isn’t merely a system to streamline your internal processes – it can in fact be a valuable competitive advantage. Countless businesses have been using it to really delve into the workings of their organization – both at a broad and granular level – and the return on investment can be quite substantial.

You should therefore look for a solution that has the ability to drill down into every level of the organization, allowing you to align the individual HR function to the other areas of the company and the wider organizational goals and strategies. This will make it easy to take a granular approach, looking at specific divisions, locations and elements of the workforce, and truly understand in detail what is going on.

As a result, you have a better idea of what key measures such as employee engagement are like, meaning you can track them in a more immediate way and put strategies in place to make sure it is all managed properly.

Any change made at this granular level can then be quantified with data that management can have confidence in, and that outlines the implications for the wider organization.

2.        Predictive power

Modern talent analytics also addresses a growing concern among businesses – it’s crucial not only to see what has been happening in the past and today, but also to use predictive analytics and see how the picture will change tomorrow.

When looking for a talent analytics solution, it is important to assess whether it has the ability to digest the data you have collected and analyzed and transform it into information that can direct future decisions.

This can guide a number of important activities such as candidate profiling, assessment of sourcing channels and employee engagement trends. By understanding the past using sophisticated talent analytics tools, organizations can predict the future, identifying patterns and utilizing those patterns for the wider benefit of the company.

Talent analytics remains a complex and comprehensive undertaking, but fortunately the solutions available today are up to the task. When choosing a solution for your organizations, it is essential to select one that features robust engines and systems that focus on automation, reducing the time people have to spend collecting data.

As a result, your organization can invest more time into actually analyzing the data and translating it into actionable insights. With solutions that are broad and flexible enough to suit an organization’s unique processes and systems, the opportunities for talent analytics are limitless.

Yes, having a superstar on your team makes success a whole lot more possible. As of today, no other team is a bigger favorite than the Cleveland Cavaliers to win next year’s NBA championship. And that superstar and A-level talent is why the Silicon Valley titans regularly raid each other for top talent. It’s a competitive world and winning is hard.

But as even LeBron James now knows, it takes more than him. While several notches down the glamour list from the Miami Heat, the San Antonio Spurs, in beating the Heat in this year’s Finals, gained much admiration for not only their style of play, but how they have developed an organization that consistently wins – year after year. They have the mindset throughout the organization to search for, develop and retain top talent that ensures the franchise’s ongoing success.

It’s no different outside the high-profile world of professional sports. The world’s top companies and the best-run government agencies pay a lot of attention to their people, as they are typically an organization’s most valuable asset. While in sports it comes from a team philosophy, scouting, player development and attention to employee engagement and satisfaction on a small but powerful scale, enterprises utilize streamlined processes and workflows throughout the organization to ensure they are recruiting, developing and retaining top talent – and ensuring succession plans for when a top employee leaves.

Talent management — from recruitment to performance management to retention and talent development – it’s the proven method for achieving organizational success.

In this complex and shifting environment, people management is becoming a top priority for organizations in all sectors. Companies need to have talent analytics systems in place to ensure they are gaining a real insight into their workforce, identifying opportunities for development and enhancing their recruitment processes.

A brief history of talent analytics

Up until only a few years ago, talent analytics was almost unheard of. It was relatively unknown, with only a handful of organizations using it and taking advantage of its many benefits.

The rest had to rely on tools such as annual reviews and appraisals to obtain any meaningful knowledge of their workforce and the wider organisation. Understandably, this wasn’t the most effective nor efficient of methods, only offering one window every 12 months into what was going on within the organization.

The use of talent analytics is definitely growing, but many organizations around the world are yet to full recognize its benefits. For instance, the Center for Advanced Human Resources Studies (CAHRS) at Cornell University found that little more than a quarter (27 per cent) of top firms working with the center felt they had the adequate expertise to execute talent analytics initiatives.

In addition, only around one in ten (13 per cent) said they had necessary systems or tools to implement these initiatives.

With the range of solutions now available, however, organizations can now constantly collect data and keep tabs on their organization and its people – without having to wait a year for results.

In Part 2 of this blog series, we’ll take a closer look at the sort of functionality that you should look for in a Talent Analytics solution.

Depending on any one individual’s or organization’s particular situation, it can certainly be debatable as to how far into an economic recovery we are in, or whether we are in one at all. However, from a macroeconomic perspective, there are many indicators that much of the developed world is on an upswing, to varying extents.

Therefore, it would seem the time is ripe for more strategic corporate and government initiatives to not only take advantage of any current or future upswings, but to also be better prepared for the opportunity for growth. In the case of talent acquisition and corporate and government recruiting, this unfortunately does not appear to be the prevalent situation.

As pointed out in a recent article on BenefitsPro.com, “most companies are still in survival mode with respect to talent acquisition.” That observation is gleaned from a recent study by consulting firm CEB entitled Global Assessment Trends Report, which also reports that “weak talent infrastructures are threatening corporate growth and impeding strategic HR support.”

The observations are unfortunate, especially since tools are readily available to assist organizations in moving from survival, reactionary and tactical mindsets to a much more strategic mentality. Like most disciplines today, a driving force in the talent acquisition field is data analytics, which allow HR organizations to really put some clout behind their decisions, actions and recommendations. Corporate board rooms and upper echelons of government agencies are looking for quantifiable numbers behind any organization decisions, and this capability now exists in the talent acquisition field.

Analytics-driven systems can help HR organizations make better decisions and remove the guesswork and “go-with-our-gut” decisions. Choices and strategic moves can now be made with more assurance. With data analytics ingrained into the DNA of the HR organization, the entire recruitment process, from initial job requests to onboarding and employee development, can become one of real, analytic insight and follow-up action. Dashboards that can be tailored to specific organizational needs and provide key insight to where inefficiencies occur and where improvements can be made are available today.

For a business or agency, the benefit of modern talent acquisition systems can be monumental. When you consider that for many organizations, people are the most important asset, and gaining or losing a star candidate or employee can have a direct impact on the organization’s success, it would be shortsighted to overlook this opportunity for strategic improvement.

With businesses poised for growth, and government agencies striving for relevancy, leaving talent acquisition in a desperate survival and reactionary mode is not the prudent path forward.

Recruitment is a space where true success can be realized – today.