[Senate Hearing 112-118]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-118
INSPIRING STUDENTS TO FEDERAL SERVICE
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HEARING
before the
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 21, 2011
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
JON TESTER, Montana RAND PAUL, Kentucky
MARK BEGICH, Alaska JERRY MORAN, Kansas
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Nicholas Rossi, Minority Staff Director
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
Joyce Ward, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
MARK BEGICH, Alaska JERRY MORAN, Kansas
Lisa M. Powell, Staff Director, Majority
Kata C. Sybenga, Counsel Majority
Rachel Weaver, Staff Director, Minority
Alan Elias, Legislatve Assistant Minority
Aaron H. Woolf, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statement:
Page
Senator Akaka................................................ 1
WITNESSES
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Hon. Christine M. Griffin, Deputy Director, U.S. Office of
Personnel Management........................................... 3
Michael C. Kane, Chief Human Capital Officer, U.S. Department of
Energy......................................................... 5
Carolyn M. Taylor, Chief Human Capital Officer, U.S. Government
Accountability Office.......................................... 6
Timothy McManus, Vice President for Education and Outreach,
Partnership for Public Service................................. 14
Laurel McFarland, Executive Director, National Association of
Schools of Public Affairs and Administration................... 16
Anne Mahle, Vice President for Recruitment, Teach for America.... 18
Witold Skwierczynski, President, National Council of Social
Security Administration Field Operations Locals, American
Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO.................... 20
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Griffin, Hon. Christine M.:
Testimony.................................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 31
Kane, Michael C.:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 39
Mahle, Anne:
Testimony.................................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 72
McFarland, Laurel:
Testimony.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 67
McManus, Timothy:
Testimony.................................................... 14
Prepared statement........................................... 55
Skwierczynski, Witold:
Testimony.................................................... 20
Prepared statement........................................... 79
Taylor, Carolyn M.:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 44
APPENDIX
Questions and responses submitted for the record from:
Ms. Griffin.................................................. 87
Background....................................................... 90
Statement for the record from Mr. David Ellwood.................. 94
INSPIRING STUDENTS TO FEDERAL SERVICE
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TUESDAY JUNE 21, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management, the Federal Workforce,
and the District of Columbia,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:34 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K.
Akaka, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. The hearing will come to order.
Aloha and thank you all for being here today as the
Subcommittee examines how the Federal Government could better
partner with colleges and universities to prepare and recruit
students for Federal service. And I would like to recognize
interns who are attending this hearing and thank you for coming
to listen in on what we hope you can be a part of in the very,
very near future. So thank you so much for being here.
The Federal Government is the largest employer in the
United States, and Federal service is a noble profession.
Within the next 5 years, the Federal Government is expected to
face one of the largest retirement waves in the Nation's
history, making the development of a new generation of workers
even more vital.
In today's economy, many students are graduating only to
find that they are locked out of a market that is not producing
enough jobs. At the same time, the Federal Government has jobs
that are mission critical and difficult to fill. There simply
are not enough graduates to fill critical jobs in many
scientific, technical, national security, and medical fields.
We must develop innovative strategies to bridge this gap. We
should not look at this solely as a challenge. This creates a
unique opportunity for universities to place graduates in good
jobs if we can make students aware the opportunities exist and
prepare them to fill those jobs.
We need to continue to build stronger relationships between
agencies and universities to help foster academic programs that
prepare students for Federal service, especially for difficult-
to-fill positions. I believe that, working together, we can
maximize our recruitment efforts to address critical hiring
needs while also creating direct pipelines for students into
the agencies.
As part of this effort, we must continue to work to improve
the broken Federal hiring process. This Subcommittee has
focused on reforming the Federal hiring process. Since 2008, we
have held three hearings on the issue and worked closely with
the administration on its reform efforts. Additionally, I
introduced the Federal Hiring Process Improvement Act last
Congress with Senator Voinovich. I intend to continue that
effort this year.
The Administration has been making some good progress, but
we still hear stories of talented individuals who seek
employment with the Federal Government, only to grow frustrated
with the archaic hiring process and find work elsewhere. In the
past, I believe there has been too much focus on creating
exceptions to the competitive hiring process for recent
graduates rather than making sure the competitive process works
for them.
I strongly believe the competitive hiring process can serve
as an effective avenue for bringing recent college graduates
into the workforce. The competitive hiring process serves as
our most effective tool to ensure that the Federal workforce is
composed of the most qualified and able individuals, who are
appointed only after competing in a fair and open process that
is free from political interference.
As the President stressed when he issued his Executive
Order last December on Recruiting and Hiring Students and
Recent Graduates, the Federal Government benefits from a
diverse workforce that includes the enthusiasm and perspectives
of students and recent graduates. Once we recruit students and
recent graduates, we must harness their enthusiasm and talents
through focused training and development.
One program I am particularly proud of is the Pearl Harbor
Naval Shipyard apprenticeship program, which attracts thousands
of applicants for 125 to 150 positions each year. The
apprentices learn a trade and earn an associate's degree from
the Honolulu Community College through this 4-year, paid work-
study program.
I am so glad to have each of our witnesses here today
representing both the public and private sectors. Each one of
you brings a different and valuable perspective to this
discussion. I look forward to hearing from each of you today
and also continuing to work with you to ensure our next
generation of Federal workers will be ready to lead.
I welcome our first panel of witnesses to the Subcommittee:
Christine Griffin, Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM); Michael Kane, Chief Human Capital Officer
(CHCO) at the Department of Energy (DOE); and Ms. Carolyn
Taylor, Chief Human Capital Officer at the Government
Accountability Office (GAO).
As you know, it is the custom of this Subcommittee to swear
in all witnesses, so please raise your right hand. Do you swear
that the testimony you are about to give before this
Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you, God?
Ms. Griffin. I do.
Mr. Kane. I do.
Ms. Taylor. I do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Let it be noted for the record
that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Before we start, I want you to know that your full written
statements will be made part of the record, and I would like to
remind you to please limit your oral remarks to 5 minutes.
Ms. Griffin, will you please proceed with your statement?
STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHRISTINE M. GRIFFIN,\1\ DEPUTY DIRECTOR,
U.S. OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
Ms. Griffin. Thank you, Senator Akaka, and it is great to
see you back in action and well.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Griffin appears in the appendix
on page 31.
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Senator Akaka. Good to be here. Thank you.
Ms. Griffin. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today
regarding the Office of Personnel Management's efforts to
improve the way the Federal Government recruits and hires
students. We are excited about all of the hiring reform
measures that we are taking at OPM, both as an employer and as
the Federal Government's H.R. adviser.
Hiring reform has several major components, all of which,
in one way or another, create opportunities to improve Federal
employment options. Essay-style questions have been eliminated
from the initial application, and job seekers can apply for a
Federal job with just a resume and a cover letter. Supervisors
and managers are more involved in the hiring process, and they
are held accountable for the quality of their hires and for
supporting a successful transition of new employees into the
Federal service. Once we get them, we need to keep them.
I am pleased to tell you that we recently launched
USAJOBSRecruit. This is a one-stop recruiting site for Federal
agencies that providing information, tools, and guidance on
recruitment as well as provides an opportunity for agencies to
collaborate with one another through the use of discussion
forums and blogs.
Additionally, through USAJOBSRecruit, there is a new tool
called the School Sorter. This allows agencies to sift through
applicants by the type of university they attended. The School
Sorter provides data in educational resources covering a full
range of postsecondary institutions across the country,
including over 7,000 colleges and universities. Users can share
recruiting experiences, and they can search schools based on
available majors and degrees, much like the ones you discussed,
that are difficult to find or to fill Federal jobs with. Also,
we can sort by historical commitment to serving diverse
populations in promoting Federal service to their students.
The Student Pathways Programs are another major component
of hiring reform. It establishes clear paths to Federal
internships for students from high school through postgraduate
level and to careers for recent graduates. This program
requires agencies to invest in meaningful training and career
development for individuals at the beginning of their Federal
careers.
The three programs included in the Pathways framework are:
An internship program, a Recent Graduates Program, and a
reinvigorated Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program. We
expect to issue proposed regulations for public comment
sometime later this summer.
OPM also conducts extensive outreach to students in
educational institutions with a particular emphasis on
enhancing diversity within the overall Federal workforce. For
example, OPM employees go directly to historically black
colleges and universities and Hispanic colleges and
universities to conduct training on how to apply for Federal
internships or jobs. In the last few months, I personally have
gone to the University of Texas-San Antonio, L.A., and San
Diego to speak directly with students and university
representatives to explain the opportunities for Federal
internships and careers. I will be in Cincinnati next week
doing exactly the same at the LULAC conference.
OPM, in collaboration with the Partnership for Public
Service, helps educate a new generation of leaders about the
importance and value of public service with the Call to Serve
Initiative. This initiative reaches more than 700 schools and
more than 75 Federal agencies, and right now we are planning to
invite the hundreds and hundreds of Federal interns here in
D.C. this summer to a briefing at OPM on Student Pathways so
that when they return to their schools they can begin spreading
the word. And, actually, a lot of the interns that are here
today are involved in actually developing that briefing for
their fellow interns through our government.
In addition to our efforts to spearhead the Pathways
Program Framework governmentwide, we are also working to
enhance our own internal agency programs for student interns
and Presidential Management Fellows. We have long recognized
that the PMF program offers an excellent source of talented
individuals who have already been recruited and vigorously
assessed by OPM.
You are a leader in this area, Mr. Chairman, and especially
in the area of mentoring and supervisory training. We know that
emphasizing the importance of supervisory training makes it
clear that supervisory skills are valued in their own right,
and the opportunity to become a supervisor or a manager is not
merely a reward for achievements unrelated to one's potential
as a supervisor. So we recognize the importance of training as
we published in our regulations for supervisors that every 3
years they should know about mentoring employees, improving
employees' performance, conducting performance appraisals, and
assisting employees in addressing unacceptable performance. We
know that good mentoring is an integral part of developing and
retaining a diverse workforce.
Thank you again. I will be happy to respond to any
questions you have.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you very much for your
statement, and it is good to hear what you are doing, so thank
you very much, Ms. Griffin.
Mr. Kane, please proceed with your statement.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL C. KANE,\1\ CHIEF HUMAN CAPITAL OFFICER,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Mr. Kane. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the
opportunity to appear before you today. We at the Department
are particularly proud to be here and discuss our recruitment
programs and, notably, what we are doing in the area of student
Ambassadors, which furthers the competitive process and gives
focus to those individuals of talent who want to pursue Federal
service.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Kane appears in the appendix on
page 39.
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In the strategy, we looked at how the Department was
recruiting. Specifically, we have 15,000 Federal employees. We
have 18 servicing personnel offices, and they are spread
throughout both rural and highly metropolitan areas.
When we looked at those offices, we discovered that they
had tremendous local outreach. They did a very good job with
local universities in and around our facilities and our
laboratories in highly technical hiring environments where
there were skill sets that we needed. However, just as you
discussed, bringing the best and the brightest means reaching
beyond those boundaries. It means broadening the view from just
a job to a career, to a lifelong commitment.
So we studied where we were holding job interviews, where
we were addressing student employment, and we found that
although we did something on the order of 182 job fairs and
events throughout the year, they were split: 40 percent of them
in the West, about 25 to 27 percent in the Midwest, and then
the remaining 20 on the east coast. And we were drawing what I
call geographically related recruitment from them. We needed to
broaden that activity.
We also needed to address the fact that OPM and the entire
reform effort connected with USAJOBS gave students a wider
window. That window opened them up to endless job
possibilities, but they needed help and assistance to look at
how those job opportunities translated into their specific
condition.
We focused on establishing, back in 2009 and 2010, six
positions called student Ambassadors. The intent was to put
these students who had worked for us, who came from diverse
program backgrounds--they were graduate and undergraduate
students, engineering students, business students,
international affairs students--out as our Ambassadors,
providing peer-to-peer, student-to-student discussion about
what it was like to work in the Department of Energy, what it
was like for the Federal Government. So that behind USAJOBS and
all the ability it gave students to locate jobs, they could
talk about careers; they could talk about meaning; they could
talk about the things that are important to the new generation:
Commitment, the chance to make a difference, lifestyle changes.
And the students themselves, using USAJOBS and using that
knowledge, could look beyond just competing for a local job and
ask where is the career path, how can I navigate that path, if
I need more information how can I find it.
So what we had were people who were located on the college
campuses, working with the professors, and here is the key
factor to me. Those six people by the end of a 7-month
rotation, basically the school semester year, had brought about
contacts with over 71 faculty. Now, those students may graduate
and move on, but that bridge that they have created to mine the
talent that is there, to refer it, is continual. It is a
renewable resource for us. And so we believe the student
Ambassadors are an excellent way to complement the electronic
world that we live in. Whether we are tweeting or texting, we
have the ability for students and faculty to find somebody who
can tell them what we are really like, who can talk about our
values, can talk about our training opportunities, can talk
about the career paths in a language they understand, and they
can tell us more directly what is working in our recruitment
and what is not.
I thank you very much for that opportunity.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Kane, for your
statement. It is good to hear what you are doing in helping
students become future employees.
Ms. Taylor, will you please proceed with your statement?
STATEMENT OF CAROLYN M. TAYLOR,\1\ CHIEF HUMAN CAPITAL OFFICER,
U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Taylor. Thank you. Chairman Akaka, thank you for the
opportunity to be here today to discuss GAO's campus
recruitment program. As an organization committed to having a
high-performing diverse workforce, we place great importance on
attracting, hiring, training, and retaining employees with the
skills needed to support GAO's mission to serve Congress and
the American public. While our future hiring will be shaped by
the budget environment, over the past 5 years we have hired
about 300 employees each year, mostly at the entry level, for
our analyst and analyst-related positions. Also over this time
period, we have had a very robust student intern program.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Taylor appears in the appendix on
page 44.
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Having a strong campus recruitment program has played a key
role in attracting highly qualified candidates. Today I am
going to focus my remarks on our campus recruitment program,
our recent efforts to enhance that program, and other programs
and policies we have in place to support and help new staff.
Now, GAO's campus recruitment program began about a decade
ago. We use senior executives and staff from across the agency
to develop and maintain relationships with many colleges and
universities across the country. Our relationship building has
been primarily based on campus visits to recruit both our
candidates for entry-level as well as for intern positions.
In addition to these visits, each year since 2001 we have
convened an Educators' Advisory Panel. This panel includes
deans and professors from various colleges and universities.
Through this panel we have obtained advice and provided
feedback about ways schools can refine and strengthen their
curricula to make their graduates more successful at GAO.
To supplement our campus-related efforts, we outreach to
various professional organizations and groups and attend their
conferences and make presentations. We also invite them to come
to GAO to talk to our staff as well. This approach has been
really very effective. Our brand recognition has grown
tremendously, and we get thousands of highly qualified
candidates for each of our openings.
However, it is a 10-year-old approach. As part of our
effort to focus more attention on strategic human capital
management and to be consistent with our recommendations to
other agencies, we have taken actions to enhance that approach.
We established stronger linkages between our recruitment
efforts and our workers' planning needs, and we set recruitment
priorities based on data and recent evaluation from our program
outputs.
Additionally, given the important role our recruiters are
playing, we have taken steps to make sure we have a well-
trained and diverse recruitment cadre. Also, we have instituted
a number of institutional changes and administrative changes to
make the program more efficient.
Along with our efforts to recruit and hire high-quality,
diverse staff, we have other programs in place to support staff
once they arrive at GAO. This support comes primarily from our
2-year professional development program. This program helps new
staff learn about our core values, how we do our work, and the
standards by which they will be assessed.
Each new employee is assigned an adviser, and each employee
participates in many, many hours of training, both classroom
and on the job. New employees receive formal feedback every 3
months and formal performance appraisals every 6 months to help
them develop and improve their skills and competencies.
In addition to our professional development program, the
involvement of our senior leaders and other policies have been
really helpful to help employees adjust to GAO. For example,
our leaders often participate in the new hire orientation. Our
agency head, the Comptroller General, meets with our new
employees. And most of our senior executives take an active
role in some way or the other in the development opportunities
that are provided for new staff.
New employees can participate in our mentoring program, and
we have policies in place to help foster an inclusive and
supportive work environment to help all staff balance work and
life, including flexible schedules and telework.
We think these practices, policies, and programs have
contributed to employees' decisions to stay. About 90 percent
of the employees that we hired in 2008 are still with us today.
Finally, feedback from our new employees shows really high
levels of job satisfaction. This positive feedback has
contributed to GAO being named as the second best place to work
in the government in 2009 as well as in 2010.
This concludes my prepared remarks. I will be very glad to
answer any questions that you may have, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Ms. Taylor, for your
testimony here and your statement.
Ms. Taylor. You are welcome.
Senator Akaka. Let me ask my first question to Ms. Griffin.
Many companies that are successful in recruiting top talent
require senior executives to devote time to recruiting and
developing the workforce. What steps is OPM taking to engage
senior leadership and focus their attention on recruiting and
cultivating top talent?
Ms. Griffin. Well, some of the initiatives that we have
taken through the hiring reform agenda are getting managers
more involved in the whole process, more involved in the
recruiting, more involved in really the very beginning of the
decision about what is needed, who is needed, and then getting
them to take more ownership of the whole hiring process.
OPM works closely with the Chief Human Capital Officers,
Council, and I am sure Mr. Kane can attest to the numerous
discussions that we have about this very issue. And in addition
to that, one of the things that we are implementing at OPM and
we hope to share with the rest of the government as we get
better at doing it ourselves is a mentoring program.
So there are a number of things that we are doing, but we
are saying to senior executives and to managers overall, and to
supervisors, that to get good-quality folks, you need to be
involved in every aspect of the process.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you very much, Ms. Griffin.
Mr. Kane, understanding which strategies work and which do
not and adapting accordingly are important parts of a
successful recruiting program. To do this well, you must
collect the right data and have metrics in place.
How are you evaluating and adapting your hiring strategies?
Mr. Kane. Mr. Chairman, we are looking at an number of
factors. We look at the number of recruits that we have from
certain universities in certain areas. We look at how many
outreach activities occur by using tools like USAJOBS, for
example, to hire, we are looking at the number of applicants
that come through to us, identifying that they have an interest
in employment, whether they file an application or not. We do
that through a series of centralized tools. We do that so that
we can track where the interest comes from and then localize
our efforts at those schools.
I talked a little bit about the Ambassadors program. That
is one of the things they do. If you look at the number of
events they get involved in, it is tremendous. So they might
result in 80,000 hits in terms of applications, requests for
information, printed or otherwise, or just online conversations
about employment. Now, that is a tremendous amount of
information.
What we need to know more specifically is: Are they finding
the right jobs? Are they getting to our executives to talk
about what those jobs really are? Are they able to understand
where our jobs and careers might result in lifestyle behaviors
or changes that they want to have? Do they want to go on to
graduate school? Do they want to go on to a Ph.D.? Do they like
living in the desert? Are they thinking about a family and
looking at a career path that will keep them in one place for a
long period? Or are they looking to be involved in
international work and want to travel overseas?
So we use USAJOBS and we use our Jobs One portal,
particularly that automated information, to allow us to focus
in on how well we are recruiting. Then we use the Ambassadors
to focus in on how are we connecting.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Kane.
Ms. Christine Griffin, OPM has led extensive workforce
planning to address the governmentwide shortage of
veterinarians after this Subcommittee held a hearing on that
issue. There are also shortages of qualified professionals in
other areas, including many scientific, technical, and medical
fields. Colleges would be eager to place their graduates in
many of these positions, but they may need better information
about what training is needed and how their students can get
hired.
My question is: How can the Federal Government better work
with schools to build pipelines into these difficult-to-fill,
critical positions?
Ms. Griffin. There is no doubt that we need to do a better
job of actually working with not only our folks at OPM that go
out and do the recruiting, but also with the other agencies and
helping them develop any of the skills and tools they need to
have access to the right colleges and universities as well as
access to the folks that they can work with to educate the
students about the opportunities that exist in the government,
and at what agencies in particular.
We know that our refresh of the USAJOBS is a way of helping
them do that, and the tool that I talked about, the
USAJOBSRecruit, is a very recent tool--I think we only
implemented it about a month ago--that will allow agencies to
find schools specifically with the students that are getting
the skills that they need in their agencies, and then they can
go directly to those schools. They can develop relationships
with the folks at those schools.
So we are using technology and developing better ways of
using technology to help the agencies actually recruit the
folks that they need.
In addition to that, there are other mechanisms by which we
can help them do that, and agencies from time to time do come
and ask us to help them develop particular registers and things
like that of types of occupations that will help them hire
people more expediently into the workforce.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Ms. Taylor, your statement notes that GAO provides feedback
to schools on how they can refine and strengthen their
curricula to make their graduates more successful. I would like
to hear your thoughts on what more the Federal Government could
do to provide schools guidance on the skills the Federal
Government needs and how schools can prepare their students to
be successful Federal job candidates?
Ms. Taylor. I would say first that we have been working
with our universities since 2001, a lot of the deans and
professors, and we have pretty much tailored our feedback to
them to fit the job areas and the competencies that we need,
and so our feedback to them has been more directed in that
regard.
And if I were to give some guidance or suggestions to some
of the other agencies, I think we have to start with each
agency's specific mission and focus and have them look for
those organizations and schools that help them meet their needs
and focus specifically on their agencies' key competencies. So
it has to sort of be tailored to the individual agency.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Ms. Griffin, historically, the competitive hiring process
was the main route into Federal service. However, in recent
years the Federal Career Intern Program grew so dramatically
that most entry-level hires were made through that program. I
repeatedly raised concerns that using the intern program as the
general hiring authority undermined veterans' preference and
merit principles. I want to thank the Administration for
phasing that program out.
How will you make sure that the new Student Pathways
Programs do not again become a substitute for the competitive
hiring process?
Ms. Griffin. One of the ways we can do that, Senator, is
actually by providing more oversight of that program. It is
something that we have discussed with all of the Chief Human
Capital Officers. It is something that we have discussed with
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as well, and we will
be seeking to have progress reviews and updates on how the
program is going on a continuous basis so that we never find
ourselves in that situation again.
Senator Akaka. Well, Ms. Griffin, President Obama issued
the Student Pathways Executive Order last December, but OPM has
yet to release draft regulations to establish the new Pathways
Programs. What is the cause of the delay? And when do you
expect the draft regulations to be released?
Ms. Griffin. Well, I am happy to report that they are
complete. They are going out for agency comment. They will be
available for public comment later this summer, so they are
actually finished to the point where they are releasable to get
comment, and we are in that process right now.
Senator Akaka. Well, that is timely, and it will certainly
help our cause here.
Mr. Kane, what are your thoughts on the Student Pathways
Executive Order? And how will these new programs impact your
agency's student recruitment strategies?
Mr. Kane. Pathways is certainly a critical piece of our
recruitment programs. It has been in the past. What you look at
with the Department of Energy is the fact that we do have a
large number of highly specialized skills sets---nuclear
engineering, environmental engineering, power transmission--and
one of the things that the Pathways Program and others like it
does is give us the ability to start working with students
early on and to encourage those students to use internships,
use viable, competitive methods coming straight out of school.
We also look at the Pathways Program as an opportunity for
us to diversify our recruitment efforts. I talked a little bit
about the things that we have been doing to try to broaden the
recruitment so that we get what I call geographic harmony,
where we do not hire from all one local area.
Pathways does that because it brings a whole large set of
students into play. It provides an opportunity that other
competitive means do not. That is not to say that we do not do
a lot of competitive hiring. We do, from straight up, very
specialized jobs. What we really want to do is get young
individuals in and help them grow in their career path, bring
them out in undergraduate school, bring them in and encourage
them to go back to school, and change the direction of where
they are going. They might come out a nuclear engineer, but
then they need to understand something about managing budgets
and costs if they are going to work for the government. So they
go back and get an MBA.
Pathways and programs like that provide that orientation.
They provide that focus. So they are extremely valuable to us.
They are much needed.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you very much for that. I have
complimented and praised our military because, as they rise in
rank, people do not realize how much training and education
they go through so that they can deal with their troops and
whatever mission they will be facing, which changes. And so
they have constant education so that they are very, very well
educated, and so in a sense we need that in the other
departments as well.
Mr. Kane. And we need to provide that continuity so that
those uniformed service members coming out who want to continue
to serve their country can take that highly specialized
training that they have, marry that with academic credentials,
and continue to evolve. Pathways is one way to do that.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Kane, some students considering Federal
jobs are deterred by the complicated Federal hiring process. We
have been working on that, all of us. OPM has made progress on
reforming the hiring process, and as Ms. Griffin testified, OPM
is also working to provide students with information to help
them through this process.
How do you make sure your recruiters on campus have the
training and ability they need not only to recruit students but
also to help them navigate the Federal hiring process?
Mr. Kane. We actually train them on how the process works,
what the good points and the bad points of an automated filing
process are, how to go through looking at a job and aiding a
student in deciphering that job, read what is there.
One thing that I think is very important to do with
students in particular is to help them understand where they
are in the process and what they are looking for. I talked
about the student Ambassadors. That is a critical link for us
in doing that because they have actually worked, they have
spent a summer or longer working inside our buildings, inside
our plants. They know the difference. They can tell somebody if
you are looking to do hands-on work, you do not want to go to
Washington. Washington worries about management and budgets and
vision and direction. If you want to do hands-on engineering,
you want to be in Los Alamos, in New Mexico. That is one
example of what they can do. They can focus in on where the
work is and help the students translate where the best
opportunity for them at that point is.
So I think that is invaluable. We cannot use all the tools
as just a way of getting people in. We have to keep the human
touch there. We have to have that quality touch. It is old-
fashioned HR. I am going to talk to you. I am going to sell you
on my job and why this is important.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Ms. Taylor, I know that you have stressed the importance of
keeping strong relationships with universities, but in this
current budgetary climate, many agencies are not hiring. How is
GAO engaged with universities to continue to strengthen
relationships on campus in this current climate? And do you
think these efforts have been successful?
Ms. Taylor. We are revising our campus recruitment
approach. We are not going to visit as many campuses as we have
in the past. It is just financially not efficient for us to do
that. We are going to maintain our relationships through a
variety of ways. We have lots of information that we share,
that we can give them. We have our senior executives we call
our campus executives, and each campus executive has probably
one or two colleges that they stay in contact with, with that
personal touch, as Mr. Kane mentioned. They will call and
periodically talk about what is happening in GAO and talk about
our announcements. We will invite some of the students and the
colleges to come to GAO, particularly those who are coming to
Washington. Many of them have a Washington semester or a
Washington visit. We will invite them to visit there.
But we have readjusted our focus. We have what we call sort
of a three-pronged approach. We are going to continue to visit
a few schools. For most of our schools, we are going to have
what we call a hybrid approach--some visits but more virtual
information sharing--and then many others where we are just
sharing information electronically.
Senator Akaka. Well, here is my final question, and this is
for the panel. For internship programs to succeed, they must
not only meet agency needs, but also provide career development
and training for participants that prepare them for a career in
Federal service.
How do you make sure your internship programs provide
students the opportunities they need to identify and prepare
for careers at your agency or other Federal agencies? Ms.
Griffin.
Ms. Griffin. Well, one of the things that is actually
discussed within the confines of the Pathways Program is that
we as a government have to do a much better job of actually
developing programs for students when they come in, everything
from having an active program that teaches them about the
opportunities within the Federal Government, within your agency
in particular, making sure that they are exposed to all aspects
of what a government job entails and what a career in the
Federal Government can entail. And that could be everything
from having, a speaker series where different people in
different parts of the agencies actually talk to them and
explain what their career path has been like and what led them
to where they are, to very good advice from our own folks at
OPM about how to develop a good resume, how to really apply for
Federal jobs, how to navigate all the different systems that
are involved.
I know that we are very active in not only doing that, but
helping other agencies, reaching out to other agencies and
helping them develop those same types of programs.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Kane.
Mr. Kane. I could follow on with almost exactly what
Christine had to say, but there is one other key piece that we
as leaders have to do. We have to protect that budget authority
and make sure it stays stable. So to provide those speaker
series, to enter into rotational assignments, it involves
temporary duty assignment and travel for these students and for
new employees, for putting them on work teams where they are
coached and where they get mentoring, technical or otherwise,
the formal course work that we require them to do.
They have to know that when they develop those plans with
their supervisors, two things are going to happen:
First, that plan is going to be respected; it is going to
be honored. And when they leave and come back, they are going
to fit back into their job, and they are going to have work to
do, not the fear that if I am gone, something is going to get
moved to somebody else. That is the first piece.
The second piece, they can look at that agency budget and
know that funding is being protected so that they are assured
that the resources are there for that commitment we have made
to them.
Senator Akaka. Ms. Taylor.
Ms. Taylor. For the most part, our internship program has
been a summer program, so we have candidates in GAO for, 3 or 4
months in the summer. We treat them like full members of the
GAO team. We bring them in. We assign them a buddy, sort of a
semi-mentor--but it is usually a young person as well--to help
them understand GAO right from the beginning.
We have a few days of training that we ask them to
participate in, and we incorporate them, again, as a full
member of the team. We have set up various activities
throughout the summer, a speaker series as well. We invite them
to many of the engagement meetings. We bring them to the Hill
for opportunities to understand that part of our work as well.
The performance management piece is important, too, so we
start with, clear expectations and we give them feedback. And
at the end of their session, we give them an appraisal and let
them know what we thought about their performance.
Most of our interns at the end of the summer are given an
opportunity to return. Many--about 70 percent--are given offers
later on, assuming we have the budget authority and the staff
year. But we have been refining our internship program for a
while, and it has been really, really an excellent program for
us. We value those students quite a lot.
Senator Akaka. Well, I thank you very much for your
valuable testimony this afternoon. As I mentioned, our Nation
for the first time in history is facing a large retirement wave
that is coming, and you have reported some of your activities
in trying to deal with this wave. And just like the way they
surf in Hawaii, we want to take advantage and even use it
wisely as an opportunity to get a good ride. [Laughter.]
So let us look forward to that and continue to try to look
for the best ways of not only recruiting but maintaining and
sustaining and keeping well-qualified, well-educated employees
for our Federal Government. It is in our hands.
Thank you for being together, and we will work hard to
bring that about. Thank you very much.
I would now ask our second panel of witnesses to please
come forward. On our second panel this afternoon, we have Mr.
Tim McManus, Vice President for Education and Outreach at the
Partnership for Public Service.
We have Ms. Laurel McFarland, Executive Director of the
National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and
Administration; Ms. Anne Mahle, Vice President for Recruitment
at Teach for America (TFA); and Mr. Witold Skwierczynski.
Mr. Skwierczynski. Good. W is like V, CZ is like CH.
Skwierczynski. You did good, though.
Senator Akaka. He is the President of the National Council
of Social Security Administration Field Operations Locals at
the American Federation of Government Employees.
Welcome to all of you, and it is the custom of this
Subcommittee to swear in all witnesses, and I would like to ask
all of you to please stand and raise your right hand. Do you
solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give this
Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you, God?
Mr. McManus. I do.
Ms. McFarland. I do.
Ms. Mahle. I do.
Mr. Skwierczynski. I do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Let it be noted for the record
that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Let me also remind all of you that although your written
statement will be included in the record, your oral statement
is limited to 5 minutes. Your full written statements will be
included.
Mr. McManus, will you please proceed with your statement?
STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY MCMANUS,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT FOR EDUCATION
AND OUTREACH, PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. McManus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As Vice President for
Education and Outreach at the Partnership for Public Service, I
lead the Partnership's efforts to inspire top talent, including
the Call to Serve Initiative--which you heard Christine Griffin
talk briefly about--a joint initiative between the Partnership
and the Office of Personnel Management. That initiative is now
a vibrant network of more than 750 colleges and universities
across the country and is the only group of colleges and
universities dedicated specifically and exclusively to
promoting Federal opportunities to students.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. McManus appears in the appendix
on page 55.
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This is a critical time for this hearing. The challenge of
inspiring students, particularly those in mission-critical
fields, is greater than ever before. As we reported in our
Where the Jobs Are report, there is a tremendous need for
mission-critical talent across government, many of which are
also the same hard-to-fill occupations in the private sector.
Budget constraints are also requiring us to look at new
cost-effective ways to effectively bring colleges and
universities and Federal agencies together to recruit top
talent. Finally, with antigovernment sentiment and Fed bashing
on the rise, we believe that the Federal Government may lose
its competitive edge that it has worked so hard to gain over
the last several years.
I want to commend the Administration and the Office of
Personnel Management for its attention to hiring reform and to
creating new pathways for student employment, particularly
through the Presidential Memo on Improving the Federal
Recruitment and Hiring Process and the Executive Order on
Recruiting and Hiring Students and Recent Graduates. I also
want to applaud the Subcommittee for its attention to these
important issues.
The bottom line, however, is that the only way we are going
to see change happen is if agency leadership makes recruiting
and hiring a priority. This Subcommittee should do whatever it
can to ensure that leaders pay attention to these issues and
hold them accountable for improvement.
One way to do this would be to require that talent
recruitment and management be incorporated into performance
reviews for all career and non-career Senior Executive Service
(SES). In addition, OPM now requires that agencies collect data
on three specific measures related to hiring effectiveness:
Time to hire, manager satisfaction with the quality of
applicants, and applicant satisfaction with the process.
Congress in its oversight function needs to hold agency
leadership accountable for these measures and broader talent
issues at every turn.
We also know this Subcommittee is interested in ways that
agencies can work better with universities to build critical
pipelines of talent. I would like to share five recommendations
based largely on our experience with the Call to Serve
initiative.
First, agencies may be limited in their ability to hire at
the moment, but should continue to have an on-campus presence
even if they are not actively filling jobs. If not, they risk
losing all the hard work and the relationships they have built
up over the years.
Second, the Partnership's research has shown that peers are
an important source of career advice and inspiration. We agree
with Mr. Kane that agencies should follow the lead of the
Department of Energy and the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) and take advantage of peer recruiting
opportunities by establishing their own student ambassador
programs, as the Partnership has advocated for in the past.
Third, agencies and universities should take full advantage
of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, which provides for
temporary exchanges between the Federal Government and colleges
and universities, thereby more closely linking faculty and
Federal agencies.
Fourth, scholarship and loan repayment programs should
target individuals pursuing mission-critical fields in the
Federal Government. Congress, in particular, should review
current Federal scholarship and fellowship programs to better
understand how the resources are being used, to consolidate
duplicative programs and infrastructure, and to ensure that
money is being used to strategically recruit critical talent to
the Federal Government.
Last, agencies should see internship programs as a way to
build long-term pipelines for entry-level talent. Internships
are a vital component of the new Pathways Program, but Congress
should also require that agencies collect metrics on the
quality of the intern experiences through exit surveys. In
addition, recognizing that there is no better way to assess
candidates than direct, on-the-job observation, Congress should
promote the notion of internships serving as a competitive
examination for future Federal employment.
The Partnership looks forward to continuing to work with
you, the Subcommittee, your staff, agencies, and OPM on these
issues. Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for your time and your
attention, I am happy to answer any questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. McManus, for your
statement.
Ms. McFarland, will you please proceed with your statement?
STATEMENT OF LAUREL MCFARLAND,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOLS OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND ADMINISTRATION
Ms. McFarland. Thank you. I serve as the Executive Director
of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and
Administration (NASPAA), an organization of 275 graduate
schools across the country, including the University of Hawaii,
which have been committed to inspiring students to Federal
service for more than four decades.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. McFarland appears in the appendix
on page 67.
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Our member schools annually confer over 10,000 Master of
Public Administration (MPA), Master of Public Policy (MPP), and
related degrees, and NASPAA is the accreditor of graduate
programs in these fields.
More than 30 years ago, NASPAA helped OPM and the Federal
agencies create the Presidential Management Fellowship program
to attract the very best from our Nation's graduate schools.
Unfortunately, while ``excepted'' hiring programs such as the
PMF have been effective in attracting capable grad students to
Federal service, there is overwhelming evidence in recent years
that the existing competitive hiring system simply does not
work for graduate students. Our data show that graduate
students applying for Federal positions often have advanced
training and cutting-edge skills, but little full-time work
experience, especially in Federal employment. Applicants with
this combination rarely get selected through USAJOBS.
Fortunately, the President and OPM have recognized this
problem and addressed it directly in the Pathways Executive
Order signed in December. NASPAA applauds the President's and
OPM's vision and courage. Now we need to make the Executive
Order stick. This is a watershed moment for the Federal
workforce. We can implement a half-hearted, skeletal set of
Pathways Programs, or we can make this a serious downpayment on
high-performance government. And we know that hiring graduate
students with the critical skills can do that. If we fail to do
this, we put the entire future capability of the government at
risk.
Students are vital in critical, hard-to-hire areas, and
they represent the future leadership and management of the
civil service. Moreover, our graduates have been trained to
address public policy problems that are growing more complex,
wicked, and global by the day.
So how do we convince these graduate students we need so
much to consider Federal service? I have three recommendations,
and Congress can play a critical role in each.
First, the Pathways Programs need to work for students by
ensuring student pathways to Federal employment are clearly
marked, coherent, and lead to further opportunities for careers
in Federal service. Congress needs to insist on a few key
elements in the Pathway Programs so that they contribute to
high performance hiring and a coherent system for efficiently
and accurately matching talent to need. Congress should use its
oversight to ensure that OPM and Federal agencies collect and
publish data about how we are doing in recruiting, selecting,
matching, employing, developing, and retaining recent graduates
in Federal positions.
Second, pay special attention to the Presidential
Management Fellows program. It is both strategically and
symbolically important in attracting some of the very best
people to careers in the Federal Government. The PMF selection
process has been famous for being rigorous, competitive, and
daunting, which we at NASPAA think is a good thing. We should
be unapologetic and proud that the purpose of the PMF is to
identify and develop future leaders and senior managers of the
Federal workforce. As such, the PMF should select, match, and
convert fellows based on the Executive Core Qualifications
(ECQs) developed for the Senior Executive Service.
Congress should ask for data on key performance measures of
the program: Were the screening and selection mechanisms truly
effective in identifying the most talented applicants? Were
offers made in a timely fashion? Were the PMF positions posted
by agencies consistent with the mission of the program? What
percentage of finalists was successfully matched to posted PMF
positions? And what happened to those finalists who did not
match?
Third, and finally, we also need a strong partnership
between Federal agencies and universities to give life to the
Executive Order's new Recent Graduates Program. If we want this
effort to be successful in drawing in graduates with the skills
we need, it must serve both agencies and students. Congress
should look for results that agencies have worked with
education and professional associations to create Recent Grad
Programs in critical functional areas, like budgeting and
financial management, public procurement and acquisition, IT,
human resource management.
Ultimately, the challenge here is not just the narrow task
of hiring students and recent graduates. Federal hiring reform
is about nothing less than ensuring the efficiency and
effectiveness of the Federal Government in the years ahead and
our ability to tackle the complicated public problems and
fiscal pressures we will face.
Today's students, especially the most talented, can and
will make a critical contribution to tomorrow's Federal
Government and our Nation. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much for your statement, Ms.
McFarland.
Ms. Mahle, will you please proceed with your statement?
STATEMENT OF ANNE MAHLE,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT FOR RECRUITMENT,
TEACH FOR AMERICA
Ms. Mahle. Thank you, Senator Akaka. I am one of the vice
presidents of recruitment at Teach for America, and I want to
thank you for this opportunity to provide our testimony and
hopefully provide some insight into how we have been successful
to date.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Mahle appears in the appendix on
page 72.
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We are honored to help our congressional leadership think
through the important question of how we will meet the growing
need of individuals to serve in these mission-critical
positions within our Federal agencies.
Teach for America is the national corps of outstanding
recent college graduates and professionals of all academic
majors and career interests who commit 2 years to teach in
urban and rural public schools and become leaders in the effort
to expand educational opportunity for all children. Our mission
is to build the movement that will eliminate educational
inequity by enlisting our Nation's most promising leaders, both
in college, graduate school, and professional sectors, to teach
for 2 years in the short run and in the long term become
lifelong leaders from all sectors who will work to eliminate
the barriers that students, families, and communities face to
achieving educational equity.
Each year we seek to grow in both scale and diversity and
to engage more leaders from across the spectrum in our work.
Over the last 21 years, and in particular in the last 5 years,
we have learned a number of lessons that we are eager to share.
We are often asked what lies at the root of our success. I
think that the answer is pretty simple. It is the hard,
purposeful work of our on-the-ground recruitment team. In our
last recruitment season, in individual and group meetings, they
met with over 32,000 college seniors, graduates, and
professionals, many of whom had never considered teaching in
urban and rural public schools in low-income communities. And
it is also the tight management that we exert around our
recruitment campaigns. At the end of the day, it is not
particularly fancy or flashy, but it makes a difference. The
members of our on-the-ground recruitment team believe deeply in
our mission and, more importantly, in the potential of the
students and the families in the communities that we serve.
This belief drives them, it inspires them in their work, and it
is through their relentless efforts that we are able to engage
more and more leaders in our efforts.
But beyond hard work and a passion for our movement, there
are some relevant lessons that we have learned.
First, students and professionals want to serve. As they
seek out their professional paths, they are looking for
opportunities to positively impact their community and their
country. But they do not want to serve simply for the sake of
service. They want to know that they are making a real, on-the-
ground impact. Students today are savvy consumers who are
looking for the most effective and direct ways to make that
impact. It is critical, therefore, that students are presented
with a compelling value proposition for public service. They
need to understand what problem they are trying to solve, that
the problem itself is solvable, how they can personally play a
role in solving it, and then, finally, they need to believe
that they are entering a program or a system that will embrace
their talent, challenge and nurture them in their development,
and help them engage deeply and meaningfully with the world
around them.
Second, high-performing, diverse talent will drive impact.
Teach for America's selectivity and diversity are central to
our success. Our selectivity is critical because the success of
our program relies on the effectiveness of our teachers in the
classroom and in their leadership throughout their 2-year
commitment and after the corps experience.
Diversity is central to our success because we believe that
maximizing the diversity of our organization will allow us to
benefit from the talent and energy of all those who contribute
to this effort. And at the same time that we value each
individual who commits to our cause, we do place a particular
focus on fostering the leadership of individuals who share the
racial and/or socioeconomic backgrounds of the students
underserved by public schools. In terms of race, we place a
focus on pursuing the overrepresentation of African American
and Latino individuals, given that more than 90 percent of the
students we reach are black or Latino. At the same time, we
also seek to recruit American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and
Asian-American corps members given that we reach many students
of these backgrounds in certain Teach For America regions. I am
pleased to announce that in our 2011 corps, 35 percent of them
self-identify as people of color.
With respect to American Indian and Native Hawaiian
recruitment, we recognize the historical legacy of inequity and
marginalization. For example, only 49 percent of native
children graduate from high school and only 11 percent go on to
earn a college degree, as compared to the national average of
86 percent and 29 percent. In response to this reality, Teach
for America has launched the Native Achievement Initiative, a
major component of which is increasing the number of Native
American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Natives in our teaching
corps.
Finally--oh, I am sorry. I am out of time.
Senator Akaka. That is all right. Will you complete your
statement?
Ms. Mahle. OK. Finally, we also think--and many of your
previous witnesses spoke to this--that tactical support is
incredibly important. Over the last 5 years we have instituted
multiple application deadlines, which allows our applicants to
complete the process within approximately 10 weeks. For
example, we let people know within a week of the application
deadline whether or not they have made it to the next step of
the process. We instituted five application deadlines to better
accommodate applicant preferences. And we think that multiple
deadlines move people through the process quickly so that they
can make the right decisions about their careers.
And, finally, we only ask for that data which we know is
helpful in our process. We have eliminated essays when the data
shows that it did not give us additional information, and we
are constantly re-evaluating our processes based on the
feedback of our candidates.
Through dedication, passion, and the relentless pursuit of
results, we have significantly improved the size, diversity,
and quality of our teaching corps. Yet hard work and innovative
strategies do not account for all of our results. A key element
of our recruitment is the value we place on teaching, leading,
and the power of transformational change in our communities.
Our applicants and corps members are drawn not only to the
challenges and opportunities of impacting the lives of
children, but the honor and prestige they associate with their
work. Much like the military, joining Teach for America is a
means of joining a mission that is greater than the sum of its
parts.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Ms. Mahle.
Mr. Skwierczynski, please proceed with your statement.
STATEMENT OF WITOLD SKWIERCZYNSKI,\1\ PRESIDENT, NATIONAL
COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION FIELD OPERATIONS
LOCALS, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES
Mr. Skwierczynski. Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the 625,000
Federal employees that American Federation of Government
Employees (AFGE) represents in 65 agencies throughout the
Nation, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the
subject of inspiring students to Federal service.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Skwierczynski appears in the
appendix on page 79.
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Hiring the next generation of Federal employees is a
serious undertaking. Those charged with the task have a legal
and social responsibility to conduct Federal hiring in a most
open, fair, and competitive way possible. Working for a Federal
agency is not the same as working for a private firm, and it
takes time to make sure an applicant meets the standards our
society expects the Federal Government to uphold.
AFGE applauds President Obama's Executive Order which
repealed the Federal Career Intern Program, a discredited
hiring system that made a mockery of the Merit System and its
promise of open competition for Federal jobs, as well as
veterans' preference.
In addition, the Executive Order created the Pathways
Program to recruit, train, and retain well-qualified
candidates. Because the OPM regulations are still in
development, it is too early to tell whether they will avoid
the pitfalls that plagued the Federal Career Intern Program
(FCIP).
We continue to urge OPM to ensure that the programs use
merit-based procedures for recruitment, provide for equal
employment opportunity, apply veterans' preference, and comply
with all applicable laws.
As an employee and a union representative in the Social
Security Administration, I know well some of the pitfalls of
the non-merit-based FCIP. In the last 7 years, at Social
Security Administration (SSA) virtually all hiring was under
FCIP. FCIP was characterized by the use of nepotism and
cronyism in hiring, the failure to hire based on veterans'
preference, and establishing an unnecessary 2-year probationary
periods where the law provides for only one.
The union surveyed SSA employees about their attitudes
about the SSA hiring practices. Forty-six percent of
respondents were aware of favoritism--favoritism being defined
as the hiring of a friend or acquaintance or relative of a
selecting official or other management official. Fifty-five
percent of respondents indicated that FCIP was used to advance
younger workers instead of more experienced and qualified
employees. Sixty-two percent stated that FCIP was used to limit
competition, and 61 percent of survey respondents stated that
FCIP was used to avoid the merit promotion process.
The union obtained data from the agency regarding veterans'
preference use in hiring. For example, in Fiscal Year 2008,
only 4.6 percent of FCIPs were veterans; whereas, competitive
hires that were hired that year, 17.4 percent were veterans.
When we published a newsletter for our SSA workers
regarding some examples in the State of Wisconsin and
Washington about hiring of relatives of managers, we received
scores of reports from employees around the country regarding
similar practices in their offices. Any new recruitment system
and hiring system must have mechanisms in place to prevent such
abusive hiring practices. Managers have shown that giving them
carte blanche hiring authority leads to abusive practices.
Ms. Griffin indicated in response to your question that OPM
oversight will cure the problems. We think that is not enough.
Besides oversight, you need competitive practices and not open-
ended hiring authority for Federal managers.
OPM Director John Berry has noted several times the desire
of the Obama Administration to make government service cool
again. We strongly agree that it is important to support in
concrete ways our Nation's public servants and to educate the
public about the value of service to America. If we do this, it
will be certainly easier to attract the best and brightest to
Federal service.
However, new hires need decent pay and benefits packages to
make Federal employment attractive. Unfortunately, the current
political climate for all public employees, including Federal
employees, is harsh. Efforts underway throughout the country
would eliminate pensions, severely curtail health insurance
benefits, cut or freeze pay levels, contract out government
work, and eliminate longstanding collective bargaining rights.
In particular for Federal employees, the 2-year pay freeze is
effective this year and next, but there are others in Congress
who are advocating 5-year pay freezes, including freezing all
performance based step increases and bonuses.
The Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, which would
provide to turn Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) into a
voucher system, would almost double health insurance costs for
Federal employees by the year 2030. In addition, it would
severely reduce health insurance premiums for Federal retirees.
The FEHB system can--there are overhead costs and prescription
drug rebate costs that can be built into the system which would
prevent shifting costs to employees and retirees and saving
money of Federal Government costs.
The retiree situation that is being discussed on the Hill
and before the Vice President, the proposals out there would
provide for almost a 7-percent increase for Federal Employees
Retirement System (FERS) employees in terms of their retirement
pay. Right now FERS employees pay 12 percent of their salary--
0.8 percent of salary for annuity, 6.2 percent of their salary
for Social Security, and 5 percent for the Thrift Savings Plan
(TSP). Congressional proposals to increase that by 7 percent
would mean that FERS employees would pay over 18 percent of
their salary for retirement. New employees would be unable to
afford this. They probably would not contribute to the TSP, and
they would lost investment earnings because of that. These
kinds of proposals to attack the pay and benefits of Federal
employees would severely inhibit recruitment of the types of
individuals that we need in Federal service.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, unless these efforts to
destroy the image and middle-class status of Federal employees
are not halted, it will not make a bit of difference if the
Administration creates the best possible programs for interns
and recent graduates. A candidate with any sense at all would
refuse to join a workforce which is constantly being maligned
and financially undermined for political purposes.
That concludes my testimony. I would be happy to answer any
questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Skwierczynski.
Ms. McFarland, I believe it is imperative that our agencies
and universities work together to make sure universities
understand the education and skills needed to prepare students
for particular Federal career paths. This helps universities
place their graduates in good jobs and helps the Federal
Government recruit the people it needs, especially for
technical, scientific, and medical jobs that often are
difficult to fill.
How is NASPAA working with your members to encourage this
coordination? And what more can we do to help with this effort?
Ms. McFarland. I think NASPAA has a special role in
coordination because we are an accreditor and we are able to
bring employers and our schools together to talk about how
students need to be prepared to serve the skill requirements of
employers. And in this case, our employers are the Federal
Government, State government, local government, nonprofits, et
cetera.
Our accreditation process has become outcome oriented and
is competency based, so we are very used to invoking the
language of what can our graduates know and demonstrate they
can do in their future workplace.
So we actually have an opportunity to bring this competency
discussion to the table as to how you develop students into
Federal workers using well-established skills and competencies
that we have been working on since they were in college and
graduate school, and in internships, and then as they enter
some of the special Pathways Programs for students.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Mr. McManus, you testified about the undersupply of
qualified candidates in certain fields. Although interest in
Federal service is high, students may not understand the
available career paths and what training they need. Students
interested in government might be drawn to these fields if they
knew about the opportunities available early enough.
How could we better inform students about Federal jobs
early enough for them to target their preparation for mission-
critical fields?
Mr. McManus. Mr. Chairman, I think there are several ways
that we can do a better job across the Federal Government to
try to educate young people about the opportunities that exist.
First and foremost Federal agencies too often wait to do their
recruiting until somebody is in college--typically in their
junior or senior year. Federal agencies, as well as society as
a whole, need to change the perception of Federal employees and
develop campaigns that show the great work that Federal
employees are doing.
One of the programs that the Partnership conducts that does
a great job of doing this is the Service to America Medals,
which highlights outstanding Federal employees and the work
they are doing. The program helps people understand that
regardless of what occupation you are in, there are
opportunities for you in the Federal Government.
Clearly on college campuses we need to do more and go
beyond career services to connect directly with faculty in
those areas where government needs talent the most. Again,
largely we look at career services as the gateway to our talent
on campuses. If we are going to be successful, we need to
expand those efforts.
Senator Akaka. Let me followup with this: Your testimony
states that the new Student Pathways Programs lay the
groundwork to improve recruiting. I would like to hear your
thoughts on how these new programs should be used specifically
to recruit mission-critical talent to government.
Mr. McManus. Great. As I stated, the Partnership believes
that student interns should be a vital component of all
agencies' entry-level pipelines, getting to students early in
the process and educating them about the opportunities that
exist. I think Mike Kane from the Department of Energy talked
about the value of the Student Ambassador Program in not only
reaching faculty but also in reaching students. Interestingly
enough, my colleague here from Teach for America said that last
year they reached 32,000 potential applicants in their
recruitment process. In the 2009-10 year, 29 Ambassadors
reached more than 17,000 students across college campuses.
So, again, I think one way to attract mission-critical
talent to government is by having peers who have actually
served in an internship talk about their experience back on
their campus and get people energized about the opportunities
they have in government.
Clearly the Pathways Program, particularly the Internship
Program, gives students a first taste of the Federal Government
and begins to expose them not only to the work of the
individual agency and the work of the individual office they
are in, but government at large. That is a great first step. We
need to capitalize on student internship programs to build
talent pipelines. A key feature of the recent graduate program
is the opportunity to develop professional. It is not simply a
hiring process or a hiring authority. It is actually a way to
bring people in and to provide on-the-job training for the job
that they are going to take over.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Ms. Mahle, as we have heard from a few of our witnesses
today, it is important to have the right data to assist a
recruitment program and adapt recruitment strategies
accordingly. What type of data do you collect each year to help
reassess your strategies? And how have you adapted your
approach based on that data?
Ms. Mahle. Thank you. We have a strong relationship with
data on the recruitment team at Teach for America. We start
out--it is a process, so we start out with basic demographic
data. How many seniors are there in a class at each college and
university that we recruit at? What is the demographic make-up
of that student body based on race? And based on that
information we set recruitment goals at the top schools we
recruit at. We set goals at about 340 schools across the
country.
This coming fall we will have 73 recruiters on the ground
in the field, and we track data day in and day out: How many
people they contact via e-mail, how many people they meet with
one on one, in a group setting, and then what the conversion
rates are from that meeting based on who starts an application
and who completes it.
We are able to track on a weekly basis. We generate reports
that are sent out to the team that track the percent of folks
who started applications that we have engaged with, and then we
look at where we are at as compared to the previous year at
that point in time in terms of the number of applications
started, and we break that out by our target areas in terms of
both race, so African American, Latino, Asian American, Native
American, as well as people who identify as receiving a Pell
grant, which is the proxy that we use as someone coming from a
low-income community.
We are lucky in that we have five application deadlines, so
each deadline represents at benchmark at which point you can
step back and reflect on the process and figure out where you
need to adjust course.
So that is how we use data in the recruitment process, but
I think another key component is the selection process because
you have to identify the right people to recruit so that you
have a high return. We use our student achievement data from
our corps members to inform our selection process. So we look
at our most effective teachers, what they are doing in the
classroom, who has the greatest outcomes with their students.
And then we look back 2 years or 1 year to see what they
brought and what they demonstrated in the application process.
And we feed all of that information together, and then we feed
that back to our on-the-ground recruiters so that they are
identifying the right folks on the front end to spend time and
effort on so that they will be successful in the process.
Does that answer your question?
Senator Akaka. Yes. Thank you very much.
Mr. Skwierczynski, as we have already discussed, I am
pleased that the Federal Career Intern Program has been phased
out. That program had been used as a broad direct hiring
authority which I believe undermined veterans' preference and
important Merit System principles.
What do you think needs to be done to make sure that the
new Student Pathways Programs do not again become a substitute
for the competitive hiring process?
Mr. Skwierczynski. Well, I think one thing that we have
learned from FCIP is that, as I testified, if individual
managers are given full recruitment authority with no strings
attached, you find abuses. Now, in Social Security, for
instance, we have 1,500 hiring officials. There are 1,500
offices and each manager does their own hiring. So many of them
recruit at universities where their offices are located, but
many of them decided that since there were no strings attached
and there were no rules under FCIP that they would hire
daughters and sons and nieces and nephews of fellow managers or
their friends, and that cannot continue under this new Pathways
Program.
As I said, oversight is not enough. You need rules. You
need to return to a competitive hiring system where everyone
understands, the recruiter and the recruitee understand what
the rules are, what the scoring system is, and that the best
possible candidates will be selected for the vacancies that are
open.
Open-ended hiring systems do not work. We have seen it
certainly in Social Security. There are too many abuses, so we
cannot return to that system.
Senator Akaka. Ms. McFarland, you noted in your testimony
that in recent years the competitive hiring system has not
worked well for graduate students who have strong training and
skills but may have little work experience, especially in the
Federal Government. Why do you think this became more of a
problem in recent years? And what can we do to make the
competitive hiring process more accessible to recent graduates?
Ms. McFarland. It is indeed true that in recent years grad
students have been having a harder time than they used to have.
I think you can trace it to a lot of things: An explosion in
the number of applications as we developed online mechanisms;
the lack of familiarity of graduate students with how the
system works and real uncertainty how best to present
themselves on USAJOBS.
How can we make it more accessible? The competitive hiring
system should continue to be an avenue for graduate students to
come into government, in addition to Pathways. I think for it
to be more accessible, there would have to be better
connections with internship programs so that students have more
demonstrated work experience, coming into the competitive
hiring system, so that they actually can document work
experience and get some recognition for that. Some of the new
resume-based applications that OPM has been introducing will be
more familiar to students who are applying for other kinds of
jobs besides Federal jobs that may help them.
But I continue to think that the Pathways Programs will be
very important in addition to the competitive hiring system for
grad students to have opportunities in Federal service.
Senator Akaka. Ms. Mahle, would you please tell us more
about how you use your alumni network to recruit on campus?
Ms. Mahle. Certainly. We currently have about 20,000 alumni
of Teach for America, and we work with them in a variety of
ways. We have a number of alumni who are in graduate school,
and so we utilize them to both recruit their peers who are in
graduate school, but also to recruit seniors and to work with
underclassmen.
We also use alumni to engage in phone meetings, in various
e-mail campaigns with individuals from their alma maters, be
they graduate school or undergraduate, and also with peers in
various career sectors. We have found that many of our alumni
who entered Teach for America as professionals, having
transitioned from a specific career sector are the most
effective recruiters for individuals who are now contemplating
that same kind of transition from, another sector whether it be
finance or law or other business enterprises into teaching.
They are in some ways the most effective individuals, and I
think a number of people have spoken about this, and the
Pathways Program speaks to it, too, that those individuals who
have gone through a program have the experience, have the
conviction, are incredibly important in terms of their candor,
in terms of their passion for what they have done, and in terms
of really creating that picture of what it looks like to serve
and to have an impact and then to reflect on that, having gone
through the entire process.
Almost all of our recruitment staff are alumni of Teach for
America themselves, so they are able to tell those stories,
too. But we find there is a greater authenticity at times
coming straight from an alumnus, who is not paid by Teach for
America to sit down and talk with you about the experience.
Therefore, we do lots of tag-teaming between our recruitment
team as well as our alumni working in conjunction with one
another. As we grow to scale we have to figure out how to
engage this force of alumni to an even greater extent. In this
upcoming season, alumni will fully own recruitment efforts at a
number of colleges and universities that we have not yet
recruited at, and we are excited to see how that plays out.
Senator Akaka. Well, I wanted to compliment you and your
program because I have spoken to teachers out there in Hawaii
who are part of your program, and they have worked in different
areas where they have made a difference.
Ms. Mahle. Well, thank you.
Senator Akaka. And what I like and am surprised at that is
many of them have come back, have continued to teach in those
areas.
Ms. Mahle. Yes.
Senator Akaka. And they seem, as you said, so passionate
and committed, and I am amazed at what they are doing. So your
recruitment must be good, and I want to use the word
``diverse,'' because your teachers have very diverse
backgrounds, and that helps the educational process as well.
Ms. Mahle. Thank you. We think it is incredibly important.
It is incredibly important to the students and families that we
serve, and frankly, it moves us forward as an organization to
have as many diverse perspectives at the table when we make
decisions. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you so much for all of that.
My final question is to the panel, and I know that as you
sit here you have other kinds of comments you would like to
make, and so I am going to give you that opportunity to add any
other comments or recommendations you may have for this
Subcommittee.
I think the final thing we can do to help these situations
and issues is legislation, so I would look at legislation as a
final thing. But, we can make administrative changes, and so
when you make your additional comments, suggest maybe what
areas we can move in to move as quickly as we can to meet the
challenge of the retirement wave.
Let me then call on Mr. McManus to begin.
Mr. McManus. Thank you. I actually want to reiterate one of
the points that I made in the oral statement. It is also
addressed in the written testimony. It is critical that we not
only collect data but also hold leaders accountable for
recruitment and hiring. Leadership accountability is key.
As we look at the landscape of young people we actually do
not see lack of interest in the Federal Government. The
challenge is that many young people do not understand what
opportunities exist. We have found that, particularly in
mission-critical jobs, the more individuals with engineering
and the highly scientific backgrounds find out about Federal
opportunities, the more they are interested in them.
The real issue, though, is that Federal agencies need to be
held more accountable for hiring reform. I am going to give a
quick example of this. One of the key components of the hiring
reform initiative and something that OPM is holding agencies
accountable for is reducing time to hire. Time to hire in and
of itself is not a good measure. We could hire very quickly and
approve the hiring process overnight, but it does not mean that
we have actually gotten the quality of applicant or the quality
of hire that we actually need.
More importantly, if we begin to break down that time-to-
hire data and look at time to hire for an internal candidate
versus time to hire for an external candidate, I think we would
be very surprised. I would surmise that the time it takes to
hire somebody internally should be significantly lower than
what it is to hire somebody externally.
If we are looking at an aggregate time to hire, we are
fooling ourselves by saying that it takes us 80 days to hire
someone when, in fact, it may take us 20 days to hire the
internal candidate but it takes us 200 days to hire the
external candidate.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has
recently launched an internal initiative to look at something
they call HRStat. They are taking hiring data very seriously
and are having Cabinet-level or Department-level conversations
about how long it takes to hire a candidate, how long it takes
to hire somebody internally versus externally and how long does
it takes to hire a candidate in one office versus another.
Through this analysis they are able to uncover where the
real problems and challenges within their hiring and
recruitment process are, and are able to hold managers that are
specifically responsible for those offices more accountable for
their actions.
Again, as I said in my oral testimony, until we actually
hold leaders accountable for recruitment and hiring, everything
we tweak around the edges is actually just that--a tweak around
the edge.
Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. McManus. Ms.
McFarland.
Ms. McFarland. Yes, I would like to close by saying one of
the things I found very interesting about this hearing was the
issue of partnerships between universities and the Federal
Government. The Pathways Programs raise a tremendous
opportunity for those partnerships to take place. And I am not
just talking about recruiting relationships, which we talked a
bit about today. I am talking about the possibility of long-
term partnerships between universities and organizations like
NASPAA, and also professional organizations that have set
professional competencies for entry-level professionals, to
work together over the long term. We need to put flesh on the
bone of the Recent Grads Programs in functional areas to create
programs that really serve the critical needs of the Federal
Government, where we are having a really hard time hiring
really good people. I think there is a tremendous opportunity
with the Recent Grads Program to ask for excellence and ask for
very high standards and to create programs that serve that
purpose through long-term developmental relationships between
universities, accreditors, professional organizations, and the
Federal Government.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. Ms. Mahle.
Ms. Mahle. I have two recommendations on the area of
possible legislation.
First, Mr. McManus spoke about the availability of
scholarships and fellowships for people who go into public
service. One of the things that we have found to be the
greatest barrier for people seeking to join Teach for America
is the burden of Federal student loans, and this is
particularly true for individuals from low-income backgrounds
as well as individuals of color. We did a study about 3 years
ago, and this was the No. 1 barrier. So the extent to which
loan forgiveness could be made available for those individuals
who seek to engage in public service, who seek to teach in low-
income communities, that I think could be a key driver to
increasing both the diversity of our teaching corps as well as
the number of individuals from low-income backgrounds who are
able to pursue that path.
Then, second, as you probably know, Teach for America's
funding was deemed to be an earmark in this last go-round, and
we lost it. We had nearly 50,000 people apply to Teach for
America this year, and we will be placing 5,100 in classrooms
in 43 regions across the country this fall. We want to grow and
meet the growing demands of communities around this country who
seek Teach for America corps members and the pipeline of
leadership, the people who stay and serve as leaders in those
communities, continues to grow. But our ability to meet those
needs and desires of communities across this country is limited
by our ability to fund and support them.
So I think those are two key areas where Congress could be
particularly helpful, loan forgiveness and potential
appropriations. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Mr. Skwierczynski.
Mr. Skwierczynski. Yes, I have actually three things.
One has to do with in order to have an effective and fair
hiring system, you also have to have an effective and fair
merit promotion system. The two go together. Without both, it
creates many workplace problems when recruits, new hires are
placed into positions that current employees have the
expectation that should be open for merit promotion.
During recent years in Social Security, when we were
hiring, once Obama was elected, under the stimulus package,
there were about 7,000 hires in Social Security. Unfortunately,
the agency decided to concentrate its efforts completely on
hiring people rather than promoting people, and that caused a
lot of internal resentment among incumbents within the agency
who did not have the same opportunities for merit promotions as
they did in the past. So I think it is extremely important that
agencies do not concentrate on one aspect of filling vacancies
to the exclusion of the other.
A second recommendation--and in the Clinton Administration
we had a pilot program on this in Social Security--is to use
current employees in the recruitment process. Oftentimes we
find that when employees are hired, they are very surprised at
actually the nature of the work and also the workplace
environment, that they were not given a lot of information
during their recruitment about the actual work life that they
would be experiencing if they were hired, and this causes a lot
of folks, after short periods of time, to leave because they
are surprised when they get here about the working conditions.
So I would recommend that agencies consider using current
employees in the recruitment practices while they are
recruiting, in the interviewing, and interviewing recruits, who
would be more free and be more able to answer questions and to
alert new hires about the nature of the jobs that they are
considering taking.
The third thing is, once hired, we have found that
oftentimes new hires are given little information about their
benefits options and oftentimes make choices without having
sufficient information. Oftentimes agencies have training
classes for folks that are close to retirement about their
options with regards to investments and everything when they
retire. Those kinds of classes should be done when people are
hired so that they can make reasoned choices about their
benefits at the beginning of their Federal service rather than
at the end when it is too late.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you very much, and I want to
thank all of our witnesses today for your thoughts and your
recommendations. I encourage all of you to continue working
together, and with this Subcommittee to build stronger
relationships between the Federal agencies and our Nation's
colleges and universities. It is critical that we recruit and
retain the best and the brightest to take on the pressing
challenges our country faces.
The hearing record will remain open for 1 week for Members
to submit any additional statements or questions.
Again, I want to compliment you for your statements and
tell you that what I have heard today will really help us in
our work to try to help our Federal Government to bring this
about. So thank you again, and I want to wish all of you well.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:20 p.m, the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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