By Stephen Barr
The government will soon need recruits to help it ride out a coming wave of retirements. At the same time, it wants to hang on to its experienced hands for as long as possible.
That was the message yesterday from Linda M. Springer , director of the Office of Personnel Management, as she announced the launch of a television advertising campaign to showcase important and interesting jobs in the civil service.
"We aren't as well known as we probably ought to be," Springer said. "We're not really good in the civilian workforce side of making known these great [employment] opportunities."
The armed forces have long run TV ads to boost military recruiting, and the OPM's effort is a first for the agency, which oversees government-wide personnel policies and benefits.
About 60 percent of the 1.8 million civil service employees will be eligible to retire in the next 10 years and 40 percent of them will leave, based on the government's past experience with retirements, Springer said. She noted that 90 percent of federal executives will be eligible to retire in the next decade.
"We are not being overly dramatic here," Springer said. "It is a big number, and we've got to do something to get ready for it."
As the baby-boom generation departs, Springer has asked agencies to work with the OPM on ways to speed up their hiring and to offer alternatives to the traditional 20- and 30-year careers that have been the mainstay of the federal workforce.
The next generation of workers may be drawn to jobs that allow people to come and go from government and offer flexible working hours and chances to telecommute, she said.
The OPM's inaugural TV ad campaign features four federal employees -- Elizabeth N. Mazzae , a human factors engineer with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Maxine M. Brown , a branch chief who manages software development and maintenance for the National Weather Service's environmental prediction centers; Walter W. Douglas , the South Carolina state conservationist at the Agriculture Department's Natural Resource Conservation Service; and Earl H. Stockdale , chief counsel at the Army Corps of Engineers.
They appear in 30-second spots showing them on the job and reminding viewers that people in public service make a difference in the lives of citizens. The ads will start airing in the Flint and Saginaw region of Michigan and in the Greenville-Spartanburg area of South Carolina next week. Much of the work on the advertising campaign was done in-house at the OPM, and officials estimated the total cost for the initial effort at about $184,000.
In addition to making the point that the government needs to ramp up its recruiting efforts, Springer also made a pitch to would-be retirees to stay on the job as long as possible.
She noted that many federal retirees start a second career, either to maintain their lifestyle or to avoid boredom, and she urged them to think about remaining in the federal service to help their agencies cope with the generational transition that is coming.
The president's fiscal 2007 budget, she said, would offer employees a way to move in steps toward retirement. The proposal would permit employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System to work part time in the latter stages of their careers without facing a reduction in their pensions, as current law requires. The proposed change requires the approval of Congress.
Although OPM's ad campaign will focus on the government as an employer, some agencies have run targeted ad campaigns to boost hiring. Last year, for example, the FBI launched its first national TV ads to attract potential employees.
The government's hiring challenges go beyond ad campaigns, however. Many job applicants complain about the red tape in federal hiring and lack of feedback from agencies on where their applications stand. Requirements for security clearances also slow hiring.
Finding job applicants with advanced degrees and specialized skills also is a challenge for many agencies. Yesterday, for example, the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service sponsored a Capitol Hill forum, featuring Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), on efforts to recruit and retain persons who can speak Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Farsi and other languages where there are shortages of talent.
More than half of all upper classmen and engineering graduate students in a survey of six universities indicated they don't know much about careers in federal government, but almost half said they were interested. They cited bureaucracy as the main reason that would deter them from working for the government.
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