For years it has been widely recognized that the federal hiring process all too often does not meet the needs of (1) agencies in achieving their missions; (2) managers in filling positions with the right talent; and (3) applicants for a timely, efficient, transparent, and merit-based process. In short, the federal hiring process is often an impediment to the very customers it is designed to serve in that it makes it difficult for agencies and managers to obtain the right people with the right skills, and applicants can be dissuaded from public service because of the complex and lengthy procedures. Numerous studies over the past decade by OPM, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the National Academy of Public Administration, the Partnership for Public Service, the National Commission on the Public Service, and GAO have identified a range of problems and challenges with recruitment and hiring in the federal government, including the following: Passive recruitment strategies. Poor and insufficient workforce planning. Unclear job vacancy announcements. Time-consuming and paperwork-intensive manual processes. Imprecise candidate assessment tools. Ineffective use of existing hiring flexibilities. These problems put the federal government at a serious competitive disadvantage in acquiring talent. For example, passive recruitment strategies, such as infrequent or no outreach to college campuses, miss opportunities to expose potential employees to information about federal jobs. Unclear and unfriendly vacancy announcements can cause confusion for applicants, delay hiring, and serve as poor recruiting tools. Weak candidate assessment tools can inadequately predict future job performance and result in the hiring of individuals who do not fully possess the appropriate skills for the job. As evidence of these and other problems, MSPB’s most recently published Merit Principles Survey results found that only 5 percent of federal managers and supervisors said that they faced no significant barriers to hiring employees for their agencies. In recent years, Congress, OPM, and agencies have taken a series of important actions to improve recruiting and hiring in the federal sector. For example, Congress has provided agencies with hiring flexibilities that could help agencies streamline their hiring processes and give agency managers more latitude in selecting among qualified job candidates. Congress has also provided several agencies with exemptions from the pay and classification restrictions of the General Schedule. Other examples of congressional action related to recruitment and hiring follow. Dual compensation waivers to rehire federal retirees. OPM may grant waivers allowing agencies to fill positions with rehired federal annuitants without offsetting the salaries by the amount of the annuities. Agencies can request waivers on a case-by-case basis for positions that are extremely difficult to fill or for emergencies or other unusual circumstances. Agencies can also request from OPM a delegation of authority to grant waivers for emergencies or other unusual circumstances. Special authority to hire for positions in contracting. Agencies can rehire federal annuitants to fill positions in contracting without being required to offset the salaries. Agencies are required only to notify and submit their hiring plans to OPM. Enhanced annual leave computation. Agencies may credit relevant private sector experience when computing annual leave amounts. As the federal government’s central personnel management agency, OPM has a key role in helping agencies acquire, develop, retain, and manage their human capital. In the areas of recruiting and hiring, OPM has, for example, done the following. Sponsored job fairs across the country and produced television commercials to make the public more aware of the work that federal employees do. Developed a 45-day hiring model to help agencies identify the steps in their processes that tend to bog them down, and created a detailed checklist to assist agencies in undertaking a full-scale makeover of their hiring process from beginning to end. Developed a Hiring Tool Kit on its Web site that is to aid agencies in improving and refining their hiring processes and that includes a tool to assist agency officials in determining the appropriate hiring flexibilities to use given their specific situations. Updated and expanded its report Human Resources Flexibilities and Authorities in the Federal Government, which serves as a handbook for agencies in identifying current flexibilities and authorities and how they can be used to address human capital challenges. Established standardized vacancy announcement templates for common occupations, such as secretarial, accounting, and accounting technician positions, into which agencies can insert summary information concerning their specific jobs prior to posting for public announcement. Individual federal agencies have also taken actions to meet their specific recruitment and hiring needs. For example: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has used a combination of techniques to recruit workers with critical skills, including targeted recruitment activities, educational outreach programs, improved compensation and benefits packages, professional development programs, and streamlined hiring authorities. Many of NASA’s external hires have been for entry-level positions through the Cooperative Education Program, which provides NASA centers with the opportunity to develop and train future employees and assess the abilities of potential employees before making them permanent job offers. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has endeavored to align its human capital planning framework with its strategic goals and has identified the activities needed to achieve a diverse, skilled workforce and an infrastructure that supports the agency’s mission and goals. NRC has used various flexibilities in recruiting and hiring new employees, and it has tracked the frequency and cost associated with the use of some flexibilities. While there was room for further improvement, NRC has been effective in recruiting, developing, and retaining a critically skilled workforce. While these actions are all steps in the right direction, our past work has found that additional efforts are needed in the areas of strategic human capital planning, diversity management, and the use of existing flexibilities. In addressing these areas, agency managers need to be held accountable for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of their recruiting efforts and hiring processes. In addition, OPM, working with and through the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, must use its leadership position to vigorously and convincingly encourage continuous improvement in agencies and provide appropriate assistance to support agencies’ recruitment and hiring efforts. In carrying out its important role, OPM will need to ensure that it has the internal capacity to assist and guide agencies’ readiness to implement needed improvements. I will discuss each one of these areas in turn. First and foremost, federal agencies will have to bolster their efforts in strategic human capital planning to ensure that they are prepared to meet their current and emerging hiring needs. To build effective recruiting and hiring programs, agencies must determine the critical skills and competencies necessary to achieve programmatic goals and develop strategies that are tailored to address any identified gaps. For example, an agency’s strategic human capital plan should address the demographic trends that the agency faces with its workforce, especially pending retirements. We have found that leading organizations go beyond a succession planning approach that focuses on simply replacing individuals; instead, agencies should consider their future mission requirements and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to meet those requirements. Recruiting and hiring for the acquisition workforce is a prime example of the government’s strategic human capital planning challenges. Acquisition of products and services from contractors consumes about a quarter of discretionary spending governmentwide and is a key function in many federal agencies. We have reported that many acquisition professionals need to acquire a new set of skills focusing on business management because of a more sophisticated business environment. At a GAO- sponsored forum in July 2006, acquisition experts reported that agency leaders had not recognized or elevated the importance of the acquisition profession within their organizations, and a strategic approach had not been taken across government or within agencies to focus on workforce challenges, such as creating a positive image essential to successfully recruiting and retaining a new generation of talented acquisition professionals. Developing and maintaining workforces that reflect all segments of society and our nation’s diversity is another significant aspect of agencies’ recruitment challenges. As we have previously reported, recruitment is a key first step toward establishing a diverse workforce. To ensure that they are reaching out to diverse pools of talent, agencies must consider active recruitment strategies, such as the following: Widening the selection of schools from which they recruit to include, for example, historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic- serving institutions, women’s colleges, and schools with international programs. Building formal relationships with targeted schools and colleges to ensure the cultivation of talent for future applicant pools. Partnering with multicultural professional organizations and speaking at their conferences to communicate their commitment to diversity to external audiences and strengthen and maintain relationships. For these types of recruitment strategies, agencies can calculate the cost of recruiting channels and cross-reference those costs with the volume and quality of candidates yielded in order to reallocate funds to the most effective recruiting channels. Several agencies have taken steps toward developing and implementing active recruitment strategies that take into account a diverse pool of job candidates. For example: NASA developed a strategy for recruiting Hispanics that focuses on increasing educational attainment, beginning in kindergarten and continuing into college and graduate school, with the goal of attracting students into the NASA workforce and aerospace community. NASA said it must compete with the private sector for the pool of Hispanics qualified for aerospace engineering positions, which is often attracted by more-lucrative employment opportunities in the private sector in more preferable locations. NASA centers sponsored, and its employees participated in, mentoring, tutoring, and other programs to encourage Hispanic and other students to pursue careers in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics. An official with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said that when NIST hosted recruitment or other programs, it made use of relationships the agency had with colleges, universities, and other groups to inform students about internship or employment opportunities. One group that helped to arrange such recruitment efforts was the National Organization of Black Chemists and Black Chemical Engineers. The NIST official said that NIST had been active in the professional organization’s leadership for years and that NIST employees had served on its executive board.