Attract New Entrants To the Federal Workforce.

The Balancing Act: Adoption & Diffusion of New Technology To Attract New Entrants To the Federal Workforce.

In order to recruit and develop cyber talent we have to ask is the Federal HR Workforce ready? NASA recently awarded the SEWP V contracts to streamline the process of providing federal agencies with state-of-the-art tablets, desktops and servers; IT peripherals; network equipment; storage systems; security tools; software products; cloud-based services; video conferencing systems, and other IT and audio-visual products; as well as related services such as installation, training and maintenance. All federal agencies and their contractors can place orders through this GWAC. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, procures and manages the SEWP V effort.

Meanwhile, the Office of Personnel Management working now with GSA to revamp the legacy Talent Management Assistance or TMA contract to what is now to be called the Human Capital and Training Solutions for GSA, General Services Administration. This information has recently been updated, and is now available at HCaTS latest update here: HCaTS Draft RFP Extension

OPM advises to both adhere to Federal Standards while moving out with new vehicles for Human capital but where are the inherent risks and potential conflicts posed by digital adoption and its new challenges to how things have always been done. Taking a customer centric approach leads us down the path of seeing the diffusion of innovation in talent management and HR systems that can both aid in ad serving and candidate sourcing as well as outreach campaign tracking techniques but at what cost?

Given the adoption of programmatic ad buying platforms or DMP (Database Marketing Platforms) government marketers can secure more highly targeted ways to leverage search engines to attract or get diverse candidates to opt-in to recruitment communications. However in so far that the Paperwork Reduction Act and the Memorandums from the Office of Management & Budget restricts the use of cookies, more DMP’s are looking to provide targeting that does not compromise PII data or aggregates that data across social media, even measuring sentiment across social networks and commercial ecommerce platforms. This may present a problem in that many new contractors and their agency clients may not even be aware that these technologies are in use or being used for reporting results in practice but as the spirit of the rule aligns to the Open Government Directive Memorandum M-10-22 states

“The central goal is to respect and safeguard the privacy of the American public while also increasing the Federal Government’s ability to serve the public by

improving and modernizing its activities online. Any use of such technologies must be respectful of privacy, open, and transparent, and solely for the purposes of improving the Federal Government’s services and activities online.”

So as we look at privacy, ease of use and cutting wasteful ad spending for more replicable and sustainable approaches for recruiting the next cadre of STEM talent we must also ask, do the means justify the ends? And at what point will contractors start targeting my digital exhaust via my work email ending in .mil or .gov ? So we ask at what point will adoption and diffusion of more robust ad serving and tracking techniques and technologies begin to encroach into the HR tech space. Will it become SOP for the public sector, or the commercial sector HR professional to know my price based on my financial digital exhaust before the interview even begins. As for the Federal public affairs, IT and human resources professionals who’s mission it is to create more citizen-centric and digital engagement strategies to attract talent albeit are they apprised of what is allowable and getting the guidance and IT governance they need to embrace social media for recruitment purposes. These are in my opinion some of the bigger questions agencies will ask.

New entrants to the Federal workforce in Cyber, HR, Acquisition, Public Healthcare are all needed to address shortfalls in Mission Critical Occupations (MCO’s)

According to a recent RAND study Hackers Wanted one could argue that the cyber-security threats and lack of supply in the workforce could in time fix itself, but with 21M undergraduates out there and given the fact the Pentagon and FBI alone have to recruit 6000 candidates, hearing former Sec. of DHS Chertoff making statements like “DHS can’t keep anyone in cyber. They just can’t do it,’’ said a former DHS official. “You can make $150,000 protecting the nation or you can make $650,000. Which one are you going to do?’ According to the FedScope database of federal employees administered by the Office of Personnel Management, between 2010 and 2013, departures of permanent DHS employees increased by 31 percent, compared to a 17 percent increase for the entire federal workforce. As GAO pointed out recently in a report entitled "Strategies to Help Agencies Meet Their Missions in an Era of Highly Constrained Resources " focused on creating a more agile talent management system(s) to address inflexibilities in the current system. The analysis found talent management tools lacked two key ingredients for developing an agile workforce, namely the ability to:

(1) Identify the skills available in their existing workforces, and (2) move people with specific skills to address emerging, temporary, or permanent needs within and across agencies.

As DHS and Army Cyber Command as well as NIST, NSF-OPM SFS Program efforts are driving awareness I would share this recent item from Wanted Analytics Four Ways You Can Recruit Cyber Talent http://goo.gl/zg5BRl A recent BusinessWeek article discusses

the US government's strategy for hiring these jobs, looking at their Cyber Corps college scholarship and stipend program. This may be the key for any organization to fill cyber security jobs.

"While the existing talent pool can be a limiter for Recruiters, our college and university graduate data estimates that 53,000 people graduated with an IT degree and some coursework in cyber security during 2013. We also estimate that a similar number of people will graduate with the same education in 2014. One problem employers might have in recruiting from colleges is that the majority (53%) of students are graduating with an Associate's degree. However, 93% of cyber security jobs require a Bachelor's degree or higher. To overcome this challenge, employers may want to either work with colleges to encourage students to pursue at least a Bachelor's degree, or consider hiring potential candidates with an Associate's Degree and develop an on-the-job development program."

Given all the Federal grant money we pour into endowments, it would be good to see more University Programs come forward and help drive enrollment into CAE Schools. Models like these for a path and career advancement opportunities within talent communities can only serve to promote awareness, digital engagement and outreach efforts that can stem the tide by a cadre of pre-screened applicants while building awareness and candidate supply for the field with our young people from minority serving institutions.

To quote Col. Rivers Johnson retired Army OPA Cyber Command

http://youtu.be/s7lOIbfyB5s “We need to ensure that we've got standardized training and that we also educate the workforce early on with regard to STEM and that we hit them straight in middle school and high school and we can continue that in college, but active recruiting is very important. We can continue to establish the Cyber Centers of Excellence so that the individuals recruited will, in fact, have a job available for them when they -- they graduate.” http://youtu.be/s7lOIbfyB5s

As he mentions in the video interview from last springs CyberForce2014 Summit “It’s a team sport” If you would like more specifics or access to research to help your organization build a coalition reach out to DHS and ask about how can your organization help build and receive value through common cause strategic partnership effort to leverage more or share resources across public-private –academic efforts for starters feel free to visit this content library or lesson plan on versal here https://versal.com/c/o6qfcr/cybersecurity-workforce-issues

Author of the Book entitled, Cybersecurity Leadership: Powering the Modern Organization

By Mansur Hasib, DSc, CISSP, PMP, CPHIMS Cybersecurity and Healthcare Leader at the University System of Maryland wrote in an article on page 70 of this magazine some very interesting thoughts. < http://www.uscybersecurity.net/Pages/winter2015/ > Notably and essentially he feels that cybersecurity is so broad and so interdisciplinary that people with any background should be able to find a role in this field. Students should attempt to develop a T personality that he discusses in this article:

<http://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team-building-and-staffing/can-healthcare-execs-be-security-experts-too/a/d-id/1297742? >

For most students he recommends taking a variety of courses to find their passion. He also recommends sitting in a class before taking it in order to feel the professor's passion for the subject. But like him he advises to be prepared to pivot as he had to since the field has evolved so quickly and how you will find success may not have even been invented yet. This happened to him, and is happening to many in HRIT, Ad-serving or digital web development technology as well albeit in a different field of study mind you but in the book he talks about the need for more interdisciplinary education.

Many feel that all the existing business and MBA programs or the IT and cyber security programs do not provide a student what they will need to be successful in today's organizations. This is why he and others at the National Initiative for Cyber Security Careers and Studies have developed both curriculum and platforms to deliver the benefits of this type of a unique Master's and Doctoral program with a blend of business and IT/cyber security that will prepare the next generation of C-suite leaders much better. So if you have connections in universities who wish to implement this program, I think he and others across several Federal and Military agencies can rally with your help and the help of the university to implement these very needed programs.

How agencies develop a well-defined school-selection criteria may be central to this discussion but one can simply click here <http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=all&sp=4 >to source HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, or HSI’s by STEM Fields for the local Regional Innovation Cluster. <http://goo.gl/CDJCYA > but how many of these programs would be considered centers of academic excellence with programs that can be translated into cyber security degrees or fields for the jobs that are

Figure 1 Government HR should source MSI’s by STEM Fields via social and digital outreach.

required in the 50 industries that constitute the Advanced Industries Sector according to Brookings latest study?

The new and improved dashboards associated with USAJobs.gov now have an improved user interface that leverages a more data-centric approach. The changes promise benefits for finding candidates as well as funding and appear to be well suited to help government recruiters locate pockets of talent within requisite markets, or in seeking concentrations of needed skill sets and competencies

But where are the best feeder programs?

In and above Presidential Management Fellows Programs, Pathways Programs now DHS has a new program called the Cyber Student Volunteer Initiative that takes in close to 1500 applicants for some 300 internships that provide real world experience in Homeland Security agencies. Army is moving to a program called Soldier for Life to address reintegration of returning Veterans into key fields where talent is needed. Even the Scholarship for Service Program with the support of the National Science Foundation and OPM as well as other intelligence have all provided access to candidates via virtual invitation only career fairs periodically that will help you fulfill an obligation that addresses student loan repayment incentives for a 24-36 month commitment to support the Federal government in your career. The new Tech Hire initiative coming out of the Department of Labor is a great one to watch too. Given the posture taken has been to fill-one-for-every-three-vacancy announcements that are open treating this reality as more than budget mechanism by agencies at a time when resources are constrained and talent is leaving at a high rate, these talent problems will be compounded when the applicant experience is a poor one. The job seeker must persevere and be steadfast to get a Federal career started, but just as there are only a few fields where a pension is even being offered or can be secured today, the journey can be worth it.

Forward leaning examples of what may become of the traditional job boards or USAJobs.gov for that matter may not be too far down the road in terms of the will to build a better mouse trap; maybe one that uses Artificial Intelligence to augment the matching of skills, cultural-fit, and career trajectories. In fact something close to that can be found on sites like Good.co, BeanSprock.com, or even mobile voice-based job boards such as Jobaline.com for bilingual or part-time jobs for those whom may only have a cell phone as a lifeline to the online job marketplace.

Just as HR tech evolves for the candidate so too are there even newer platforms for corporate recruiters that are emerging. From video interviews, to those that can help build talent communities or ecosystems such as portals, websites or SaaS based solutions to address the changing job market. Many that have popped up that include the likes of SeedJobs.com, Findly.com, or Recruitics.com just to name a few, are focused

Figure 2 Data Analytics Dashboards for USAJobs.gov

on the data analytics and metrics in mind. These disruptors as well as the traditional vendors in the applicant tracking system space are all scrambling to optimize for mobile, search engines, while providing a branded digital experience across the full candidate lifecycle solution.

If we are to leverage innovative sourcing and data analytics tools like wantedanalytics.com, we must also be mindful of the changing landscape in terms of America’s Advanced Industries and what talent we foster to support efforts not only in key technical areas but in support of programs around regional innovation clusters or (RICs).

HR Tech shortcomings potentially can both help and hinder a challenging process. The days of a resume based applications being mailed in with a cover letter are soon to go the way of the horse and buggy. Social media and the application of social networking platforms that can help sift filter and sort jobs, while serving to provide more access to and awareness of those types of roles and career paths that ultimately should be informed not only by assessments now available by USAHIRE, Findly, or PDRI a division of CEB but by skills matching as is being done on LinkedIn.com. Never mind the fact that your agencies are now spending here to determine your skills and

competencies, but potentially cultural fit as well. I recall being a recent college graduate some few decades ago and outside of a post card deck attached to a cork board or a flyer in the Career Center on Campus there was not much in the way of even an understanding on how to apply for and secure a position in the public service outside of the military, national non-profits and EDD office options that existed for me. It’s a new game and with so many looking into retirement and TSP Rollovers these days its good to have the acumen and profile to support your hard earned credentials, for those that are ready to retire be sure to email benefits@opm.gov your questions but do know we value your service and hope that you will pay it forward to the next cadre of the Federal workforce or at least send us a tweet every know and then.

Figure 3 Retirement Conundrum - An Opportunity To Address Mission Critical Occupation Vacancies Source:

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?sid=3338792&nid=1140

John Bersentes

Consultant

johnbersentes.com

john.bersentes@gmail.com