Government’s Hiring Problem Isn’t Just Finding People- It Takes Too Long to Hire Them

At one point in my New York City government career, approximately a full year passed between the time I interviewed for a position and the time I was called to actually come onboard.

A year.

By the time the person who had interviewed me called, I didn’t have the faintest recollection of what he looked like.

He seemed ready for me to start almost immediately.

I had to explain that I already worked for another City agency and wanted to give my current employer two weeks’ notice as a professional courtesy.

It’s a funny story now. But it illustrates one of government’s most persistent workforce problems:

Government’s hiring problem isn’t simply finding qualified people. Sometimes we find them and then take so long to hire them that we’re fortunate if they’re still available.

The explanation, however, is more complicated than saying HR moves too slowly.

To understand government hiring, you have to understand civil service.

Civil Service Exists for a Very Good Reason

New York’s Constitution requires appointments and promotions in civil service to be based on merit and fitness, determined, as far as practicable, through competitive examination.

That principle was designed to move public employment away from patronage and toward merit.

Government jobs shouldn’t simply go to somebody because that person knows the mayor, commissioner, council member or political party leader.

That’s a feature, not a bug.

But the principle of civil service and the administrative machinery surrounding it are two different things.

We can preserve merit-based employment while still asking whether the process administering it is unnecessarily slow.

Sometimes Getting a Government Job Starts Long Before There’s a Vacancy

For many competitive-class City positions, the process begins with a civil-service examination.

And “exam” doesn’t necessarily mean sitting in a classroom answering multiple-choice questions. Depending on the title, candidates may instead be evaluated based on education and experience or through another examination method.

You apply.

You take the examination or submit your qualifications.

It gets scored.

Eventually an eligible list is established.

Candidates who pass are ranked.

Then they wait.

NYC advises candidates that eligible lists are generally established six months to a year after an examination period ends and typically remain active for four years.

Passing doesn’t mean you’re immediately offered a job.

It means you’ve earned a place in the pool from which appointments may eventually be made.

Then the agency hiring process begins.

A Hiring Manager Can’t Necessarily Just Pick the Person He Wants

This is where government employment differs substantially from private-sector hiring.

If an eligible list exists for a competitive title, a hiring manager doesn’t necessarily have the freedom to interview everyone and select whichever candidate he or she prefers.

New York civil service generally operates under what is commonly called the one-in-three rule.

Appointment can generally be made from among the three highest-ranking eligible candidates certified who are willing to accept the position, subject to the applicable rules.

A manager might know an outstanding employee.

An outside candidate might have tremendous experience.

Someone might appear to be an ideal fit.

But if an eligible list controls appointments to that competitive title, the list matters.

That restriction is intentional.

Unlimited managerial discretion can become patronage.

Civil service trades some flexibility for fairness.

The challenge is ensuring that we aren’t adding unnecessary administrative delay on top of the protections the law actually requires.

Provisional Is Not the Same as Non-Competitive

There is another distinction worth understanding.

Most City positions are in the competitive class, but government also has non-competitive, labor and exempt classifications.

A non-competitive position is one for which competitive examination has been determined to be impracticable, although candidates still have to meet applicable qualifications.

A provisional employee can be something entirely different.

When government needs to fill a competitive-class vacancy but an appropriate eligible list isn’t available, a qualified person can sometimes be appointed provisionally while the competitive process catches up.

That provides operational flexibility.

But provisional status isn’t permanent competitive status.

The employee may be doing the job successfully and still eventually have to take the applicable examination and navigate the process for permanent appointment.

Long Beach Shows Why Those Distinctions Matter

These aren’t merely HR labels.

They can have significant legal consequences.

In Matter of City of Long Beach v. Civil Service Employees Association, the New York Court of Appeals addressed employment protections involving provisional employees and reinforced the distinction between provisional service and permanent competitive civil-service status.

The broader workforce lesson is important.

Government can need someone now.

It can hire someone provisionally.

That employee can become experienced at the work.

Yet the underlying civil-service process doesn’t simply disappear because the arrangement has lasted a long time.

That tension between operational necessity and civil-service status is one reason government workforce management can become complicated.

Then There Is Contracting

This is where my professional world of procurement intersects with HR.

I work extensively with consultants, particularly in technology.

Government may suddenly need a cybersecurity professional, database administrator, cloud architect, programmer, engineer or specialist in a legacy technology.

Perhaps the expertise is needed for only 18 months.

Perhaps government compensation isn’t competitive for that particular skill.

Perhaps no appropriate eligible list exists.

Perhaps the project cannot wait a year for someone to be hired.

Contracting can sometimes provide that expertise much faster.

That doesn’t mean contractors should replace civil servants.

It means contracting is one legitimate component of workforce planning.

Contracting Can Expand the Talent Pool

This becomes particularly important in technology because the labor market is global.

Most NYC jobs don’t simply require someone to hold a green card. The more accurate issue is whether the individual is legally authorized to work in the United States and whether the employer can or will provide any immigration sponsorship the worker requires.

Those are different questions.

Some government employers or individual postings require candidates to already possess authorization to work without employer sponsorship.

That can make certain technology professionals difficult for government to recruit directly.

A consulting company may operate differently.

The government contracts with the company for services. The company employs its workforce and is responsible for complying with applicable employment and immigration requirements.

Depending on the circumstances, that can give government lawful access to highly specialized professionals who might not be practical candidates for direct government employment.

This isn’t about preferring one category of worker over another.

It’s recognizing the reality of the technology labor market.

But Consultants Aren’t Automatically the Cheaper—or More Expensive—Answer

Suppose a consultant costs $150 an hour while a City employee performing similar work earns $120,000.

It’s tempting to compare those numbers directly.

But they’re not directly comparable.

An employee’s salary isn’t government’s entire employment cost.

Likewise, a consulting rate includes more than the worker’s compensation. It can include benefits, recruiting, corporate overhead, risk and profit.

Then there is another cost:

availability.

A hypothetical employee who would cost less but takes nine months to hire isn’t performing the work during those nine months.

The consultant who can begin next month might.

Conversely, if government has needed the same consultant continuously for seven years, we should probably ask whether the supposedly temporary requirement is actually permanent.

The question shouldn’t be ideological.

Employee good, consultant bad.

Or consultant flexible, employee bureaucratic.

Ask the question I return to repeatedly in procurement:

What are we actually getting for the money?

Vacancies Aren’t Free Either

My budget background also makes me skeptical when vacant positions are automatically described as savings.

No employee means no salary expenditure.

But who is doing the work?

Existing employees?

Managers?

Consultants?

Overtime staff?

Or nobody?

In procurement, financial management and technology, inadequate staffing can itself cost money.

A procurement takes longer.

A contract expires.

Negotiations aren’t as thorough.

Projects slow down.

Managers perform transactional work instead of managing.

Opportunities to reduce spending aren’t pursued because nobody has time.

If a specialized four-person unit loses one employee, it has lost 25 percent of its staffing capacity.

The workload doesn’t necessarily decline 25 percent.

A vacancy has a carrying cost too.

It just doesn’t necessarily appear on the personnel line.

Fellowships Can Build the Pipeline Before the Vacancy Exists

There is another workforce tool I think government should use aggressively: fellowships and structured pathways into public service.

Traditional government recruiting often begins too late.

We wait until a position is vacant and then ask who is available right now.

A better strategy is to build the pipeline before the vacancy.

New York City programs such as the Civil Service Pathways Fellowship demonstrate the concept particularly well.

Recent CUNY graduates can gain actual City government experience in fields including procurement and finance, information technology, data analysis, project management, policy, architecture and engineering while developing a pathway toward civil-service employment.

That is more than an internship.

It’s workforce planning.

New York State uses similar approaches through programs including the Excelsior Service Fellowship for recent graduates of participating graduate and professional schools and the Empire State Fellows Program, which can provide experienced professionals with an entry point into State government.

The federal government has long used comparable concepts through programs such as internships, Recent Graduates opportunities and the Presidential Management Fellows program.

Different governments use different structures.

The underlying idea is powerful:

Don’t just recruit for vacancies. Build pathways into public service.

Government Needs Entry Points at Different Stages of a Career

Not everyone enters public service at 22.

Government needs a path for the recent college graduate who has never considered civil service.

Another for the graduate student completing an MPA, MBA, JD, MPH or technical degree.

Another for the experienced private-sector professional who decides at 40 that the next chapter of a career should be public service.

And another for existing government employees ready to move into leadership.

Fellowships can introduce people to government before they understand how to navigate civil-service examinations and eligible lists.

But the fellowship should lead somewhere.

Government shouldn’t spend two years developing someone and then discover three weeks before the fellowship ends that nobody planned for what happens next.

What civil-service title corresponds to the work?

When is the relevant exam?

What qualifications will the fellow need?

What permanent opportunities are likely to exist?

Those questions should be considered when the fellowship begins.

Government Should Measure the Waiting

None of these workforce tools eliminates the need to make the traditional hiring process faster.

But simply measuring “time-to-hire” isn’t enough.

Break it apart.

How long from identifying a vacancy to authorization?

Authorization to posting?

Posting to interview?

Interview to selection?

Selection to personnel approval?

Civil-service certification to appointment?

Appointment approval to start date?

And perhaps most importantly:

How much of that time was somebody actually working on the hiring action, and how much was the file simply waiting?

A nine-month process doesn’t necessarily contain nine months of work.

Maybe some of that time is legally required.

Maybe some reflects necessary budget, background or civil-service controls.

Fine.

Then focus on everything else.

We shouldn’t eliminate controls simply because they take time. We should eliminate time that adds no control.

Technology Should Make Civil Service Easier to Administer

A hiring manager shouldn’t have to wonder where an appointment package is.

A candidate shouldn’t disappear into a black hole.

HR shouldn’t have to manually reconstruct every handoff.

An authorized manager should be able to see:

Here is the vacancy.

Here is the civil-service title.

Here is its classification.

Here is whether an eligible list exists.

Here is the candidate’s status.

Here is the outstanding requirement.

Here is how long it has been waiting.

And here is who needs to act.

Eventually, carefully governed artificial intelligence may be able to help organizations identify bottlenecks, answer routine candidate questions, match workforce requirements to titles and flag cases that have stopped moving.

That isn’t circumventing civil service.

It’s administering civil service better.

Don’t Wait Until Someone Retires to Think About Replacing Them

There is one final problem technology won’t solve.

Too often, workforce planning begins when somebody leaves.

If an employee has 30 years of institutional knowledge and everyone knows retirement is approaching, succession planning shouldn’t begin on that person’s last Friday.

Identify critical positions.

Document processes.

Cross-train employees.

Develop people internally.

Plan examinations around anticipated workforce needs where practicable.

Determine which capabilities belong permanently inside government and which are appropriate to contract.

Use fellowships to build the next generation.

Use consultants strategically where specialized or temporary expertise makes sense.

And make permanent appointments efficiently when government has identified the people it wants.

Government Needs a Talent Portfolio

Put all of this together and government actually has more workforce tools than we sometimes acknowledge.

Competitive civil-service hiring.

Provisional appointments when appropriate.

Non-competitive titles where the classification permits them.

Internal promotions.

Contractors.

Internships.

Fellowships.

Training.

Professional development.

Succession planning.

No single mechanism solves every workforce problem.

The mistake is expecting one to.

A strong public workforce should be managed almost like a portfolio.

Some civil servants provide decades of institutional knowledge.

Some specialists may be needed for only 18 months.

Some fellows may become the next generation of career public servants.

Some experienced professionals may enter government midway through their careers and eventually become agency leaders.

Some consultants may provide specialized expertise and transfer knowledge to permanent employees before moving on.

The objective isn’t to maximize any one category.

It is to have the right talent, in the right structure, at the right time.

Preserve the Principle. Fix the Process.

I don’t want to solve government hiring delays by returning to a system where public jobs are handed out based on political relationships.

The merit-and-fitness principle matters.

Competitive examinations matter.

Eligible lists matter.

Fair access to government employment matters.

A professional civil service also provides something particularly valuable in government: institutional continuity when elected officials and administrations change.

But none of those principles requires administrative complacency.

Government should be able to maintain a merit-based civil-service system while moving qualified people through it faster.

Where permanent hiring cannot meet an immediate or specialized need, contracting can provide flexibility.

Where government needs to cultivate the next generation, fellowships can create a pipeline.

Where experienced employees are approaching retirement, succession planning can preserve institutional knowledge.

These shouldn’t be separate conversations conducted by HR, budget, procurement and program managers.

They are all parts of the same question:

How does government get the people it needs to accomplish its mission?

Government frequently says it has to compete with the private sector for talent.

That’s true.

But competition implies something we sometimes forget:

The candidate gets to choose too.

When my telephone finally rang approximately a year after my interview, I happened to still be interested.

I just needed two weeks to give my existing City employer the courtesy of a proper transition.

Government shouldn’t build a hiring system that depends on every good candidate being that patient.

Protect merit. Protect fairness. Protect civil service. But protect the candidate’s time too.