Pathways and Partnerships to Federal Service

Hi, this is Lindy Kyzer with ClearanceJobs.com, and if you’d follow the show, you know that improving and enhancing hiring across the federal workforce is a passion point for us over at Clearance jobs. So we are really excited today to talk to Michelle Amante, Vice President of Federal Workforce Solutions at the Partnership for Public Service. If you haven’t heard of the Partnership for Public Service, you’re not aware of all the things you’re doing, we’re hoping to open your eyes to all of their capabilities and capacity and passion points today. We share a lot of passion across improving federal workforce, hiring, leadership. The Partnership for Public Service offers key solutions across the federal talent management ecosystem, including leadership development and workforce strategy. So with that, thank you so much, Michelle, for taking the time to chat with me and be on the show today.

Well, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

I don’t think most people probably grasp the full scope of what the Partnership for Public Service is or does. I know that because it seems like every week I’m finding out a new cool thing that you guys are offering or doing to help make the federal workforce better. I’m sure we won’t be able to get to every topic today, but I’d love to kind of give high level takeaways about what you guys do.

Yeah, absolutely. So the Partnership for Public Service was founded in 2001. So we’ve been around for over 20 years, and as you mentioned, we’d probably need two hours to walk through everything we do, but our mission is to build a better government and a stronger democracy, and we play in that space that focuses on management issues, so leadership, talent recognition, presidential transition, the big issues that every agency is really faced with challenges in, and so we try to support and provide capacity building to agencies in all those spaces.

Fantastic. No, I love that, and I love to learn about all the different things that you’re doing. One of those things was that you recently hosted your inaugural Human Capital Conference. So can you talk about what made you decide to host the conference and what you accomplished there?

Yes, it was so exciting. We had our first conference in April. We’ve been thinking about it for years. It was probably maybe two years before the pandemic that Feds really started talking to me about it that they missed having a space, a conference that was just for federal human capital professionals. The big conferences like SHRM and Gartner. There’s value to them, but they’re not with their peers. We started thinking about it probably 2018, 2019, and then Covid happened. So all of those things got put on the back burner, and we started thinking about it again last year and getting really excited about it with the primary goals of being one, a place for federal human capital professionals to connect and build relationships. A lot of times that problem solving happens, the best problem solving happens between agencies and between departments. So number one, that networking piece, and then number two, obviously to provide really good and relevant content. So we love the space, and so we were very excited to host it in April.

I love that – you had me at good and relevant content. I knew that was a key reason that I loved what you all were doing. We’re going to talk about what was some of that content, what were some of the sessions focused on? What were some of the maybe hot button topics or things that generated the most chatter when you got people together?

So we had three tracks. One was back to basics, which really focused on core HR technical training, things like what is Veterans Preference, Classification 101, and we did a lot of partnering with OPM on that training. That was interesting to us. We wanted to see how that would play out, and it was very popular, which I think signals a need that there probably needs to be more available in that space. So that was one track. A second track was on talent acquisition, so anything from internships and apprenticeships to improving recruiting and branding, so anything and how you’re acquiring talent by making their experience really strong as they get onboarded to your agency. And then that third track was called Thriving Workforce. So things like focusing on DEIA, focusing on employee engagement, some of the bread and butter topics that the partnership really has a lot of experience in and making sure your workforce is engaged every day in fulfilling its mission.

(04:34)
The sessions were very even in terms of capacity, so it really segmented us that there’s really interest all around. We had almost 400 people in total at the conference. Some of the hot button topics, sorry, maybe not even hot button, but things that kept coming up again and again, artificial intelligence, which I’m sure is not surprising is on everyone’s mind. And so that was coming up. We had some sessions dedicated to it, but it was just coming up in other sessions as well. Another topic that was coming up a lot is skills-based hiring. How are agencies thinking about it? I think there’s a lot of excitement around it, but the assessment piece can be overwhelming. How are they figuring out how to attract this new kind of pool of talent? So that was another topic that came up in more than one session, but overall, just a lot of excitement and we’re happy to announce that we will definitely be having a conference in 2025, so make sure to stay tuned for more information on that.

Love how you brought together all those topics. I think that’s so common. If you were hiring in the federal space, whether you’re a contractor or government agency, you are affected by all of those policies like you mentioned classification, CUI, we talk about all the time, veteran hiring, preference, direct hiring authorities. You need to kind of know policy, but also know tactically what it looks like to hire, how to do skills-based hiring or how to implement AI in your recruitment processes or talent management. So I love that you took on different tracks and all of those topics. Talk a little bit about what was the typical attendee, do they represent certain industries? I think for me, having worked both for the federal government and on the contracting side, sometimes it’s interesting to see the different roles, lanes, titles that can be involved in talent management across both ecosystems. Can you speak to that at all?

Sure. What was interesting, and I think this ties something you just said too, is I think when you think about a different generation of HR professionals in the federal space, they used to be generalists. So I think that the folks that are probably Gen Xers, they came in and they learned it all from soup to nuts, everything about federal HR, and they rotated around. But now when people come in, they tend to be very siloed. They just work on classification or they’re just working on recruitment. It’s good in that there’s specialists in those areas, but then there’s big holes for them in terms of how the whole process works from start to finish. It also isn’t great for collaboration and certainly not always great for the applicant experience either. In terms of specialty areas, I think that there was a really wide mix of people.

(07:05)
Like I said, all of those sessions were pretty much evenly filled, so you had people in all different areas that were coming to the conference in terms of level, I think most of them were mid-career. They had a few years into HR and they were looking to learn more and to build their connections. That has become more obvious to me over the years is that we’re losing those generalist positions, which is a little frightening. Then you have less people that can connect all of the dots and really fully understand how to improve processes if they don’t understand how it works from start to finish.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I love, again, ourpublicservice.org –  a shout out for that. You talk a lot about the different pain points in the federal hiring process, something we talk about at ClearanceJobs. There’s a lot more agencies that do have direct hiring authority, which is great to see. So you can innovate in hiring and go outside of the norm, but we still see a number of agencies who just struggle to take advantage of the authorities that they have. So do you have any thoughts on that? What is sometimes preventing government agencies from addressing their broader workforce issues?

Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think about CHCO’s like Tracey Therit at Veterans Affairs, who is a really experienced, thoughtful chief human capital officer, and she’ll tell you, please don’t give me any more direct hiring authorities. There is a limit to how many you can get. And I remember Angie Bailey, who used to be the CHCO at DHS would say the same thing. It gets to a point where it is overwhelming for staff where you have so many that they can’t actually utilize all of them. So I think there is this balance of that tends to be the solution, particularly that Congress likes to give. It’s like, oh, you need to fill spots in this area. Let’s just give you a direct hire, but it’s not solving all of the other challenges. How are you sourcing that talent? How are you finding those people and making connections in those areas?

(08:51)
How are you assessing them when they walk in the door? It’s not getting to the root of the actual hiring process. So while it’s great to have that authority and it gets rid of some of the layers, there’s these other problems still persist and it doesn’t give them any support or capacity to solve those other problems. I mentioned skills-based hiring a few minutes ago. I think there’s an opportunity to bring in whole new groups of people to the federal government hidden talent that just has not been accessed before, but agencies need to figure out how are we going to give them really good solid assessments to make sure they’re ready for the jobs to make sure they’re hiring managers feel comfortable with bringing them in the door again to the sourcing. Many agencies don’t have recruiters at all, so how are they going to find the talent even if they have an authority to bring them in?

Boom. That takeaway I think is so critical, and it’s something that we find when we talk to folks that a number of government agencies don’t actually have recruiters. I think that’s something that we talk about the hiring process. Few people realized that, and I think there was something that came out of even DOD, think about the thousands of positions they’re hiring for, and they had, I think less than a hundred folks working human capital. And even of those, I think if you quantified what their job was, it was a lot of times fell into more admin or compliance roles and not kind of direct line recruiting the way we think about recruiting in the commercial sector. You mentioned the direct hiring authorities we’re asking government agencies to apply authorities that they actually aren’t staffed or resourced or trained on how to use.

That’s right. I found even agencies that do have recruiters, oftentimes they don’t have that background, so it becomes a job that they may have been promoted into. They have no real training, even if on paper they are recruiting, they may not have the skills and experience to do that job effectively.

That is one thing that Partnership for Public Service can help with. I think I’ve talked to folks across the organization that do help federal agencies kind of assess their current hiring processes and then come up with strategies to implement better recruiting. I think that’s absolutely a need if you’re in the federal space to kind of look at what your folks are doing, how hiring can be done in improving that process. And so employer branding, I want to touch on that because that’s always an important topic for us at clearance jobs. We talk a lot about it in the commercial hiring space because for attracting candidates, you really have to have a brand that magnets that talent in so that they’re interested, willing, they know what you do ahead of time. Do you think the federal government realize that it has a brand and do you think it’s using it to help attract the next generation of talent? So

I think there is recognition that they do have a brand and that as a whole, it’s not a great one. Just last week, the partnership had its annual trust summit and we released some of our research in that space, and you’ve got less than 25% of our country trusting the federal government, which doesn’t bode well for federal hiring, but there are some agencies that are doing it better. And I think as it’s not just about attracting for a specific position, but it’s the brand of the whole organization and really understanding their value proposition. And when you think about an agency like National Park Service, which is on Instagram and Twitter and has really engaging content, particularly as a young person, you want to work there, you want to be part of it. Some agencies really get it and have made that connection. Particularly Partnership does a lot of work with early career talent.

(12:12)
That’s really where we focus. And so when you think about Gen Z, they’re so focused on DEIA and working in communities and being in touch, just kind of in the weeds of problem solving. And there’s so many opportunities for government to do that and make that connection for them, and a lot of agencies are not. There’s a huge missed opportunity of how drawing the line between where their passions are and how working in the federal government can make that a reality. When you look at a lot of the schools of public administration and public policy, a lot of those graduates are either going into consulting or they’re working for nonprofits because they feel like they can have a more direct impact in their communities. And so the federal government is missing out on that opportunity really within that branding conversation of like, but you can work for a federal agency and have a direct impact on people and on communities. And I think if they just did a spend a little more time with their storytelling, it would do them a world of good in terms of hiring and sourcing talent.

I absolutely love that. This is a common dinner party conversation topic for me, so I would love to invite you into my dinner party conversation topics. So that’s the issue with federal government. I have a lot of friends who say, Hey, young people just don’t want to work for the federal government anymore and stop. So a lot of doomsday, it’s too late. Ship has sailed. The federal government, I feel like it is, as you mentioned, a storytelling, a branding, a communication issue. I think if the broader young people understood what the federal government was doing, I think that they could get past any of the politicized or the thought barriers around it. I think the actual functional work is highly interesting. There is a ton of innovation happening and there are cool opportunities. So can you weigh in on that debate? Where is it? Where do you land on that spectrum of the federal hiring and getting the young people interested in these jobs?

I think you should come out in the road with us. We meet a lot of college students. Every fall we go on a big road show, and we’ve been all over the country talking to students. So I think that we have a really good understanding of what they’re looking for and how to make those connections. There’s a couple of things that the federal government can do to help bridge this gap. One is I think a lot of students think that all the jobs are in DC and we know that that’s not true. We know that 85% of the jobs are actually outside of the DMV area, so we always try to talk about these, again, are in your states and your local community. So that’s really important to them and an important connection to make for them too. We like to show, we have our, another thing the partnership is famous for is our service to American medal winners every fall.

(14:43)
These are the best civil servants that you could possibly imagine. Their work is so inspirational, and so we share these stories with young people to know the kind of impact they can have in their career. So again, sharing stories with them. We bring young feds out in the road with us, so not only sharing stories of what you can do 20 years from now, but we have really impressive under 30 feds that talk about the impact that they’re having. So it’s important for them to hear from their peers as well, understanding like, Hey, I don’t have to wait until I’m 40. I can make an impact at 27. And then the other thing that we do is making sure that they understand that no matter what your passion is, no matter what your major is, there is a job for you in government. Our early career site is go government.org.

(15:28)
One of the things I love on that site is we have these career guides, and it’s my topical area, so you can say, oh, I’m in creative arts, and you can go to the Creative Arts career guide and see all the types of jobs that you can do in government that relate to that topical area. So no matter what you do, there’s a job for you. So making that connection too. You don’t have to be someone who’s focused on policy. You can be in it, you can be in finance, you can be in art, and we need all of you. And once they hear those types of things, you can see the spark and then you just have to hope that it doesn’t take them a year to get through USA jobs and that they can get a job out with the federal government.

Yes, I was avoiding USAJobs. I’ve been on the record many times saying what I feel about USAJobs, so I will not compel you to join into that conversation with me, but hey, there’s always a chance and hope for improvement. I love what you said about 85% of jobs are outside the DMV. Something I was just talking about with Paul Nakasone, who left NSA Cyber Command is now starting a new institute at Vanderbilt. You talked about how NSA, CYBERCOM, a lot of the IC agencies usually successful at recruiting around the DC metro area, have a great profile there, but there is such a need to go out across the country, and if we think about filling all of their positions, thinking across geography is so important. And it sounds like Partnership for Public Service is doing that. I love to hear that and love to hear about that work.

Yeah, and when you think about, I mean, there’s rightfully so. We want to be bringing in a more diverse population of people into the federal government. We want a government that looks like and represents the American people. And so to do that, not everybody wants to leave their community and leave their home. And so we need to be more intentional about recruiting in all these different spaces and being open to remote work so that we can get that diverse talent into government.

I love it. So you already said Human Capital Conference 2025 is coming, so we just have to wait and get ready to mark our calendars between now and then. How can Human Capital Leaders engage with you? What should we be looking out for between now and then?

So we always have lots of exciting things going on, so I think go to our public service.org and look at our events calendar. As I said, we just had, our Trust summit was last week, but we’ll have all sorts of round tables and events throughout the summer and in the fall. In the fall, we have our annual, what we call our DC night, which is a career fair. We invite all of the DC based schools to come to the partnership, so that’s an opportunity for your agency to show up. It is free. Let me know if you’re interested in recruiting young talent in September, and again, we’ll have lots of opportunities. If you go to our events page, there’ll be places where you can see to connect with us.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Michelle. Thank you so much to partnership for public service, for all the things you do, again, visit our public service.org to learn more. It’s an exciting time to work for the federal government. We need the next generation of talent to come in. I’m here to help you with all of your clearance questions. Michelle is here to help you learn more about what it’s like to work with these government agencies and help those human capital officers so, so important. Again, thank you so much, Michelle, for being on the show.

Thank you for having me.