Federal Government Information Technology

Some Agencies Are Making Headway on Luring Millennials

Nextgov: At Home Depot, forklift operators can apply for jobs and get hired in 72 hours, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., instructed an Office of Personnel Management official at a Thursday hearing. “But in a government warehouse, it takes up to three months before he hears back.”

That won’t do much to attract the millennial generation so needed to offset the government’s coming retirement wave, Lankford said, noting that millennials—definitions vary but all are under age 40—are now only 16 percent of the government workforce. Surveys show this age group is turned off by the lengthy and cumbersome hiring process; the General Schedule system’s “rigidity that treats everyone the same;” and jobs that are often “unrewarding,” where “incentives to excel are rare,” Lankford said.

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