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Lectern

By Steve Kelman

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The Lectern: Fresh thinking on recruiting contract professionals

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The Lectern: More on FAR Part One's core guiding principles

Karen Pica, head of the Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI), gave a fascinating presentation at the Executive Leadership Conference (probably the largest government IT conference each year) in Williamsburg earlier this week, talking about efforts the government is undertaking to increase its ability to recruit a new generation of entry-level, recent college grad contracting professionals.
 
FAI, in cooperation with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the Office of Personnel Management, started by holding focus groups of newly hired contracting professionals, to find out about what kinds of activities new contracting professionals found most-appealing about jobs in government contracting.


Based on the focus groups, they developed a list of five activities (such as negotiating or applying business skills) that these young people found most attractive. Then, based on this list, the government has now revised job descriptions for entry-level contracting jobs.  Instead of beginning with such turn-off phrases as "Incumbent shall" and pages of incomprehensible government-speak, the job announcements begin with phrases such as, "Do you like to negotiate?" that describe things contracting professionals do.
 
The group also decided that, given that it was unlikely that new college grads had had much experience undertaking activities typical for the job of a contract specialist, it was unnecessary for applicants to fill out lengthy essays on "knowledge, skills, and abilities" that turn many federal job applications into major essay contests.
 
In her presentation, Pica made a really interesting point about the potential attractiveness of government contracting jobs for young people who would like to try many different activities during their careers.  If you think about contracting jobs from the perspective of the varying missions contracting supports -- from homeland security to national parks to social services -- then it is possible for a person to stay in contracting but to experience support for many missions, all the while not losing seniority or benefits because the individual stays inside the federal government, though at different agencies. Good point, and one that I think will appeal to many young people.
 
Karen and her colleagues deserve kudos for thinking in an innovative way about recruiting techniques.  It was inspiring to listen to her presentation at Williamsburg.
 
The problem remains, however, of retaining new recruits once they come on the job. If young people come into the contracting environment created by the fear industry, centered around rules, compliance, and "gotcha," it is highly questionable whether many will stay.  This is the paradox for the members of Congress who talk about upgrading the status and situation of contracting professionals, while contributing to an environment that makes the field less attractive for people to enter or stay in.


What do you think? Post a comment on this blog or send an e-mail to letters@fcw.com (subject: Kelman) and we will post it for you.

Posted by Steve Kelman on Oct 30, 2008 at 9:18 AM


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Reader comments

Wed, Nov 12, 2008 John Monroe

Respectfully to Steve and his Blog readers: A great philosopher once said th at children will blame everyone else for their problem except themselves. However, when they examine themselves for being the possible cause of the problem than they are on the way to solving the problem.It’s not just the recruitment process, or just the FAR and contractual documentation that impacts the retention of new and middle level contracting professionals, and it’s not just the economy that will direct applicants to our career field it’s the lack of good leadership.Continuing even today, some leaders in contracting have practiced unethical, poor business, and sometimes illegal practices. What would a potential recruit to our “professional” career field think about a career field that has taken years to award an Air Force tanker contract, or that the IG is continuously finding major contracting problems related to Iraq reconstruction and recovery from Hurricane Katrina. I recommend that you think about the ways contracting leadership manage our career field and are they a contributing cause to the recruitment and retention problems ? When will the contracting profession leadership get together and come up with a plan to lead all levels of our profession into the future .Additionally, we are not a “support” career field and once we get that idea out of our heads maybe we can perform and be accepted on the same professional level as the engineer, warfighter, and lawyer. I know that these are controversial ideas but perhaps our leadership needs a kick start to think innovatively about improving themselves to get improved results in recruitment and retention as a professional career field.Nelson L. Mellitz

Sun, Nov 2, 2008 Michael Del-Colle

I heard Karen's comments as well. I think her point was simple: for an 1102 you need to enjoy what you're buying as much if not more than the process by which you execute the buying. I agree with her. In my 33 year career it was what and for which program I was procuring that excited me. While I enjoyed mastering the process of procurement, I found my enthusiasm for what I was buying and in support of particular missions to frequently be the difference in how I approached my job and the use of the tools in the procurement process. I went to work for NASA because I wanted to support the space program; NIH because I wanted to do be part of the programs of the National Cancer Institute; Park Service because I wanted to support the interpretive programs; and MMS because I enjoyed the scientific research that was needed. I think FAI has come to understand that many in the 1102 profession who do the best do so because the invest themselves in the program not just their job.

Fri, Oct 31, 2008 John Monroe

Michael, the best of our contracting professionals see the center of their work as being to provide best value products and services to the missions of the agencies they serve, and to the taxpayer. And the thrust of the procurement changes of the 1990's was to bring to the fore the mission support goal of contracting. Of course, contracting officials have a "check and balance" role as well, but making that the center of their job -- as has unfortunately been the thrust in recent years -- is a recipe for mediocre (at best) contracting and, from the point of view of what I was writing about, great difficulties in retaining young people in the contracting workforce. There are kids who want to be cops, but if they do, they will go for the real thing -- the FBI or the IG -- not for a pale imitation. Steve Kelman

Fri, Oct 31, 2008 Pragmatic ex-fed

Dr. Kelman, I too was taken by Karen's comments. With regards to the retention questions, I was thinking about the mountain of training required to get warrants issued.I hope that systems develop not just tying together different compliance and reporting tools, but actually integrate the guidance of best practices into a hand holding, order management tool. One that will offer the expertise and guidance of the really excellent 1102s, in a manner akin to Madden 09 for the gamers.Bringing my thoughts into context, we could then, perhaps, provide a more abbreviated syllabus for the 80% of folks who don't procure major systems, thus alleviating much of the current and future backlog in an era of increased "transparancy" (delay).

Fri, Oct 31, 2008 Michael Lent

Steve,As always, you bring good ideas to light, in this case for recruiting and retaining desperately needed acq professionals. But I was perplexed by your concern that their retention would be impeded by a contracting environment "centered around rules, compliance, and 'gotcha'." Well, what is a contracting professional's environment centered on? The mission is something you might plausibly say. But these civil servants, at least the contracting officers, hold warrants that enable them to obligate United States funds and actions to complete a contract. They are part of the bulwark against fraud, waste and abuse by either government employees and/or contractors and vendors. It would not be surprising if their world "centered" on rules and compliance, but how do you view it? As for "gotcha," that's another matter relating to responsibility and accountability and bearing the burden of working for the public good, with overseers, including the Congress, the media and the taxpayers and their watchdogs. Goes with the territory. In the forseeable future, it is hard to imagine that genie being put back in the bottle.

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