Agency Snapshot: 
Department of Defense

The Department of Defense (DoD) continues to work aggressively toward accomplishing the Presidential mandate to make it quicker and easier to bring talented individuals into Federal service.  DoD Hiring Reform activities are focused on three overarching Objectives: Improving Hiring Timeliness, Improving the Applicant Experience, and Attracting and Obtaining Top Talent.  In 2007 and 2009, DoD held Lean Six Sigma process reviews that led to the consolidation of DoD’s complicated and onerous hiring process into a concise, straight-forward 10 step approach.  Tasks outlined within the Hiring Reform Action Plan directly support each step of this process and each of the DoD Hiring Reform Objectives.

DoD senior leadership is heavily invested in the Hiring Reform initiative, and as a result, is providing strong direction and structure to the effort. To support leadership, the Hiring Reform Project Management Office (PMO) is focused on driving results-oriented initiatives, coordinating efforts across the Department, and converging integrated project team (IPT) efforts to align with the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) overall Hiring Reform objectives. DoD is institutionalizing the core principles of Hiring Reform across the Department, and creating a meaningful culture change around hiring.

Applicant Satisfaction with the Application Process

Applicant satisfaction with the application process is about more than the speed of hiring. It also depends on how cumbersome and long the application is, whether the application questions appear relevant, and applicant awareness of their status during the process. To learn more about these factors, the Chief Human Capital Officers developed an applicant survey that asks applicants to assess the application process on a 1-10 point scale. The results of this survey for applicants, by agency, are shown here only for agencies with a minimum of 30 responses in a given quarter. As of the end of Q2 FY11, the applicant satisfaction survey is now being sent to a randomly selected 50 percent sample of USAJOBS applicants who complete and submit their application. This is an increase from a randomly selected 5 percent sample size in previous quarters.  As a consequence, agencies should see a significant increase in their number of applicant responses.

Tabular View
Manager Satisfaction with Applicants

DoD assesses manager involvement in the hiring process through the use of the CHCO Manager Satisfaction Survey. Senior leaders are primarily focused on results of the survey items on satisfaction with the hiring process and satisfaction with applicant quality. Candidate Quality Score is also determined through the CHCO Manager Satisfaction Survey. The responses result from the survey item “Applicants referred had the competencies to perform the job. The response rate is on a 0 to 100% scale (of responses receiving an 8-10 score), and is calculated as the “percent agreement that applicants referred had the required competencies for the job.” 

With the recent survey format refresh, the DoD expects to improve both response rates and satisfaction scores; the Department is taking an active approach toward improving response rates through visibility and leadership emphasis on the importance of satisfaction survey responses. The average score for manager satisfaction with candidate quality for Q2FY2011 was 7.5, which was slightly lower than the government-wide average score of 7.8. 

OPM added functionality to its USA Staffing product in the March 2011 release to provide a means for HR users to send a link to the CHCO Manager Satisfaction Survey to hiring managers (following the manager’s selection of an applicant and return of the referral certificate). Agencies are able to modify the text that accompanies the survey link as well. DoD is looking to leverage this new feature within USA Staffing to promote standardization of the CHCO Manager Satisfaction Survey across Components to improve survey responses.

Tabular View
Time to Hire

As a result of metrics standardization efforts during FY2010, DoD is now able to measure end-to-end time to hire in a consistent way across the enterprise in order to make decisions and improvements based on accurate data. The Hiring Reform initiative has enabled DoD to commit to improving the time to hire for external competitive (Delegated Examining) hires as one of its eight high priority performance goals. In FY2010, DoD accomplished the following:

  • Reduced external (Delegated Examining) hiring timeline by 25% from the FY2009 baseline of 155 days to 116 days (FY2010 goal was 140 days).
  • Adjusted FY2011 yearly Delegated Examining timeline goal (quarterly targets were adjusted subsequently) downward to 101 days (the original FY2011 goal was 112 days).
  • Maintained FY2012 goal of 80 days.

While DoD’s focus has been on reducing the time to hire for the competitive (Delegated Examining) hiring process, DoD expanded its set of metrics to include internal hires (Merit Promotion), all external hires (those originating from outside the DoD), all hires with use of a job opportunity announcement, and hires by certain targeted authorities such as Direct Hire and Expedited Hiring. The average timeline for “All Hires” met the 80 day goal in Q2FY2011 and Q3FY11, and the average timeline for competitive (Delegated Examining) hires was 106 days for the third quarter of FY11. Improving these timelines is incumbent on hiring managers and Human Resources who are collectively responsible for 64% of the hiring process.

Tabular View
Building an Inclusive Workplace

DoD continues its efforts to build an inclusive workplace by targeting its recruitment efforts to applicants who have disabilities and those who are veterans.  In May 2010 DoD implemented the DoD Veterans’ Employment and Recruitment Operational Plan, which aligns with both the OPM Veterans Strategic Plan, and the DoD Strategic Human Capital Plan. This plan was updated in October 2010 to include performance measures and expected outcomes.  DoD promoted itself as America’s model employer of Veterans by offering the following tools and events:

Eight to ten DoD-sponsored Hiring Heroes Career Fairs conducted throughout the U.S. each year

  • Two comprehensive employment and resource websites (www.goDefense.com and www.DoDVets.com)
  • Career advice available by toll-free phone number (1-888-363-4872) (1-888-DoD-4USA)
  • Live Web Chat on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30pm - 2:30pm Eastern time

To date, thirty-eight career fairs have been held at or near Medical Treatment Facilities reaching out to over 13,000 service members and their families with over 2,300 employers offering job opportunities.  As a result of these events, 3,311 interviews were conducted and 1,363 job offers were made onsite. In addition, DoD provided training to HR professionals/hiring officials and job seekers on Veterans’ employment, Veterans’ preference and special hiring authorities, employment of spouses and reasonable accommodations for disabled Veterans. This training was provided during information sessions conducted prior to the Hiring Heroes Career Fair at Fort Sam Houston, TX.

In 2010, 80 Recruiters from 44 federal agencies, including 33 recruiters from DoD, visited 220 colleges and universities nationwide and interviewed students from 325 schools for possible inclusion in the Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP) database. The participating schools included 9 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), 26 Minority Serving Institutions (MSI), and one Tribal College or University (TCU).  Of the 2,157 participants selected for inclusion in the 2010 WRP database, DoD had 437 hiring actions, including 38 permanent hires, accounting for 72% of all Federal hires made utilizing this program. In addition, over 35% of individuals hired by DoD had targeted/severe disabilities.The table here shows information on the agency workforce as well as new hires in the third quarter of FY11.
No. of Employees in Q3 FY11No. of New Hires in Q3 FY11% of Employees that are Veterans in Q3 FY11% of New Hires that are Veterans in Q1-Q3 FY11% of Employees with Disabilities in Q3 FY11% of New Hires with Disabilities in Q1-Q3 FY11
725,35458,88444.748.77.25.6
These data are from the OPM EHRI-SDM. Individual Departments may have additional, updated data for their respective agencies.