Recent industry reports project a 1.8 million cybersecurity workforce shortage across the globe by 2022.
To operate and innovate in the federal IT space, the United States Federal Government must continue to invest in recruiting the necessary talent. The Federal Government must compete to recruit IT talent needed to defend the nation’s infrastructure, deliver digital services to the American people, and modernize the Federal Government’s IT systems and operations.
To strategically respond to these challenges, the Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council, in partnership with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), hosted the government’s first-ever Federal Tech/Cyber Hiring and Recruitment Event on November 6th & 7th 2017. The event had several goals:
- Attract, interview, and ultimately hire as many IT & cyber professionals as possible
- Consolidate and strengthen Federal Government vacancy marketing and outreach
- Reduce “time-to- offer” by six to eight weeks
- Increase awareness of federal agency missions
31 federal agencies and nearly 2,000 potential hires from 42 states participated in the event. Many agencies recruited, interviewed, and provided participants with temporary job offers on the spot.
Agencies collectively conducted over 300 interviews and made over 50 tentative job offers within 30 days after the event. Over 200 participants attended free training seminars that covered resume writing, interviewing, and applying to Federal Government jobs. The council anticipates the number of job offers to continue to increase.
This event demonstrated the necessity of operating as a unified federal enterprise. The federal-wide hiring event was an effective and cost efficient solution to attract diverse top talent to the public sector. Key event facts and figures are provided below.
- The event was delivered on time and under budget.
- Agencies received more than 5,000 applications to the government-wide vacancy announcements;
- The government-wide vacancy announcements produced a diverse applicant pool that included veterans, students, and CyberCorp® Scholarship for Service candidates.
- All participating agencies reported being ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’ with the quality of candidates and the overall event;
- Agencies requested more than 100 certificates of eligible candidates at all available grade levels;
- The CIO Council webpage (CIO.gov) received a recording breaking 72,000 site visits before, during and immediately after the event.
As we move into 2018, the CIO Council plans to continue working on innovative and collaborative approaches to recruit the workforce of the future based on the key lessons learned from this event, including:
- Evaluating the feasibility of hosting additional events in the future;
- Identifying new ways to attract top talent with strong experience, training, and drive; and
- Continuing close collaboration with the Chief Human Capital Officers Council.
The CIO Council will continue to drive efficiencies and build relationships across agencies to tackle a broad range of workforce challenges including the recruitment, hiring, development, and retention of federal IT and Cyber professionals. Retention starts with the new hires from this event who are currently being onboarded. The CIO Council will provide support to agencies in the development of tools and resources to enable their success in the federal government.
