Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the: (1) major problems that federal agencies were having in recruiting and hiring qualified entry-level employees; and (2) effectiveness of Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and federal agency actions in addressing those problems.
GAO found that: (1) noncompetitive starting pay, ranging from 4 percent to 49 percent behind private-sector salaries, resulted in difficulty in recruiting high-quality applicants; (2) interviewed college students overwhelmingly said that entry-level federal salaries would not meet their financial needs; (3) even with special rates, starting salaries for hard-to-fill occupations were not competitive with the private sector; (4) lack of flexibility in setting entry-level pay hindered federal competitiveness with the private sector in different geographical areas; (5) agencies viewed the federal government's hiring system as time-consuming and unnecessarily complex; (6) a lack of documentation made it difficult to determine the timeliness of federal hiring methods or the effectiveness of OPM monitoring of agency hiring; (7) agencies' direct-hire procedures did not fully meet merit employment principles; (8) a lack of federal employment information available to college students and a poor image put federal agencies at a recruiting disadvantage; (9) agencies that actively recruited attracted sufficient numbers of applicants, although the quality of applicants was a concern; (10) surveyed students rated personal contacts as the most effective recruiting technique; and (11) agency recruiters had little knowledge of OPM recruiting initiatives.
