The extremely tight labor market continues to be tough on employers in the private business sector, and many recruiters are looking at a talent pool they previously ignored: those in the public sector, including civil service.
Top elected officials and their star appointees have always been courted by business and industry for their golden connections, of course. But staffers several rungs down the public service ladder have been ignored, the victims of recycled generalizations about their mediocre work, cushy hours and lack of ambition.
But the push to find staff has now caused some recruiters to cast a net wide enough to catch the best and the brightest in the public sector as well as the private.
Nobody knows for sure how widespread the trend is, but the tide has turned gradually over the last few years, said Jeff Waldron of Waldron & Co. in Seattle, an executive recruitment firm that specializes in public, non-profit and outplacement work.
In addition to recruiters changing their mindset, more public sector employees are learning about private jobs through the glut of information on the Internet and are lining up to be considered.
“We’ve lost between five and ten people over the last year and expect to see more go,” said Kenneth J. Kalscheur, deputy regional administrator of the General Services Administration’s Great Lakes office in Chicago.
What seems to make the difference in whether a candidate is considered is if their skill set matches the demands of the job and can be transferred. “Recruiters are looking at resumes and want to know what someone brings rather than who they worked for,” said Maggi Coil, a partner at the Center for Workforce Effectiveness, a Northbrook consulting firm.
Not surprisingly, technical specialists are among those most sought. “Employers looking for programmers, systems analysts and managers. CIOs (chief information officers) are willing to rethink how to find people to do the work, whereas two years ago many said they’d never consider people in the public sector or military,” said Joyce C. Knauff, a Chicago recruiter who focuses on this market. She says the current tech worker shortage is a replay of what occurred in the late 1960s-early ’70s when mainframe computers spurred a similar hiring rush.
“Nowadays,” she said, “people in the military understand security. That’s a big issue for companies using the Internet.”
Management and people skills are also favored.
Although he has worked in public sector jobs for 26 years, Roger D. Crum, Evanston’s city manager, says he thinks he could switch sides, based on colleagues’ moves to private executive-level jobs and to university vice presidencies.
“The skills are the same, and I actually think public sector management can be harder. I have 10 elected bosses, one mayor and nine aldermen. We meet regularly and everything you do is subject to public scrutiny. If I was working in the private sector as a CEO, I’d probably meet with my board less often and not deal as closely with customers,” he said.
Donna D. Bennett also thinks her ability to balance business and political imperatives as deputy commissioner at the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C., would be highly useful outside the government if she hung out a for-hire sign. “I’m second in command and oversee operations of four business lines and 3,300 people. I’m used to dealing with controversial initiatives and technologically complex matters,” she said.
Michael R. Losey, executive director of The Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va., agrees.. “If somebody is a good performer in the public sector, there’s no question they can do equivalent work in the private workworld. People are wonderfully adaptable.”
What typically acts as the biggest motivator to change is a higher salary and the absence of compensation caps, which exist in government positions. For those who stayed long enough in public jobs to walk away with a pension, the amount of the new second salary may not matter quite as much.
Another attraction of switching is the chance to advance faster than in the government, especially at the federal level, said Donald H. Haider, professor of management at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
For others, a switch simply reflects today’s more mobile mentality in both sectors. “Public service as a career vocation has been breaking down for the last 25 years,” said Haider. “There’s also a lot more blurring between the two sectors.”
Yet in spite of the shifting playing field, not all employers and recruiters are willing to take the gamble, and not all public employees want to change sides.
When it comes to those hiring, some think the skills in the two sectors are still too dissimilar, that the way of thinking too different and that the timetables at which they operate too disparate. The implementation of “a great idea in the public (sector) is measured with a calendar, in the private with a stopwatch,” said N. Fredric Crandall, partner at Center for Workforce Effectiveness.
Certain professions seem particularly resistant. Susan Rosenstein, who places mid-to-upper-level marketing and strategy executives through Executive Search Ltd., in Chicago, says her clients still want as their first choices MBA candidates from top schools who have had classic marketing experience at top companies.
However, what they are willing to consider, because of the shortage, are people without MBAs but who have undergraduate degrees in business, economics and sometimes liberal arts, she said.
Andrea Wong, whose Wilmette recruiting firm W.K. Search specializes in banking, also finds her clients are reluctant to look too much beyond the traditional parameters. “They’d worry that the candidate might not know the same system or might not have a book of business (clients) to bring with them,” she said.
Even if given the chance, not every public servant would jump. Many took their jobs because of a desire for secure employment; to do good for their city, county or country; or to gain challenging experience.
Deputy Chief Jim Pratt of the Des Plaines Fire Department says a big lure when he joined 26 years ago was that every day would be different, and it has been. “There’s nothing mundane; every day changes because of fires, weather, disasters. I love this job. The main downside has been the long hours, being on call at 2 a.m. or later, and not getting compensated for working holidays.”
Joe Wade, personnel director for the village of Glenview, also was attracted to his job because of the variety of challenges. “You need an assortment of skills–personnel, financial, managerial, problem solving. And we’re doing more things since people are more demanding for their tax dollars. I may make a little less than I could on the outside, but at the end of the day I feel I’ve made something a bit better for somebody. I’ve also moved up in my 15 years,” he said.
