How to Increase PMF Hiring for Your Agency
How to Increase PMF Hiring for Your Agency
Bring more to your agency quicker than any other hiring pathway!
We all know the value a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) can bring to a federal agency—in work ethic, focus, and intellect. However, for many federal agencies, there is limited understanding on this Pathways Program. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is one such agency that has had minimal experience over the years with PMF hiring. And since spring 2019, the USDOT PMF Leadership Council (LC) has been trying to change that. Formed as the brainchild of a few USDOT PMFs during the 35-day government shutdown, the employee resource group set out to raise departmental awareness and to increase the number of PMF hires. And thank goodness too: in November 2021, the President signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which created the need for USDOT to quickly hire thousands of new employees.
To meet this demand and to increase the agency’s awareness of the PMF Program, here are three actions that USDOT implemented that may be useful for you and your agency:
A top-down approach. As romantic as grassroots activism can be, it simply wasn’t paying off across the various sub-agencies that make up the USDOT. Sure, there were isolated success stories, but overall, HR offices had minimal incentive to alter their hiring processes based upon individual employee suggestions. As a result, the LC decided to go another route. With the assistance of some helpful staff, a few folks from the LC were able to secure a small block of time on the Assistant Secretary of Administration’s calendar and present to him their concerns with USDOT’s limited approach toward PMF hiring. But in addition to presenting the problem (USDOT ranked 17th among large agencies in the number of PMF fellows hired from 2010 to 2020), the LC proposed a solution: USDOT leadership should be the drivers who advocate the PMF program as an effective hiring tool for managers.
Communication with the PMF Program Office. Transmitting this message—from the LC to the Assistant Secretary for Administration, and then from the Assistant Secretary of Administration to leadership across the department—required reliable data if it was to be done clearly, accurately, and persuasively. Why—and how—should agency leadership push for change if there’s no evidence of a hiring dip? This is where engagement with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) came in handy. As the storehouse of Federal hiring information, OPM provided the LC with tailored data that illustrated USDOT’s hiring trends of PMFs over the years. This put the issue in perspective for USDOT leadership. Furthermore, the LC bolstered their presentation with other useful details that preemptively answered common PMF questions related to the OPM fee, rotations, training requirements, etc.
Active Follow-up. After the LC briefed the USDOT Assistant Secretary for Administration, and after he emphasized the value of expanding PMF hiring to the department heads, the sub-agencies began posting PMF job announcements. Some took longer than others, and some only posted one or two. But nearly everyone posted at least one job onto the PMF portal and then went on to make at least one PMF hire in 2022. And for some sub-agencies, this was their first PMF hire in several years. As this was proceeding, the LC remain involved through formal presentations at HR meetings and informal check-ins. Altogether, the initial messaging from the Assistant Secretary combined with the regular communication between the LC and HR staff brought about greater awareness and results with USDOT’s PMF hiring: in 2022, the USDOT increased its PMF hiring 500% year over year, jumping from five hires to 26.