There is much written, discussed and debated about the challenges of attracting, hiring, retaining and growing talent in the federal government. Ongoing and emerging challenges such as the retirement tsunami, the new millennial workforce and competing with the private sector are just a few of the myriad of challenges that agency HR leaders face.

Exploiting technology to improve organizational workforce performance

What are not mentioned as much, at least at the higher levels, are some of the more tactical and technological problems agencies face. Or perhaps more to the point, in many cases, the lack of technology or lack of advanced and sophisticated technology. This is why at NGA.NET we are focused on exploiting technology to improve organizational workforce performance. Because we believe that talent management technology is fundamental to transforming organizational performance.

This focus on technology to transform organizational workforce performance is at the heart of everything we do. This is true whether we are talking about a very high level concept such as integrated talent management or at a low level tactical implementation of a feature that makes a huge impact on the performance of the organization.

Overcoming federal talent assessment challenges

A case in point is our new Quality Review Form capability within our federal Talent Assessment process management module. Until now, managing applicant pools for jobs in the federal service has been a time-consuming, laborious and error-prone process. In order to glean from the applicant pool only those eligible candidates with the best qualifications to perform the duties of the position, HR resources have been limited to manually documenting their findings on paper rating sheets and applicant lists and then later transferring these findings back into the automated talent acquisition system.

The Quality Review Form feature automates and streamlines the assessment of applicants through the review and rating process. eRecruit, NGA.NET’s talent acquisition system, maintains a dynamic association between decisions captured on the Quality Review Form and the applicant pool. From the Quality Review Form, the HR resource is able to validate an applicant’s self-certification and indicate:

• Qualification for a requested series-grade performance
• Veteran’s Preference eligibility
• ICTAP/CTAP eligibility
• Eligibility for special hiring authorities (e.g. VRA, Schedule A)
• Type of certificate or list on which an applicant may be referred.

Decisions captured on the Quality Review Form are automatically made available and displayed in the Applicant Pool. Through this dynamic association, HR resources can now easily filter the applicant pool on any of the quality review findings. Significant efficiencies are gained through being able to validate all grades and series, as well as conduct preference verification and methods of consideration from a single online form per applicant that flows through to filters in the applicant pool. This saves the HR specialist from having to do this offline and go back and forth multiple times per applicant. Upon completion of the Quality Review Process, the HR resource can filter the applicant pool to easily display a list of applicants who should be referred out on each certificate type for a specific series and grade.

Quality Review Form Benefits

Our new Quality Review Form feature within the Talent Assessment module delivers numerous benefits to federal HR organizations and is changing the way they perform talent assessment. These benefits include:

• HR work is conducted exclusively within the system rather than having to leverage both automated processes and external business processes that have to be repeated with the Talent Acquisition System
• HR and recruiting specialists save time and can now spend time on more strategic tasks
• Eliminates toggling back and forth between applicant pools multiple times per applicant
• Allows agencies to speed their hiring process
• Ensures correct documentation of the review process
• Speeds and improves preference verification process.

The new Quality Review Form speeds federal talent assessment and time-to-hire. It’s another example of NGA.NET innovation and a technology breakthrough that delivers real-world value to the federal HR community.

Joe Abusamra is Vice President, Product Marketing at NGA.NET