Strategic Recruiting, Staffing,
and Retention

Defense Telecommunications Service-Washington (DTS-W), Comprehensive Human Capital Solutions to Support Organizational Change: Staffing System Support

Project Description

Since the Spring of 1998, Booz Allen Hamilton provided support to the Defense Telecommunication Service-Washington (DTS-W) to deliver a series of human capital solutions to issues arising from an organizational re-structuring in response to budgetary pressures and changing occupational needs.

Intended or Achieved Results

One of these tasks involved evaluating DTS-W’s staffing strategy and providing a new tool for structuring the applicant interview process. This task was part of a larger Booz Allen led effort to evaluate and subsequently transform many of the positions within the organization to meet requirements for the recently developed OPM classification series for Information Technology workers (2210 series) as well as fit within the parameters of a new organizational structure designed to better support external customer needs and internal business processes. Position Descriptions were revised for workers from GS-7 to GS-15 levels to reflect the new demands of their jobs. Revisions affected the majority of the workforce at DTS-W and were based on a multi-method job analytic approach that involved subject matter expert interviews and archival data research.

With a need for new skill sets to support the position requirements of the 2210 occupational series, the Booz Allen team evaluated the effectiveness of selection strategies traditionally used in the organization. This evaluation revealed an unstructured approach to staffing that resulted in a wide variance of effective hiring decisions. Subsequent work focused on developing a structured approach to making staffing decisions by creating an interview manual, structured interview question guide, and interview training workshop delivered to all DTS-W staff with hiring discretion.

The structured interviews were specifically used to hire five employees to fill three position classes at a level of government requiring experienced and skilled workers. Selection to these positions was of an increased sensitivity because the applicant pool contained candidates both internal and external to the organization. The process for selecting these employees was free of complaint by applicants or current employees competing for the positions.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Assessment of Recruiting and Selection Practices

Project Description

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality contracted with Booz Allen to conduct an assessment of their recruiting and selection practices in an effort to better understand their current processes and how they may make improvements and ultimately enhance the effectiveness of the Agency’s recruitment and selection strategies.

Intended or Achieved Results

The assessment involved the development of a baseline of AHRQ’s current recruiting and selection practices, followed by a benchmarking study and best practice assessment.  Through these studies, five variables were identified as critical for effective and efficient functioning of an organizational recruitment system.  These variables included recruiting structure, process, sources, incentives, and measures.  Booz Allen conducted an analysis to reveal gaps between AHRQ's recruiting practices and ideal organizational recruiting practices against these five variables.

For each phase of the assessment, Booz Allen incorporated a combination of data collection and analysis methods, including documentation review, literature review, focus groups, and standard interviews.  Booz Allen team members applied their knowledge of best practices to data collection, analysis, and validation processes to ensure that the appropriate conclusions could be drawn.

At the conclusion of this engagement, Booz Allen prepared and submitted a comprehensive report and made recommendations for improvements. 

Internal Revenue Service, Develop and Implement Recruiting, Hiring, and Training (Onboarding) Strategy and Processes

Project Description

The Internal Revenue Service Large and Mid-Size Business (LMSB) Division is a 5,000 plus person organization that serves corporations and partnerships with assets greater than $10 million. LMSB Revenue Agents assist organizations to deal with complicated issues involving tax law and accounting principles and conduct business in an expanding global environment.  In FY03/04, IRS undertook a significant effort to improve compliance processes.  As part of this effort, LMSB was given funding and approval to hire, 2,500 technical employees (e.g., Revenue Agents) through FY05 to improve productivity. Given such dramatic and rapid growth, LMSB required a new approach to recruiting, hiring, and training (i.e., onboarding).

Intended or Achieved Results

Booz Allen was contracted to develop an innovative HR onboarding strategy and model to improve recruiting, hiring, and training of new LMSB technical employees.  Specifically, the onboarding strategy and model developed addressed LMSB’s ability to identify and attract a quality pool of employees utilizing innovative recruiting practices to supplement existing practices, evaluate, secure, and hire the most qualified candidates for open positions in the shortest period of time, and develop a training model to inject new technical employees into the LMSB exam process as soon as possible after hiring. The ultimate goal of the effort was twofold:

• To identify strategy to get the right people with the right skills working on the right cases at the right time
• Create a strategy to recruit and train new hires
• Provide recommendations that will provide significant and measurable results in less than one year, as well as longer term recommendations

To accomplish these goals, Booz Allen utilized qualitative methods including:

• Review and analysis of historical IRS recruiting, hiring, and training programs, practices, and alternatives (i.e., various recruiting channels and techniques, tracking mechanisms, hiring practices, and requisite competencies, and training design, length, and delivery)
• Interviews with LMSB executives, division representatives, and agents working on onboarding issues, and
• Identification and analysis of best practice recruiting, hiring, and training organizations. 

Outcomes of the effort focused on creating onboarding performance tracking mechanism, increasing volume of qualified candidates, improving applicant processing methods, improving new-hire training process. Among our accomplishments, we developed a recruiting strategy including sources, tracking mechanisms, and recruiter roles and responsibilities, as well as identify key skill areas and recommend an approach to streamline selection.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) Human Capital Support

Project Description

Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) Business Office hire 737 full time employees (FTE’s) by January 2005 and to design a world-class strategic human capital branch to service the agency.

The Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) Directorate under DHS was created by merging five agencies into one directorate. The IAIP mission is critical to the Department’s success in securing the Homeland – a fully staffed functional workforce is required to execute that mission. However, since its creation in March 2003, IAIP has not yet reached its full end strength of 737 FTE. Therefore, IAIP set targets to achieve its full FY 2004 personnel end strength (737 FTE) by January 31, 2005 and provide the organization with a fully operational human capital branch to service new hires and existing employees. In addition, IAIP needed to fully develop its human capital capability to service the organization’s workforce. As a result, DHS contracted with Booz Allen Hamilton to design a national campaign and implement a strategic human capital plan to meet these requirements.

Intended or Achieved Results

Booz Allen initially designed an IAIP hiring strategy to accomplish the goal of hiring 737 new employees and developed a Human Capital Plan to meet the strategic and operational workforce needs. To support this full complement of human capital services, Booz Allen developed a project plan with seven task teams to provide management oversight and support for the following:

• Recruiting Campaign: Determines strategic hiring needs; ensures diversity with recruitment and selection; determines job fairs, outreach to colleges, universities, military and governmental entities; develops and implements internet recruiting plan; plans logistics and support for IAIP recruiting events.
• Campaign Marketing and Communications: Determines strategic communication and branding for recruiting efforts; designs marketing, advertising and communications materials; produces video and broadcast products for mass media distribution.
• Campaign Monitoring and Reporting: Sets hiring targets, determines measures of effectiveness for the hiring strategy, tracks, analyzes, and reports hiring campaign progress for internal and external purposes; identifies trends or issues for resolve; designs a tracking tool to automate hiring process actions and reports; ensures steady progress in achieving hiring targets.
• Internal Communication and Relationship Management: Identifies organizational information and communication needs to support the hiring campaign; develops products (e.g., e-bulletins, newsletters, town halls, Intranet portals); facilitates s meetings with internal stakeholders.
• Hiring Process Design and Improvement: Baselines the hiring process, identifies bottlenecks and inefficiencies, determines process areas for improvement, implements and communicates improvements.
• Strategic Human Capital Development: Develops strategic human capital plan to implement strategic and operational programs and efforts to support the organization’s workforce needs (e.g., workforce planning, competencies, performance management, training and development, work-life balance initiatives, incentives and rewards).
• Tactical Human Capital Execution: Assists the Human Capital office with effective operations (e.g., identifies emerging operational issues; assesses operational needs and recommends actions for improvement; conducts best practices for Human Capital office design and operations; assesses internal office design and operations; recommends actions for improvement.

Results include:

• 353 new hires on board as of August 2004
• More than 7,000 applicants have applied for IAIP positions
• More than 800 resumes have been received at career fairs/events
• IAIP managers now have access to an electronic candidate pool of more than 5,000 resumes (the majority of candidates in the pool hold clearances including TS/SCI)
• The monthly candidate pipeline has more than tripled from April 2004 to August 2004