Ushering in an Era of Skills-Based Hiring
The Marines have adopted a pre-employment test of sorts, consisting of work samples, case studies and skills-based interviews, said Jing Deng, chief human capital officer for intelligence and cyber and workforce director for the service branch.
Traditional military operations specialties were bypassed by the successful Marine Corps Talent Acquisition Pilot, and the branch hired two candidates out of the Defense Department’s Cyber Sentinel Skills Challenge. The Marines learned that putting in the front-end work of categorizing skills on resumes into buckets allows hiring managers to better match applicants with job vacancies, Deng said.
The USAJOBS website deters job applicants because of how cumbersome it is, said Air Force CIO Venice Goodwine.
Instead, the military needs to embrace rapid hiring, because the average 80-day time to hire is “way too long,” Rathbun said. The Navy CIO wants to see a return to civil service tests, which were popular in the days when fewer people had college degrees. This time, they could be automated.
“Whether they have a piece of paper or not should not matter,” Rathbun said.
Automated civil service tests would reveal what a person is capable of heading into an interview, which would provide the hiring manager with a better sense of who they are. Similarly, the General Schedule levels, which are education-based, also need a “long overdue” rethink, Rathbun said.
