Government Leaders: How To Get Top Tech Talent When You’re Competing With Silicon Valley

It’s proven to be extremely challenging for government agencies to maintain top talent in the technology field. It’s very difficult for government to convince the talent pool they’ve got something to offer, when you’re competing with ballooning salary offers and well-known brands. However, the good news is that with the correct strategy, it is possible for government to attract those A-level candidates. The reality is government often has the most interesting problems that need to be solved — it’s the perception that’s stopping people. How can government leaders start attracting more top talent to walk through their doors? Here are some cool ways to do it.

Define the vision, strategy, and tactics

Ensure you can clearly articulate your vision and outline what steps are required to get there — if you want to be viewed as an innovation-driven organization, you must have an image that reflects that. You need to have a specific end goal that can be directly tied back to the strategy and tactics outlined in your plan.  Always focus on the outcomes over the outputs and don’t waste your time focusing on vanity metrics that don’t matter. For example, feeling satisfied with a certain number of job applicants or new hires doesn't necessarily translate into any concrete impact. Instead, focus on the things with key outcomes — for example, driving measurable adoption of Lean or Agile business management practices within the organization.

Create the conditions for success

It’s important that as a whole, the organization demonstrates that hiring top technological talent is a priority. Agencies should identify and empower executive champions for this role, and hold these individuals accountable for the results. By assigning a qualified owner to recruitment and talent acquisition, it becomes easier to identify gaps in leadership and strategically tackle these short-falls. Ideally, the best candidates for this role will be people with the skills you are hiring for. Establish roles and responsibilities that will create an optimal environment to attract top talent, and engage key stakeholders whenever possible. The functions should not serve as final decision-makers or gatekeepers but work to serve the programs and their missions. Additionally, you need to remove as many barriers as possible and prepare people to work differently. Introducing new tools and methodologies is one of the main reasons any agency wants to attract innovative talent, so you need to ensure you can equip your team with the tools they need to be successful.

Use all the available tools

The most effective strategies will include short, medium, and long-term approaches. Short-term approaches will often involve quick contributions from outsiders, while medium-term initiatives bring the benefit of speed and flexibility. Long-term initiatives are those that permanently change the culture and makeup of the agency over time. Agencies have a range of options for interacting with the private sector, which can include competitions, challenges, and idea jams. Additionally, they have numerous options to engage on a limited-term basis. Recruiting and hiring is a critical component for government’s modernization. It’s equally important that there are investments made in workforce development. The problems that government agencies get to work on are very interesting, but there must be a plan in place to communicate that to ideal applicants.  Stay tuned for when we talk about how to keep them once you get them! Subscribe to receive a monthly roundup of all things tech & government → https://buff.ly/2QSGxBC