This story was up to date Monday night with further feedback.
The Trump administration is increasing its pitch to recruit early-career job seekers, now trying to attach companies with much-needed expertise in job fields past the tech sector.
The Workplace of Personnel Administration on Monday launched a brand new “early-career talent network,” an internet portal the place people involved in public service can signal as much as obtain bulletins of job openings and upcoming hiring occasions from federal recruiters. The job community pertains particularly to youthful, much less skilled staff — a demographic that companies have struggled to recruit and retain for years.
OPM’s new expertise web site consolidates hyperlinks to varied sections of USAJOBS.gov, highlighting early-career job openings in “critical mission roles” throughout 5 job fields — human assets, finance, expertise, undertaking administration and contracting — a lot of which have confronted longstanding abilities shortages within the federal sector.
These 5 areas are “where we see current demand for early-career talent,” OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote Monday in a weblog publish. By way of the brand new expertise community, he defined that federal job seekers can keep knowledgeable of, specific curiosity in, and apply for openings, whereas companies can extra simply join with candidates at “the top of the funnel.”
“The ultimate goal here is very simple, but audacious: Make it really simple to match the best talent with the best opportunities,” Kupor mentioned. “The single-user mode of the past — where a single applicant applied to a single job opportunity as a single agency — doesn’t accomplish that goal. But a network model will.”
The recruitment effort comes after a yr of sweeping reductions throughout the federal workforce, which disproportionately affected youthful workers. Much less skilled staff had been focused as a part of the governmentwide probationary terminations the Trump administration undertook final yr.
“That sent almost all of the federal government’s recent employees heading for the doors and in turn made it hard for career advisors to recommend federal employment, if individuals could find themselves instantly jobless,” mentioned Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the College of Maryland’s college of public coverage.
Since President Donald Trump took workplace, the share of federal workers beneath age 30 has declined from about 9% in 2024 to about 8%, OPM’s workforce knowledge reveals. Partially, that features a lack of workers by means of probationary firings, in addition to the shuttering of the Presidential Administration Fellows program.
Kettl mentioned the brand new early-career expertise community is a constructive and much-needed effort, however added that the outsized lack of youthful workers over the past yr means companies could have a more durable time attracting and retaining that expertise going ahead. Contemplating different workforce overhauls, such because the finalization of the Schedule Coverage/Profession employment classification, Kettl argued there’s deep uncertainty within the long-term prospects of federal employment.
“It’s good to see OPM taking a strong role here,” Kettl mentioned. “However, the federal government has a long, long way to go in making federal employment attractive to younger workers again. Kupor’s announcement isn’t likely to counter the tsunami of bad news that has surrounded recruitment for federal positions over the last 14 months.”
Three of the areas OPM is concentrating on in its new recruitment pitch — contracting, HR and IT — are among the many federal job sequence hit the toughest by latest worker separations, in keeping with knowledge from OPM.
Practically 7,600 federal HR managers within the 0201 job sequence have separated from their positions, both voluntarily or involuntarily, since January 2025. Simply 928 workers had been employed right into a federal HR administration position in that very same time.
Contracting roles within the 1102 job sequence have confronted the separation of greater than 6,700 federal workers since January 2025, whereas companies made simply over 1,100 new hires.
And shut to twenty,200 federal workers left jobs within the tech fields OPM is now highlighting for early-career job candidates. The tech-related separations largely stem from the 2210 job sequence for IT managers, with over 18,000 worker separations in that class. In that very same time, companies made about 2,300 new IT hires.
“The federal government has not proven itself in the last 14 months to be a reliable and trustworthy employer,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) mentioned Monday. “I encourage the administration to think carefully about incentives and the message it sends to young people when it indiscriminately fires, maligns and maltreats its people, and what that means for the American people whom they would serve.”
Throughout a Home subcommittee listening to final week, Kupor pushed again in opposition to Democrats’ considerations of companies’ skills to ship a constructive message to early-career job seekers, contemplating the outsized impacts of the Trump administration’s pitch to scale back the dimensions of the federal workforce.
As an alternative, the OPM director argued that that job stability isn’t “the most compelling message” for early-career workers.
“We may disagree on this, but I think what young people want is to build their careers. They want to learn. They want to be surrounded by smart people. They want to be in an environment where they can actually progress and be recognized for that,” Kupor mentioned throughout the March 25 listening to. “That’s why the early-career push is exactly consistent with our push around performance management culture.”
By way of different recruitment efforts such because the “Tech Force” initiative, OPM has been encouraging youthful workers to hitch public service, not less than quickly. Kupor mentioned Tech Drive is already beginning to repay with “strong interest” from early-career job seekers.
“Building a strong pipeline of early-career talent is essential to the future of the federal workforce,” Kupor mentioned Monday. “We are making it easier for talented individuals to connect with meaningful careers in public service while helping agencies efficiently identify the talent they need to deliver results for the American people.”
However Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, questioned whether or not OPM’s new early-career expertise community will in the end obtain the specified final result.
“Our government will always need young, talented individuals to join the civil service, but this announcement runs headlong into problems of the current administration’s own making,” Stier mentioned. “The firing of thousands of probationary period employees last year, canceled internships and ongoing attempts to politicize the civil service have left a lasting impression on exactly the young workers the government is trying to recruit.”
If you want to contact this reporter about latest adjustments within the federal authorities, please e mail drew.friedman@federalnewsnetwork.com or attain out on Sign at drewfriedman.11
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