Fixing Government Hiring

• Eliminate outdated civil service exams and create effective skills-based assessments instead.
• Modernize job classifications and write job postings in plain, compelling English.
• Allow individuals to apply for many jobs through a single posting.
• Allow multiple agencies to hire off of a single posting.
• Keep job postings open and allow agencies to hire from them over long periods.
• Give managers more discretion to hire qualified applicants.
• Raise pay in key roles facing chronic shortages, and align the full pay scale with market demands.
• Overhaul business processes and introduce an effective Applicant Tracking System to make the hiring process more efficient.
• Create performance management systems that connect employee goals to organizational goals, define competencies critical to jobs, provide for regular feedback, fairly evaluate employee contributions, elevate and reward effective employees, and swiftly improve or remove those who do not get results.
• Include employee performance in the context of annual salary increases, updating traditional seniority or step increases.
• Enable and evaluate variation within systems, so that different agencies can apply different approaches, and leaders can learn from those changes, and the system can improve over time.
• Use AI to review and improve classification systems, employee handbooks, hiring processes, and job listings. For more on the possibilities from AI for streamlining government, see Let’s Tidy Up State Government, The States Forum Journal, Summer 2025, by my colleague, Jennifer Pahlka.

So much of excellence in employment depends on qualities that are not visible in a test or on a resume. This does not make hiring arbitrary, but it does mean that managers often need discretion to consider data from interviews or reference calls that cannot be reduced to formulas. But that discretion can and must be channeled–by holding managers accountable for their results. In an agency where people are just punching the clock, a mid-level manager might get away with hiring somebody’s nephew. But if that manager needs to deliver on clear metrics, he will think twice. For this reason, streamlined hiring benefits from streamlined firing.

Each in their own way, all of the states above point to important pathways forward.

Improving these practices may differ state to state. Virtually everywhere, HR departments have discretion under current law to improve their hiring processes and technology, cutting the time to hire in the process. The impressive startup Work for America offers two case studies of the difference that a modern Applicant Tracking System can make. State legislatures can jumpstart this work by holding hearings to focus executives on what’s broken today and offering with very modest funding for reform.

More structural changes may require legislation, but even here, there is often surprising executive discretion. Rarely do laws require thousands of job classifications or turgid job descriptions. Even pay levels can be a policy call, though it may sit with a semi-independent board or commission rather than an executive agency. Civil service exams and termination procedures are in state statutes, and in some cases, in state constitutions.

In short: Effective legislators can drive change simply by asking important questions about why hiring in government is so hard. Modest funding may be helpful to drive some changes, while others are about courage more than money. Everything depends on raising the profile of an issue that few take seriously today.