I’ve spent the past few weeks talking with students on college campuses as part of our effort to bring early career talent into federal service. It’s been awesome. In my old job as a venture capitalist, I used to tell anyone who was pessimistic about the future of our country to spend a day with me on Sand Hill Road (the home of many Silicon Valley venture firms) listening to entrepreneurs pitch their visions of the future. There is no way to be anything but optimistic when you hear the amazing inventiveness of brilliant founders. Of course, much of what they propose may never see the light of day, but their indefatigable spirit and belief in the future is intoxicating.

The same is true of our great universities. Spending time with students who are smart, dedicated and ambitious well beyond their years will quell any pessimism you have about the future of this great country of ours. Despite whatever challenges may have you thinking otherwise, the future is in great hands.

My goal on behalf of the federal government and the American taxpayer is simple – we need more of that patriotic talent to grace the halls of our federal offices.

What’s the problem?

Without mincing words, we have done a poor job of getting early career folks into government. Today, only 7% of the federal workforce is under the age of 30. In the overall U.S. workforce, 22% of employees are under 30. You don’t need a calculator to realize the problem – by a factor of more than 3:1, the federal workforce is under-indexed on early career talent.

At the same time, fully 44% of the federal workforce is over the age of 50 – I’m helping support that statistic personally! In the overall U.S. workforce, 33% of employees fall into this demographic. So, the federal workforce skews older by 11 percentage points than other employers. And this means that within a 5-10 year span, close to half of current federal employees could leave the workforce through retirement.

You may be a big government or a small government person, but I am pretty sure that not too many people are “no” government advocates – e.g., do you want to be able to receive your Social Security check, Medicare/Medicaid benefits, a passport, etc.? Yet, left unchecked that is the direction we are trending.

Even if the numbers weren’t so stark, I believe the trends are troublesome.

In a fast-changing world – particularly one in which technology plays an increasingly important role – we need diversity of experience in government. Like all other organizations, having employees who have grown up in a tech-first world bring fresh ideas and perspectives that enhance the ability of the government to deliver for the American people. And no, I am not saying that more experienced employees are not valuable, but only that a mix of experiences is a good thing.

So, how did we get here and what are we doing? I’m so
glad you asked.

First, marketing.

We haven’t shown up on campus (and social media) and told a compelling story. To be fair, that is not true of all agencies – clearly our armed services colleagues have long had college (and non-college) recruiting efforts and some agencies (witness what NASA is doing today) are heavily invested, but overall, we need to do more. We need to go where our target audience is; thus, why I do silly social media hits that give my kids endless fodder with which to make fun of me!

But it’s pretty simple when you think about it – it’s Marketing 101. If we don’t tell students that we exist, who we are, what opportunities we have and why we think they are exciting, then shame on us; we deserve that 7% number.

We are changing that. Last week we kicked off a 40-university tour (I get to visit a dozen of them personally) to tell our story.

Think about the work ahead. If you want to help return Americans to the moon, NASA needs talent. If you want to improve health care, look at HHS. If you want to work on agriculture, energy or diplomacy, there is a place for you in But, there’s more than that.

Yes, if you are a policy person, go do any of the above – your talents are needed. But that’s too limiting of a view as the federal government is the largest employer in the country – full stop. We run a 2 million strong massive organization.

So, in addition to policy jobs, every single job that exists in the private sector exists in spades in the government – human resources, finance, operations, project management, software development, IT services, law enforcement, health care professionals, customer support, procurement, facilities, security, etc. I’d be willing to bet that there is not a single private sector domain the federal government doesn’t cover.

Second, we also need to recognize that the way students today think about careers is different from what may have attracted prior generations to the federal government. I am certain that there are few, if any, 22-year-olds who think about a 40-year career in federal service (or any other employer); rather, they think about shorter increments of a few years and a career that likely involves lots of different experiences in roles and employers.

We need to embrace that.

My message to students has been really simple – we don’t need you to make a 40-year decision to be a federal employee. Instead, give it a shot for 2-3 years and see if you like it. I hope some will and may re-up for another stint, but for sure many will decide to seek their calling elsewhere. That’s fine; we don’t need to fight that or denigrate that. Any public service is better than none and getting a firsthand understanding of how government works will engender a sense of patriotism that we can’t replicate in any better way.

But everything is a two-way street.

If we ask for short-term service from our college graduates, then we owe them a career path in return. We have to demonstrate that the work they do in government will be a great training ground for whatever they choose to do next, especially if they elect to go to the private sector. That is why we have developed some bespoke programs such as Tech Force that explicitly partner with private sector companies to help participants with training and career development during their government tenure and culminate in private sector job fairs for those aspiring to that path. We have more to do here and will not shy away from partnering with the private sector.

In a perfect world, the federal government could act as a “finishing school” for raw, early career talent in all domains. These employees serve our country for 2-3 years, going great work on behalf of the American people, and in return they develop a set of skills that are marketable to all employers – private sector, public sector, non-profits, educational institutions, etc. Selfishly, I think our country would benefit enormously from a steady stream of new talent, even if their tenure in government were finite.

Third, if we are going to embrace a new model of shorter tenured stays in government, the environment in which these employees work also needs to change.

This is why you have seen us working hard to create a high-performance culture in government through regulatory changes – one in which poor performance is not tolerated, and truly outstanding performance is rewarded. No more grade inflation for all, but rather a place where those who consistently go above and beyond are differentiated from the many others who show up every day and do what is asked of them. We shouldn’t apologize for differentiating employees by performance – every organization needs both steady, reliable workers and a contingent of people who do more than asked, deliver more and higher quality work product and who are self-driven to deliver on our promises to the American taxpayer.

And we need to eliminate – as we are – non-merit-based obstacles to promoting our top performers. “Time in grade” (i.e., tenure) is a lazy substitute for merit. We shouldn’t care how long someone has sat in the seat but rather what they have actually accomplished in that role. Time-based gates to promotion dis-incent any organization’s top performers; our regulatory changes will fix that.

These changes will not only help us attract early career employees who see themselves as wanting to build a set of skills and be recognized for demonstrated performance, but they are good for all federal employees and ultimately for the American taxpayer. I hear time and again from existing top performers in government about the desire to be recognized and rewarded for their contributions and about our need to improve accountability for those who are not carrying their weight. We owe it to our teams to make these changes.

A word on non-college graduates in a post about college graduates.

“Early career” is not a euphemism for college graduates only; it is intended to encompass the full breath of individuals who are truly early in their career. This includes not only servicemembers who are early in their new civilian careers and importantly anyone – whether a college graduate or not – who is a career switcher or a career starter.

To that end – and consistent with our merit hiring goals – we have been going through all federal job classifications that have “college degree required” in their requirements to eliminate wherever possible those requirements. This is not an anti-college drive, but rather a recognition that skills and merit matter more than sheepskin. There are lots of ways to demonstrate skills directly versus relying on college degrees as a proxy. True there are some roles for which technical, educational experience is needed – e.g., if you want to become a nurse you probably do need a degree that confirms your successful completion of the core education-based requirements – but most jobs do not fall into that category. We shouldn’t exclude skilled candidates by using credentials that in many cases are not predictive of success in a given role.

So, give us a shot.

We are a 250-year-old experiment. And, as with all experiments, we need to test our hypotheses, analyze the results and course correct as we see fit. That is not a sign of failure, but rather the key harbinger of progress. That’s the scientific method in process.

If you care about this country and want to help us continue to experiment, give it a chance. Lend your talents in service of a future that 250 years later remains ever so bright.