Study urges agencies to choose wisely from social networking menu

Agencies should embrace technology in recruiting new employees, but they also need to choose the appropriate tools for their target audience and prepare for the effects of more transparency, according to a new report from Harvard University and human resources observers.

"If you're a federal agency, and you're putting your toe in, you have to make sure you have the right capabilities," said John Palguta, vice president for policy at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. "You'd have to know, 'What do we put on Twitter, and what do we want to do?' You have to be knowledgeable."

Stephen Ander, a public policy student at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government found that federal agencies lagged far behind private companies when it comes to using social networking technology.

Ander studied the recruiting practices of the 50 top-ranked agencies according to the Partnership for Public Service's 2007 Best Places to Work and the 50 top-ranked private companies in Fortune Magazine's 2009 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Private sector firms were more likely to have official pages on Facebook and Twitter, both social networking sites. Nearly half of the employees working at the top 50 private firms had LinkedIn profiles, while only 5 percent of the workforce at the top 50 federal agencies were members of the popular career networking site LinkedIn, Ander found. As a result, young workers are more likely to network with private sector employees, and "their network will under-represent the presence of federal government jobs in the marketplace," Ander wrote in the report.

The Merit Systems Protection Board has urged agencies to use the recession and the greater interest in federal employment as an opportunity to upgrade their online presence and to increase the use of social networking technology to reach out to and stay in touch with potential applicants who expect more frequent contact.

Ander also noted that the government might not be making the best use of its existing Web presence. Monster.com, which maintains USAJobs.gov, does not include a link to USAJobs.gov on its own Website, which has significantly higher traffic. In addition, help wanted listings on USAJobs do not show up automatically on Monster.com. If the Office of Personnel Management renews its contract with Monster, it should require reciprocal posting of USAJobs listings on Monster.com, Ander said.

Palguta said expanding the use of online social networking can be a good way for agencies to delegate responsibilities to younger workers who are more familiar with technology trends and are comfortable with the style and tone of such sites. At the Partnership, former interns who have remained at the organization as permanent employees recruit their own replacements, because they know where to find good candidates and how to attract them, he said.

While a larger online presence might help applicants find federal jobs, Palguta cautioned that the greater transparency the Web offers could provide applicants with more information about salaries and job duties that they can use to negotiate during the hiring process.

Such systems already are cropping up online. Asbury Park Press runs a free and publicly accessible federal salary database. On Wednesday, MeriTalk and the Federal Managers Association launched a self-assessment tool to help federal employees covered by the General Schedule pay scale estimate raises. FMA President Darryl Perkinson praised the system, dubbed MeritMore, as a valuable resource to help employees understand how supervisors evaluate their performance.

Palguta said such tools were useful for applicants and employees as they prepared for interviews and performance evaluations.

"A manager has to really be on top of things, and don't assume you have an edge, because you have information the employee or job applicant doesn't have," he warned. "They could know more than you."