Hill Day 2004

by Will Kilburn
Monster Government Solutions

On April 7th, 160 Federal Human Capital workers and Administration officials attended Hill Day, an annual event designed to bring Federal Human Capital managers, staffers and other experts up to speed on the latest innovations from Monster Government Solutions.

“Monster is the leader in the HR field, both in the private sector and in the government realm,” said Rob Keast, Program Manager for Government Affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, which cosponsored the event. “A lot of people might be surprised at the role that Monster is playing with the USAJOBS Web site, so highlighting the success and the progress in that is helpful.”

While some of the attendees, like Mike Dovilla, Executive Director of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council at OPM, and Claire Gibbons, OPM’s Recruitment One-Stop Program Manager, were no doubt familiar with Monster’s advances in Federal hiring, for others it was their first in-depth look.

“Hill Day was an opportunity for folks on Capitol Hill--senators, congressmen, and their staffs--to come in and to see what Monster Government Solutions was all about,” said Dan DeMaioNewton, Director of Consulting Services and USAJOBS Program Manager. “What our products and services/suites are, to hear some of the success stories for what we’ve delivered in the past, as well as the vision we have for the future for how Monster and Monster Government Solutions are going to help improve Human Capital Management in the Federal marketplace.”

Speakers included Brent Pearson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Monster Government Solutions, who mapped out how Monster can help Federal employers at every step of the Performance Continuum; and Chief Monster Jeff Taylor, who repeated a previous Capitol Hill performance with a dramatic unfurling of a 20-plus page Federal job announcement.

“He said, ‘You want to know why the federal government has trouble attracting the best and brightest folks?’” recounted DeMaioNewton. “He lets it drop to the floor and roll probably 20 feet across the floor. And he said, ‘This is the reason.’”

Difficult enough, said Taylor, for the best and brightest to connect with the job that’s right for them-- and all too easy for qualified people to get lost in a flood of e-applications.

“As they go through [the job announcements] they say, ‘You know what, I give up here, it just doesn’t make any sense,’” said DeMaioNewton. “Or, they say, ‘You know what, I can’t figure this out, I might like this job, I’m going to apply for it and let the recruiter figure out if I’m qualified or not.’ So it puts an unfair burden on the recruiters, because they have to deal with a high percentage of unqualified applicants.”

Solving this problem, continued DeMaioNewton, has become a top-down priority in government.

“The president has set an agenda that’s much more results-oriented than any other past administration,” he said. “He’s put in place these measurement systems where the focus is on results and performance is going to be measured against a clearly articulated plan for what progress is being made.”

Getting those results depends heavily on streamlining the recruitment process, which is where the new USAJOBS Job Builder comes in.

“We’ve taken the job announcement and broken it up into jobseeker digestible sections,” explained DeMaioNewton. “The overview section is entirely new: At the top it shows the core details about the job, like the salary and the agency and the title, then right underneath that it has an agency marketing message, so the agencies can reinforce their branding, and then right underneath that there’s a one-paragraph job summary of what this job is about-- the most essential information a job seeker is looking for.”

Also of importance to attendees were Monster’s recent efforts to connect military veterans to Federal employers, including enhancements to USAJOBS and the core Monster site, and the March acquisition of Military Advantage Inc. and its Military.com Web site.