Team sets sharp focus on civilian recruiting

  • Published
  • By Chuck Paone
  • 66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
HANSCOM AFB, Mass. --  After just three days of meetings and informal discussions, an ad hoc team of Electronic Systems Center officials has begun planning to beef up the center's civilian recruiting efforts.

"The incredible energy and enthusiasm demonstrated by people on this team shows just how important they believe this issue is," said Dr. Joseph Delaney, deputy director of Plans and Programs for the center and team leader. "I've even had a number of people who aren't currently on the team contact me and say they want to participate."

The team began the process by breaking out the key issues involved - including defining needs, identifying the potential employee types the center wishes to target, and developing new marketing products and approaches. From there, sub teams developed some short-, intermediate- and long-term goals, as well as rough budget estimates and timelines.

The team spent a lot of time discussing ESC's specific hiring needs, acknowledging up front that enhanced recruiting won't, by itself, solve the whole problem.

"What we're trying to focus on here is, how do we better prepare ourselves to attract talented, qualified people to ESC," said Sherry Farley, deputy director of Personnel and a key team member. "If we're prepared to do that, then we'll be ready to attack our staffing shortages, when the Air Force Personnel Center is able to work through existing backlogs and around some of the other obstacles that often prevent us from being able to fill key positions."

Several key leaders, including vice wing directors Tom Powis and Larry Coe, are on the team, but it also includes employees newly hired by the center.

Dr. Delaney listed some of them while pointing to the diverse pool of talent the center tries to draw upon. "We have Dr. Susan Arnold, who we hired from Air Force Research Laboratory, and at the same time we have Jim McMath, who had been working here as a contractor before accepting his civilian job; and we've got a young guy in Adam Correau, who we managed to hire out of college."

Yet while the conditions turned out right for acquiring each of those people, all team members agreed that other good candidates are being missed. Some missed opportunities result from a hiring process perceived as both complex and slow, but others stem from a lack of awareness on the part of job seekers.

That's the part the team is hoping to fix.

Team representatives will take their results to ESC senior leadership during next week's offsite meeting, putting forward a strategy and a message.

"The message is that we know we can't solve all the problems related to civilian hiring, but that we can do some things now - and that we've got people who are eager and excited about helping," Dr. Delaney said.