Uncle Sam doesn't want you; government agencies are a haven for the mediocre because they don't try to get anybody better - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1990 by John Heilemann

Well, I say to Wat, arbitrary cut-off points are part of life, you know, it happens to everyone. "At 2:30 in the afternoon?" Oh.

It's tempting, of course, to dismiss the accounts of Pryor's interns as petty complaints. But they make a simple point: Recruitment is still not high priority at the agencies. When someonw who sits five floors bellow Director Newman is closing up shop at 2:30 p.m., the message is obviously not trickling down.

Lines of resistance

Confronted with this observation, OPM's response to Pryor was, essentially, give it time. Now, a year later, Marsha Frost, deputy chief for affirmative employment at OPM, tells me, "Those sorts of things are unlikely to happen today." As for the lack of information on campus--arguably more critical, since that's where most students will make their first career decisions--she points to the "College Hotline" 900-number and says things are much better. I decide to see for myself.

My first stop is OPM. It is, for one thing, more colorful than I had expected. The countless job listings and other notices that fill the glass cases on the walls are a rainbow of blue, yellow, pink, and green. Several bulleting boards are blanketed with the aesthetically pleasing pages of the "Career America" brochure, which pictures a remarkably racially balanced lot of young workers demonstrably enjoying their jobs. Their smiling faces contrast noticeably with those of the would-be civil servants scouring the job listings and squinting at the interactive computer terminals.

"How long have you been at this?" I ask a job seeker in his mid-20s. "Nine months," he says, "I'm about ready to give up. I keep sending out these damned applications and nothing ever comes back. I haven't had a single interview yet ... and I've got a college degree." Several others make similar comments; why will become clear to me later.

After waiting in line to talk to the woman behind the infamous information counter (who is pleasant and perfectly helpful), I return to jot down a few job listings. The array of postings--all in one huge display case--is staggering, running from autopsy assistant and air traffic controller through grievance analyst to phlebotomist and police officer. I make note of 10 openings at random and leave.

Next it's a whirlwind tour of the agencies--IRS, Commerce, Energy, Treasury. I quickly find that despit each department's different function, their personnel staffs seem to have been trained by the same manual. Its first rule, I surmise, must be "Treat all potential job applicants with complete indifference." As I lean over the front desk in the Treasury Department's personnel lobby, the young woman sitting behind it chats on the phone with her boyfriend. I shuffle my feet. Elsewhere in the office, a middle-management type experiments with a different sort of recruiting technique--aggressively flirting with his secretary. Fifteen minutes of throat-clearing later, I am informed that I should come back next week.