Challenges in Public Sector's Tech Recruitment Highlight Systemic Inefficiencies

Recently, I posted on Twitter about my issues as a candidate in the Public Service staffing process, due to changes in the classification standard from CS to IT. The changes included a new educational standard that requires “graduation” rather than “completion of two years”:

Bit annoyed on the new educational standards for IT - as an existing term employee that has 2yrs completed (but not graduated) - I'm stuck in a limbo when it comes to indeterminate! The policy should have been revised from 1999 to reflect the new reality…#GCDigital

— ashar (@aahmed_ca) December 21, 2021

This presented challenges for me as I’m seeking indeterminate positions (fancy government speak for “job without a contract end date”) but don’t have my degree yet. Common sense would dictate that since I’m already an employee working for a government department, just not one with that status, I’d be grandfathered in to some degree and able to get it later, right? Not from my experience:

Must be odd for candidates who have already been qualified, reference checks done, etc, only to be told they are disqualified from the selection process.#GCDigital

— ashar (@aahmed_ca) December 22, 2021

Even if you’re in a pool and qualified, I found out the hard way that sometimes, new pool requirements can still disqualify you.

This is one big barrier to staffing in the public service that I’ve faced, as the public sector hiring system is already lengthy and overly administrative, adding more requirements makes the hiring process collectively worse, especially for juniors / new grads.

With the gap between public and private sector tech increasing, adding more restrictions to an already bureaucratic hiring process for IT personnel serves to only worsen the problem.

— ashar (@aahmed_ca) December 21, 2021

My perspective is that we should be pointing out the unintended consequences of these types of hiring requirements in order to help address the public sector’s long documented challenges in tech hiring and retention.

In my experience, these are all issues that frankly are not faced by private sector organizations as they are not constrained by strict educational requirements relating to hiring.

What do you think? Reach out to me on Twitter if you have any thoughts to share!

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this blog are purely my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of any organization.