Dive Brief:
- The US federal hiring freeze is set to expire on April 21, 2017, reports Mike Causey of Federal News Radio. While many jobs were exempt from this, other government agencies were impacted when the freeze went into effect on January 22.
- Luckily, candidates who had received a job offer before the cutoff had confirmed start dates within 30 days. But this also left many candidates behind who had not successfully been given job offers by this time. It was also anticipated that some federal workers would retire during the roughly 90 day period.
- Causey advises that the hiring freeze was to allow the Office of Management and Budgets' new team the time to create a long-term plan to reduce the federal workforce and spending. However, it costs far more to reduce the workforce due to severance pay requirements.
Dive Insight:
If the federal hiring freeze is lifted in April, it will be good news for agencies that have been doing double-duty since January. It also signals recruiters to connect with any candidates who did not get job offers by the cut-off date, to see if they are still considering a government job.
Civilian companies may want to ramp up their efforts to attract some of this talent in the meantime, taking advantage of the freeze by offering temporary contracts to displaced federal workers. Now may be an opportune time to pursue approval as a federal contractor to work with agencies that will be hiring new workers in the spring and summer months.
