How to Repair — and Improve — Government’s Talent Acquisition Pipeline
Tom Nelson began his career as an Army infantry officer. Upon retiring from the military after 20+ years of service, he co-founded Talos IO to provide the US government an information related capability to combat misinformation on social media. He is now Vice President at BMNT Inc.
“If we want to attract the brightest minds to public service, it’s time to meet the next generation where they are.”
In June of 2013, Edward Snowden leaked information about NSA programs that abruptly -- and severely -- broke Americans’ trust in their government. Two years later, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed that only six percent of Americans felt “very confident” in government agencies — on par with Americans’ trust in credit card companies.
Unsurprisingly, this also affected the rate at which generations of high school and college graduates viewed public service as an option. Graduates entering federal jobs between 2001 and 2017 saw a 75% drop.
There’s worse news. The distrust spurred by the Snowden leak was only the fuel to a fire that was already burning. In earlier decades, following the United States’ triumphant and moral role in the two World Wars, many young citizens viewed the military as a respected (and almost de facto) option for public service. In more recent years, highly contentious wars like Vietnam and high-casualty, drawn out skirmishes in the Middle East yielded a scarring disenchantment with the idea of military service. A 2021 Reagan National Defense Survey showed that only 56% of our citizens have trust in the military, with the highest rate of distrust among those under thirty. In other words, the promising leaders of tomorrow want nothing to do with us.
Blanketing all of these detractors is the fact that government agencies’ recruitment models have remained relatively unchanged. And as promising innovators graduate college and move on to the private sector, we will continue to see a troubling pattern: a siloed approach to problem-solving, in which the government loses the best minds to the private sector and academia — all of which are duplicating efforts to solve the same problems in their own vacuums.
What does this mean for the future of our government, and the Department of Defense, in particular? It means that we will continue to lose the best and the brightest, particularly to the technology behemoths who are building power that the government struggles to regulate. It means we will be slower to solve time-sensitive problems that affect not only our nation, but the world. It means the public view of government agencies will continue to decline, and innovation will be increasingly difficult to bring to fruition, allowing us to fall behind rival nations whose militaries will soon outpace and outsize our own.
These problems are both systemic and overwhelming, which is why it is so imperative that we make changes now in how we introduce the concept of public service to the next generation. And we must do so in a way that excites them. If we want to attract the best minds to public service, it’s time to meet the next generation where they are.
One organization has spent the past few years doing just this in a shockingly effective way. The Common Mission Project’s (CMP) delivers the “Hacking for'' programs (like Hacking for Defense, Hacking for Homeland Security, Hacking for Diplomacy), on behalf of the respective government agencies and in partnership with BMNT — and it is flourishing in universities across the country. The programs create a runway where students of all disciplines can solve real-world government problems. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of this program is that it bridges the gap between the private sector, government agencies, and academic institutions — breaking down silos, consolidating efforts, and leveraging the strengths of each.
The numbers speak volumes. Most recently, Georgetown students enrolled in “Hacking for Diplomacy” worked with the Department of State to tackle two problems specific to the agency. As part of the program’s model, each student team conducted more than 50 exploratory interviews across the department in order to first understand and validate the problem to be solved and then iterate on feasible solutions. The application of this unique entrepreneurial problem-solving approach exposes students to the real challenges facing our national security professionals and enables them to be part of the solution.
Of the eight students who completed this course, six decided to pursue careers with the Department of State. This program doesn’t only attract intelligent people to government jobs; it brings to our agencies people who deeply understand the inner workings of government and the complexity of the problems at hand. In doing so, it also changes the perception of what the government does and the people behind it. In other words, it brings something to the next generation that our costly marketing campaigns have not: inspiration. It is the most American of muses, having birthed every great speech, artwork, or invention that has made us who we are today.
In addition to its breadth of reach, the program has also extended its breadth of problem solving, tackling issues beyond national security such as climate change and regional economic challenges, among others. The “Hacking for” program attracts students from law schools, business schools, and departments such as computer science, economics, nursing, and international affairs — many of whom went on to either seek employment with government agencies or launch a company that produces solutions for the public and private sectors.
We are at a point where the choice is simple: we can either do the work of demonstrating the opportunities and value of serving in public departments in a way that appeals to the next generation, or we can allow our national security agencies to become the DMV at the cost of billions in subpar recruitment efforts. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel to achieve the former. By partnering with the Common Mission Project, our government can benefit from the program’s world class market research through deep discovery to generate more solutions faster — and solve hundreds of problems simultaneously, proliferating our resources exponentially.
This program has shown to clearly demonstrate that public service holds real opportunity, and encompasses so much more than joining the military. It attracts talent from a huge variety of educational backgrounds, bringing our agencies a strong diversity of thought and skill. It ferries talent to public offices who already, upon completion of the course, have intricate knowledge of agency landscapes and challenges. It humanizes our government and shatters the perception that our federal and state agencies are separate from the people they serve. And it provides an opportunity for government agencies to align their long-term goals with the different strengths brought forward from our nation’s top schools. All our agencies must do is say yes.