Recently I had the pleasure of attending the International City/County Manager’s Association (ICMA) 100^th anniversary celebration in North Carolina. There were many informational sessions and as an MPA student the knowledge I learned there was invaluable.

The last session I attended was called “The Future of the Workplace” and it was filled with city, county, and town managers that were interested in discussing recruiting the younger generation to work for the government. It is imperative that public administrators reach out to recruit talented, eager, and younger individuals to work for the government. Approximately 60% of the 1.9 million federal employees will have to retire by 2020 (General Accounting Office, 2013) and when they do, there will be a significant lack of educated, trained, and experienced administrative professionals to take their place. Generation Y and Millennials (those born after 1980) currently make up only 5% of the public sector workforce.

This problem is even more substantial in state and local governments. It was interesting for me to hear many of the managers at the ICMA lament about a dearth of available talent. Some mentioned it was difficult to recruit younger employees because they are not able to pay as highly as many private sector positions. While it is true that many local governments are not able to provide attractive financial benefits it is important to note that money is not the main determinant for Generation Y’ers and Millennials in choosing a job.

In fact, in a recent survey conducted by ICMA, when new government employees were asked “Why did you decide to seek a career in local government?” 58.1% of them replied “I had a desire to serve the public/make a difference in the community.” There were many ideas thrown out at the session and we ran out of time before I got to ask the managers in the room: How many of you are actively recruiting Master of Public Administration (MPA) or Masters of Public Policy (MPP) students in your community?

There are tens of thousands MPA and MPP students all across the nation-these students are obviously interested in working for the government. We MPA/MPP students willingly invest time and money in order to get our degree so that we may either begin or advance a career in government. All of us have spent countless hours conducting research that can help local communities. However, upon graduation many of us are unable to find government positions that will allow us to use those skills.

There is an untapped pool of Local Government talent just waiting to be recruited and city/county managers can do just that by:

1)    Developing relationships with Directors of MPA and MPP programs so they can refer talented students

2)    Attend or hold a career fair at large universities. I have been to many job fairs and I can’t remember ever seeing a representative from local government at one.

3)    If you can find the time try teaching one class at a university. Not only will you be able to impart your hard-earned knowledge but you will get to know your students and identify which ones you want working with you before a position even opens up at your agency.

4)    If you can’t commit to teaching, how about being a guest speaker at a school or even just during one class? In my program we have had various guest speakers and each of them have exposed us to working with the government in capacities that we would never have known about if they hadn’t have told us.

Sometimes it appears that governmental agencies do not aggressively recruit for talent-they have the mindset that employees will find them and the result is acquiring public employees who work for the government because they were unable to find jobs in the private sector. This leads to subpar employees who are not passionate about their work and that attitude seeps into the organization. If you are looking for eager, talented, passionate, young, skilled, and knowledgeable employees for your organization I urge you to connect with your local colleges and universities and seek out their MPA/MPP students. We are out there…we are looking for you…it’s time for you to look for us as well.