Open the Doors to the People You Need

Goal: Adopt skill-based hiring and develop training programs to build the staff you need.

Jon Rogers is Director of Strategic Workforce Planning at the Indiana Office of Technology (IOT), which oversees IT for the state’s executive branch agencies. Partnering with the Indiana Department of Workforce Development (DWD), IOT has adapted an existing trade apprenticeship program to train people interested in a career change to IT and recruit them into roles in state government.

Hire for Skills, not Credentials

Governments at all levels struggle to recruit workers, especially for IT jobs. But IOT is finding ways to expand the pool of eligible applicants. That makes it easier to make good hires.

Working with the Indiana State Personnel Department in 2019, IOT began removing degree requirements from most job requisitions. “We’ve discovered that through skills-based hiring, we’re getting a broader and more diverse candidate pool,” Rogers said. “It makes it easier for us to find people who can be good communicators and also have the tech practitioner abilities.”

“When you post a job and only have 10 candidates, you have to hope someone in those 10 will have that combination of skills,” he added. “When you’re getting 100 candidates per requisition, your odds obviously increase.” IOT is now exceeding the state average for responses per job posting.

When comparing candidates with varying combinations of education, experience and industry certifications, “it’s on us, the employers, to know not what sort of credentials we want to see, but what skills we want to have on that job,” Rogers said. “When the person enters on Day One, what do they need to know, and what can I train them to do on Day Two? If I can’t articulate the skills that I want out of each of those people, it’s on me.”

Train to Build the Workforce and Improve Lives

IOT isn’t just welcoming more diverse candidates. It’s also established a program that trains people who are interested in working in IT — and the public sector.

Borrowing the structure from DWD’s State Earn and Learn program, State Earn and Learn IT offers paid training alongside IOT teams and opportunities to earn industry IT and cybersecurity certifications. The program takes 12 to 14 months to complete.

“We were the first state agency to use that approach to, quite literally, reskill adults from any other occupation into information technology and security,” he explained. “I have someone who was a long-haul trucker who’s now doing penetration testing. I have a mechanic who was just promoted to be a Linux administrator.”

IOT evaluates candidates on their potential and commitment. “We want to find folks who have the right sort of transferrable skills into this career — the drive for public service, the dedication, the critical thinking, the communication,” Rogers said.

The program started with two trainees in 2020 and has graduated 42 so far. Of the graduates, 39 hold state staff positions and one is a contractor. “Our retention rate is 95%,” Rogers noted.

Looking forward, “my hope would be that other agencies adopt our model …, and that we can just find more and more of these wonderful folks who want to work [in government],” he said.

This article appeared in our guide, “Agencies of the Future: How to Break Down Barriers to Growth.” For more about how governments are embracing change, download it here:

Image by Coffee Bean from Pixabay