Why fired federal employees are ideal for companies with talent shortages

Tom Temin: And your company specializes in getting people jobs that have been laid off often in large mass layoffs in the private sector?

Raymond Lee: We are. Yeah, we’re helping those individuals who are impacted by a layoff transition into new jobs. So we’re taking them from the point of separation to ultimately helping them find their dream job.

Tom Temin: All right. And you are telling your acceptance clients, that is the target clients, that feds might be good people to look at. Tell us what gives you that conclusion.

Raymond Lee: Well, first and foremost, there’s transferable skills. I think about the IRS as an example. If you’re a forensics investigator for the IRS, there are skill sets that you’re demonstrating at the IRS that are transferable to the private sector. So maybe an accounting firm or other firms. So there are opportunities for federal workers to tap into private sector jobs.

Tom Temin: Right. And those in the public sector at the moment then should think beyond simply going to contractors, which is the typical way that federal people transfer their careers.

Raymond Lee: Yeah, you certainly can look at contractors, but if you consider even more broadly the private sector, there are a number of jobs that individuals may consider. The thing that I would say, though, if you’re sitting in a situation right now where you’re high level of uncertainty, you think your job could be eliminated, start looking at gaps of where you are today in your skill set and think about what are some additional skills, certifications that you can obtain today that will make you more marketable in the private sector.

Tom Temin: And what do you find the gaps tend to be for people leaving government or is it very industry specific?

Raymond Lee: Yeah, it is industry specific. But there are certifications that you may need to obtain that would allow you to get certain jobs. So it could be programing as an example or it could be something related to security or artificial intelligence. There’s a number of things that you may need to get in order to apply to those private sector jobs.

Tom Temin: Yeah, you might have been overseeing people from the private sector with those certifications when you were in the government and now you have to get that CISSP or whatever the case might be, to work for the private sector or for the government.

Raymond Lee: Exactly. Yeah.

Tom Temin: And what about the companies seeking to hire feds, knowing that it’s hard to find the right people nowadays? There’s 345 million people in the country, but usually only two or three you want. What do those companies need to know about, say, people that have might have been in the government for 25 years or 20 years?

Raymond Lee: Yeah. So it is interesting because working in the federal government, a lot of companies who interact with the federal government on a regular basis, having that experience where you know the inner workings of the government could be incredibly valuable to a private sector company in terms of their ability to kind of navigate the all the inner workings of the government. So having that experience would be incredibly valuable to a private sector company.

Tom Temin: And then there’s the other question that I hear from a lot of feds. I just talked to a millennial, who was 10 years at a midsize department, came to me for advice on what to do next. And they’re more than willing to work in the private sector, but they are interested in something that aligns with public values or public service values. For example, this person worked in the housing field and therefore has a different view of, say, housing operators than other people might have. And so would that align with their public sense of duty in the private sector? And how does a company convey that, ‘Yeah, we really are good people here?’

Raymond Lee: Yeah, I think there’s an opportunity for companies to really highlight their overall culture or their brand. Companies on the private sector typically do that in their career section of their website where they’ll show testimonial videos of current employees and why they like working for the company. And so that branding of the culture of the company is so important. That is also conveyed on social media. Companies have Facebook pages. They have pages on LinkedIn. So creating content where your employees are sharing the value of working for the employer, I think it’s a great way for those private sector companies to convey their brand to federal workers where culture is important.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Raymond Lee. He’s president of Careerminds, a company which helps people laid off from one industry find jobs in the same or different industry. And that’s the other question. People need to imagine themselves in terms of their skills, but not necessarily the industry they were in. They need to maybe understand what the real skills are that are not industry related. That is, if you’re good at research or if you’re good at human relations, or you’re good at some kind of skill that’s transferable, fair to say?

Raymond Lee: Absolutely. I think of it is as simple as doing a side-by-side comparison. If you take your federal government resume or CV and you have all of your accomplishments listed, the different agencies and departments you’ve worked in, and then you do a side-by-side comparison to a position that you’re interested in the private sector and then you’re literally comparing your skills as they sit today and the skills that are required in the new position. And then you’re mapping what are the transferable skills that you already have today and then aligning those to how you can take that experience from the public sector into private, but then also identifying where the gaps, and that’s where you’re going to have to make some investments in terms of sharpening your skills, you may need to take some online training like a LinkedIn learning class or something like that. So you really need to identify those today and build a roadmap to kind of close the gap so that you can market yourself to the private sector.

Tom Temin: And once you are a private sector company that has hired one or more feds, somebody coming out of the government, what can you do to ensure their success during that initial, what do they call it, onboarding or that initial period when someone comes on? That’s often when success or failure is determined, even the first few days, I think, in many cases.

Raymond Lee: Yeah, I think we call it the 30-60-90. When you start in a private sector job, you need to identify what is the outcome in the 30 days, 60 days and 90 days. And what I oftentimes advise candidates. So if you’re a public sector candidate, you’re interviewing for a job. Ask the company, what are your expectations of me in the first 30-60-90 days in terms of what needs to be done, right? Like you have the job of an accountant or an investigator in the public sector. You know what’s required in that job. But when you go to the private sector, there’s the job. But then there’s also what is the goal of me for the first 30-60-90 days? You identify that in the interview process and then when you get to work in that company, there’s going to be an orientation, there’s an onboarding, but then they’re going to expect you to hit the ground running. And if you know already what that 30-60-90 days is, then it shouldn’t surprise you when you start in a new position.

Tom Temin: And is it also probably important for people to maybe dispense with stereotypes that government people are process-oriented and clock watchers and people in the private sector are cutthroat and only care about profit above all else. None of those really apply in general, do they?

Raymond Lee: Well, I have to say, Tom, you’re hitting on a number of points. And depending on the company that you go to, if it’s a big organization, and depending on the industry, it could have a lot of the same sort of bureaucratic stereotypes that you would expect in the federal government. What I tell candidates is do your diligence, ask what’s it like working here? How are decisions made? And you can uncover a lot around what the company culture is. There’s no one culture on the private side. It’s not like they do everything very different. Sometimes companies run very similarly in terms of processes and it feels like it’s government red tape. But you have to find what is the company culture and sort of the environment that you think you thrive into and ask those questions when you’re going through the interview process because you certainly don’t want to be surprised when you start and you realize, ‘Holy cow, this is not exactly what I signed up for.’