New Guidance on Promoting Internships in Federal Agencies
With the U.S. job market still relatively tight, the federal government is working to stand out as an employer of choice, especially for workers embarking on their careers. Now, the Biden Administration is taking new steps to promote internships, fellowships, and apprenticeships for students, recent college graduates, and early career employees after federal internship applications dropped substantially in recent years.
In a memo, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released new guidance on promoting internships and ways to effectively bring younger workers into the federal workforce. The guidance is also designed to boost the Biden Administration’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) goals.
According to OPM Director Kiran Ahuja and OMB Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller, internships are a “critical pathway to federal service” with internships being “mutually beneficial” for both interns and agencies. They write that interns often bring “different perspectives and create a stream of talented and diverse employees” while non-supervisory agency employees can benefit from “experience, training and mentoring new staff.” Internships are also seen as one of the “most impactful ways to rebuild the Federal Government’s lagging early career talent pipeline.”
Director Ahuja and Deputy Director Miller urge agencies to add more paid interns and reduce the number of unpaid internships, which they say are an “illusion of opportunity” for some and often exclude participants from minority and underserved communities.
There has been movement on the front toward paid internships. The White House itself started paying its interns in the fall of 2022 and in President Biden’s FY 2023 budget, agencies committed to hiring over 35,000 interns in the coming year.
The guidance urges agencies to consider compensation practices that are “fair and provide equal opportunity” whether it’s hourly compensation from the agency itself or other arrangements including stipends, travel reimbursements, or financial arrangements with third parties.
In addition, agencies are asked to do the following:
Ensure adequate staff is available to promote and administer internships, fellows, and apprentice programs
Raise awareness about these programs
Update supervisory training curriculum to “to address the long-term value proposition and business case for hiring interns, fellows, apprentices, and early Federal career employees”
Establish agency-wide method to convert eligible interns into full-time hires
Provide up-to-date data on internship and early hire programs
OPM also issued an additional guidance resource on internships, fellowships, apprenticeships and other programs to agencies.
The guidance is designed to align with the first priority of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), which is “Strengthening and Empowering the Federal Workforce.”
Agency executives themselves have reported some progress in hiring students and recent graduates. In the January edition of Issue of Merit, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) reported the results of a survey of agency Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs) on how they recruit, hire, and manage students and recent graduates.
Seventeen out of twenty CHCOs told MSPB that their agency is successful in hiring students and recent graduates and that the hiring of these individuals is part of the agency’s strategic planning. CHCOs also agreed that targeted hiring helps with candidate quality but not timeliness, and that a targeted, multi-tiered approach is best for recruitment efforts of students and recent graduates.
“Whether someone is entering the workforce for the first time or changing professions, these programs offer public servants an opportunity to demonstrate their talents and potential,” said OPM Director Ahuja on the new guidance. “By increasing opportunities and removing barriers to hiring interns, fellows, and apprentices, Federal agencies can boost their talent pipelines and better serve the American people.”