Interested in getting into government work?

The government has made several recent pushes to lure jobseekers away from the private sector. In New York, for one, state agencies are getting ready to hire up to 500 IT consultants from the private sector. The new hires will be appointed to posts for a maximum of 60-month terms, although they may become eligible for permanent status during that time. This will likely be a big pull for contract consultants who work on an hourly basis or project to project ("They are like our pimps, and we are like technical whores," says one contract worker with an active imagination). But for salaried, private-sector consultants who receive higher salaries plus financial incentives and benefits, government jobs will be a harder sell.

The federal government is also taking a giant leap forward to make itself a ripe target for job seekers. The Washington Post reported yesterday that President Obama will call on federal agencies to overhaul the arduous hiring process for government workers, in an effort to win over some applicants who might otherwise look solely to the private sector. The new process is expected to reduce the hiring process by 50%; some government jobs can take up to 200 days to process, and the new procedure will aim to cut hiring time down to about 80 days. Described as a "19th-century hiring system," this overhaul, which is expected to take about six months to implement, seems like a more-than-welcome change. As Phil Stott wrote yesterday, the areas in government projected to hire most by 2012 are medical and public health; security and protection; compliance and enforcement; legal; and administration, program management.