A Revolution in Public Personnel Administration: The Growth of Web-Based Recruitment and Selection Processes in the Federal Service

Abstract

As the movement toward greater decentralization of the federal recruitment and examination process gained momentum, new innovations emerged involving the use of Internet-based technologies which hold the promise of combining the advantages of centralization and coordination with the improved efficiency and timeliness that has been sought through decentralization. One of the largest efforts to leverage these new capabilities is the federal government's Recruitment One-Stop project organized by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Recruitment One-Stop can briefly be described as an attempt to both centralize many of the government's myriad recruitment processes and leverage current technologies available to advertise, recruit and fill positions throughout the government. This article provides an analysis of the federal government's efforts to implement automated recruitment processes and discusses the implications of implementing the Recruitment One-Stop project in a decentralized personnel environment.