Finding ideal candidates is an ongoing challenge for every HR department. Fortunatley, HR has tools at their disposal. One of those tools is often under-utilized. What's that tool you might ask? —Talent personas... think of them like a wanted poster for your ideal hire. If you follow the suggestions below and take the time to really map out what you’re looking for in a candidate, personas are likely to become one of your go-to HR tools.

One of the findings of the IPMA-HR HR2020 Task Force was that only 49% of public sector organizations believe recruiting directly supports the culture. If we set the bar a bit higher and ask if recruiting strongly supports the culture, only 11% say it does. If the recruitment process in your organization isn’t promoting the desired culture, what should you do?

The dreaded PIP. Though the acronym stands for Performance Improvement Plan, to many employees it might just as well mean “Panic-Inducing Punishment.”

The best employers know a PIP can place underperforming staff on a path to transform themselves into better employees. But, in practice, a PIP is too often a half-hearted attempt at giving somebody one last improbable chance to save their job. Sometimes, managers treat the PIP as little more than a mandatory step in the process of firing an employee.

Performance Improvement Plans have so much potential. How can a PIP revive a struggling employee’s job performance?

Every organization will have a unique employee onboarding process. Of course, the details will be partly dictated by administrative, IT, legal, and human resource needs. But, for your onboarding to be effective, it should also be guided by continuous employee feedback.

By bringing empathy into your employee performance reviews, your organization can improve the process for employees and managers alike. You can also increase the positive organizational outcomes that result from well-run, productive employee performance reviews.

NEOGOV was recently honored with inclusion in the GovTech 100, ELGL Choice Awards, and Apps Run the World HCM Top 500 Software Vendors.

Talk to the talent acquisition team at Tesla and they’ll tell you some jobs are hard to fill. If even cool corporations with rich compensation budgets find certain types of jobs hard to fill then what can the public sector do? Well don’t give up, there is an effective strategy.

As an HR professional, your personal brand is one of your most important assets. It’s a mix of who you are, what you’re known for, and how well you’ve proved what you can do. It’s partly the persona you craft and partly the reputation you earn.

Attracting Millennials to government work isn’t always easy, especially when there are higher-paying private sector positions with better benefits. Government may not be able to compete in these areas, but there are other ways you can build a next generation talent pipeline.

HR should be continuously improving its processes: performance management is no exception. Of course, that means that you’ll need some guidelines for reviewing your process. Here is a checklist for identifying where improvements are most needed.