300 interviews, 50 tentative job offers and more: CIO Council shares initial hiring fair results

Two days and foot traffic by a full 1,864 job seekers ultimately led to 300 interviews and more than 50 tentative job offers.

These numbers, and more, are the preliminary results of the CIO Council’s federal tech and cyber jobs fair (a first such event for the government), which was held in November in Silver Spring, Maryland. The numbers, the CIO Council said in a blog post, “demonstrate effectiveness of CXO collaboration.”

More than 5,000 people applied to the 500 federal vacancies advertised. CIO.gov had record-breaking traffic around the time of the event — 72,000 site visits. And, importantly, all 31 participating agencies told the organizers afterward that they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the event.

“This event demonstrated the necessity of operating as a unified federal enterprise,” the blog post reads. “The federal-wide hiring event was an effective and cost efficient solution to attract diverse top talent to the public sector.”

So what comes next?

“As we move into 2018,” the blog post states, “the CIO Council plans to continue working on innovative and collaborative approaches to recruit the workforce of the future, including:

• Evaluating the feasibility of hosting additional events in the future.
• Identifying new ways to attract top talent with strong experience, training, and drive.
• Continuing close collaboration with the Chief Human Capital Officers Council.

In November, then-acting federal CIO Margie Graves told reporters that organizers would look for return on investment measured as the number of actual hires that come out of the event, agency feedback and more when deciding whether to expand this exercise beyond the pilot phase. The recent blog post indicates that agency feedback has been good, but it remains vague on true hiring numbers.

On the ground at the event in November, FedScoop heard mixed reviews — some attendees were disappointed by the fact that many agencies present weren’t hiring (some were under a hiring freeze at the time), while others were heartened to see the government trying out a new model.

Raymond Simmons from the Food and Drug Administration wasn’t hiring, but still saw value in the event.

“It’s a plus to get 2,500 people in one place,” he said at the time. “There’s a value to face-to-face.”