The Senior Executives Association released a survey on Oct. 28 detailing the challenges faced in recruiting new talent into the Senior Executive Service.

The survey, entitled "Recruiting Qualified Career Senior Leadership: How Are We Doing?" found that the SES is still having difficulty in filling vacancies with high quality candidates and that managers encouraging GS employees to ascend to SES jobs often find interest lacking.

The SEA surveyed nearly 500 SES and senior professionals across government to find concerns about their agencies' ability to fill jobs and believe recruitment is being hampered by everything from compensation, political gridlock to the difficulty in filing a job application online.

"Based on the results of this most recent SEA recruitment climate survey, it now appears the lack of support, coupled with the pervading negative political climate and the 'gotcha' mentality surrounding the federal workforce (and especially career Senior Executives and Senior Professionals), is increasingly casting a pall on the attractiveness of pursuing and serving in SES and SP positions by high-quality, potential internal and external job candidates," the report said.

More than 43 percent of respondents said that it was somewhat difficult to attract high quality candidates for SES vacancies, with another 24 percent saying it was very difficult get those candidates.

Forty-three percent also said that because of the dearth of highly qualified candidates, vacancies had remained unfilled within the past two years.

Salary seemed to be the biggest factor for respondents when asked why recruiting efforts had faced difficulty. Fifty-seven percent of respondents found insufficient compensation as affecting recruitment by a great extent, while a lack of sufficient pay increase from promotion to SES was also as a prominent contributing factor.

Punitive congressional bills and political climate were also cited as negative factors, leading the difficulty of the job, work-life balance, lack of authority and resources and the challenge of applying.

More than half of the respondents said they were taking special steps to improve recruitment, including management development, mentoring and succession programs. Overall, 49 percent of respondents said they felt they didn't have or weren't sure they had a good pipeline of talent that could fill SES positions, compared to 42 percent that were confident of their talent pools.

The report offered six recommendations to improve SES recruitment, including improving compensation and work-life balance, instituting better succession and mentoring programs and highlighting the positive aspects of SES service.

The SEA, a nonpartisan association of federal executives, said the recommendations could help address a continuing decline of talent that could hurt government efficiency in years to come.

"In short, the continued brain-drain of existing Senior Executives and Senior Professionals, combined with the increasing paucity of interest among high quality candidates to replace them, spells deepening, urgent trouble for the career leadership corps and the critical government programs and processes it manages."

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