The nation’s largest Hispanic college internship program joined forces with the Partnership for Public Service to promote new efforts to increase diversity in the federal work force at a time when the public service sector is gearing up for a wave of new job openings in the next two years.

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) National Internship Program and Partnership for Public Service on Monday hosted a congressional staff briefing on Capitol Hill to promote capitalizing on the currently untapped pool of student interns already on the job – but without a permanent employment offer in hand.

“The federal government can meet its coming ‘help wanted’ crisis and increase public service sector diversity at the same time if the public service sector follows the lead of the private sector in making federal internships a more effective pipeline to permanent federal employment,” HACU National Internship Program Executive Director William Gil said after the briefing.

Gil and Partnership for Public Service President and CEO Max Stier led the briefing in Washington, D.C., for representatives of 13 congressional offices and two congressional committees. The briefing was sponsored by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and U.S. Representative Tom Davis of Virginia.

The federal government will need to hire nearly 250,000 highly qualified new employees in the next two years to meet new homeland security challenges and an unprecedented wave of expected federal retirees. Yet, according to the Partnership for Public Service, the federal government is not capitalizing on the pool of highly qualified interns who are now working in the federal government, but who have not been offered permanent positions.

“Diversity goals have not been met, either,” said Gil, whose program has introduced more than 3,800 Hispanic college students to federal employment opportunities through paid internships in the public and private sectors since 1992.

Hispanics, the nation’s youngest and largest ethnic population, remain the only under-represented population group in the federal labor force, Gil said. Only 6.7 percent of the federal work force is Hispanic, compared to 11.9 percent of the non-government work force.

Although more students are choosing internships within the government each year, the federal government has largely failed to recruit from this valuable pool of talent for permanent positions, according to a new study by the Partnership for Public Service.

More than 46,000 students worked for the federal government in career-oriented internships over the last five years. However, on average, only 12 percent of these interns were recruited into permanent federal jobs. By contrast, approximately 35 percent of private sector interns accepted jobs with the companies for which they worked.

“The need to address this challenge has becomes urgent in the wake of reports that more than 50 percent of the current federal work force may be eligible to retire within just the next five years – including 70 percent of senior managers,” Gil said.

Earlier this year, HACU joined other national higher education associations, more than 300 colleges and universities, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and 38 other federal agencies in the Partnership for Public Service initiative,  “A Call to Serve: Leaders in Education Allied for Public Service.” The initiative will inform students abut federal employment opportunities, and promote the importance of a strong, diverse public service sector.

A recent Partnership poll showed that only one in six college-educated Americans expresses significant interest in federal employment. A lack of information was cited as a key factor. By contract, a recent survey of former interns in the HACU National Internship Program (HNIP) reports that most former interns are now considering federal service careers as a direct result of information they obtained through their HNIP experience.

As the nation’s largest Hispanic college internship program, HNIP each year introduces hundreds of highly qualified Hispanic higher education students to professional development opportunities and on-the-job experience through paid internships at participating federal agencies. Indeed, many former HNIP interns today are permanent federal employees.

“Interns are a valuable recruitment resource,” Gil said. “Efforts should be made to capitalize on internship programs such as HNIP, and to introduce new, government-wide procedures to ease the transition from intern to permanent employee.”

For more information, contact William Rafael Gil, Executive Director, HACU National Internship Program, at (202) 467-0893. Or visit www.hacu.net.

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