Amid budget cuts, pay freezes, and more potential hiring freezes, it can be easy for federal workers to feel despair about their future. But take heart. This is not the first government workers have faced career uncertainty.
Consider the case of Sharon. In 1981, she was about to graduate with a master’s degree in public administration and planned to join the federal government. She came from a family steeped in the tradition of public service; her father had worked in county government and her grandfather was a state employee during the New Deal era. Indeed, she was excited to become a public servant herself. “I sort of grew up with public with public service. It was highly regarded where I came from,” Sharon recalls. She had prepared herself with an internship for the local United Way.
The logical entry point for a new graduate student was the Presidential Management Internship (PMI) Program, the precursor to today’s Presidential Management Fellowship Program, which would take on a new batch of graduate students each June. One of President Reagan’s first actions, during Sharon’s last semester in school, was to disband the PMI Program and institute a federal hiring freeze. Sharon remembers that the 1980 election felt like a milestone pushing the country towards much more conservative policies, including lower taxes and smaller government. There was a sense that the world was permanently changing.
In the space of a few days, Sharon went from being a young person with a bright future in the civil service to being totally adrift. It affected everyone in her class differently. Some of her classmates tried to network their way out of the problem—joining associations, attending mixers, and introducing themselves to people who might be able to help them. Some refocused on the few agencies that were still hiring, like DOD in the wake of the Reagan defense spending increase. Others, like Sharon, started looking at other levels of government and other kinds of public service. She parlayed her internship at the United Way into a job, and then moved later to an advocacy organization for women in the federal government.
Sharon says that she can still remember how lost she felt: “I remember walking across the campus and I stopped on the bridge. I thought to myself, ‘I had a plan and now I just have no idea what I’m going to do.’”
But she reminded herself that other people were finding jobs and committed to believing that she could, too. “I sort of made up my mind that I was going to take the first train moving. If someone offered something, I was going to say yes, because moving was better than standing still,” she says.
She admits that it wasn’t a sophisticated analysis. It was based in part on chance and random connections through an internship, but that is the way many career paths end up working. She just knew she didn’t want to get trapped by fear of failure, because facing hard choices like this early in her career meant this was the time to be taking risks. It was hard, and it was harder for some than others. Sharon remembers a friend who wasted his talents for 18 months sorting mail, but eventually found career success.
This story doesn’t just have one happy ending, though. Twenty years later, in the middle of her career, Sharon moved from being a consultant to joining a federal agency. She confesses the fulfillment of her early dream was a surprise, but also immensely satisfying. “It was completely backwards how I became a fed and I still can’t believe it sometimes. It’s different, because you’re a completely different self now,” she says.
What’s Sharon advice to people facing the same challenges she did?
For starters, she recommends considering the military if you feel like every other option for public service is closed. “It will help later to get in the door to the civil service,” she notes. Next, be sure to join professional associations, and be sure to read the literature in your field and find the people working on problems that interest you. “People who care about public service and those problems are very interesting people.”
What’s more, Sharon suggests saying yes to every odd project you can. “I’m not an extrovert, but it’s even more important for people like that to get out there and be active. It doesn’t serve you well to be shy.”
But above all else, believe in yourself. “I really do believe that it’s worth it to have faith, because it will work out in the long run,” Sharon says. “I saw that with my friends.”
