By Brett Rowland
The Center Square

A former top government official said the federal government has a rare chance to rethink how it hires and trains top talent amid an ongoing hiring freeze.

“From a workforce standpoint, we have seen the substantial shrinking of the federal workforce, and you’ve got a hiring freeze in place at the same time, you’ve got incredible initiatives toward modernization of technology, improving processes, trying to really focus on delivery,” former General Services Administration Administrator Emily Murphy told The Center Square. “Which makes it a great time to be looking at how to get the most out of the workforce you have? How do you upskill them? How do you make sure that they’re up for the challenges and that they are up to speed on the latest technologies?”

President Donald Trump has made better hiring practices central to his second administration. He said that he wants the federal government to hire top talent. On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order titled “Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service.”

“By significantly improving hiring principles and practices, Americans will receive the Federal resources and services they deserve from the highest-skilled Federal workforce in the world,” Trump wrote in the order.

However, much of Trump’s early months of his second term has included legal fights with unions over his plans to overhaul federal labor practices. In March, Trump stripped unions representing federal employees of their collective bargaining rights under the auspices of national security. Some of those legal battles continue.

The federal government’s hiring challenges predate Trump. Strategic human capital management has been on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list for over a decade.

“Strategic human capital management, specifically the federal government’s efforts to address government-wide and agency specific skills gaps, has been on GAO’s High-Risk List since 2001,” GAO noted in 2023. “These gaps impede the government from achieving desired results. A skills gap may consist of an insufficient number of individuals, individuals without the appropriate skills, abilities, or behaviors to perform the work successfully; or both. OPM has identified skills gaps in government-wide occupations in fields such as human resources, cybersecurity, and acquisition.”

Justin Vianello, CEO of Florida-based SkillStorm, says his firm’s ability to custom-build tech teams is what the government needs. His vision goes beyond the government. Vianello wants America to build its own top talent here in the U.S.

“If you look at what’s happening in terms of offshoring and outsourcing, how are we going to make sure that we retain domestic talent in the U.S.? How are we going to make sure that we are creating the next generation of cybersecurity analysts where we know we have 500,000 open cybersecurity roles as of January 2025? How are we going to create the next generation of AI specialists and lead the charge in AI, if we are not creating domestic tech talent here in the U.S.?”

SkillStorm trains and certifies professionals in high-demand skills. Vianello and his team find the people, pay them during the training process and get them ready to work. Then the company bills hourly to recoup its costs.

“We create net new talent,” Vianello told The Center Square. “So we go to transitioning military, we go to veterans, we go to college graduates, we’re going to people who are looking at career changes, and we say, here’s an opportunity to become a technologist. Go through this intense program for 10 weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks, depending on the technology and the speciality. We’re going to pay you during that training, because we want you to focus on being the best technologist you can be. Then you’re going to get certified, then deployed. We’re going to take all the risk up front.”

Vianello said the military provides great candidates.

“That’s why we have such a strong focus on the military. These are people who served,” he said. “These are people who want to continue to serve.”

Murphy, who serves on Skillstorm’s board, said working with veterans makes sense.

“You’re recruiting a lot of people who have already proven that they know how to serve and that they’re mission-driven, and incredibly capable of handling very complex challenges,” she said.