My father’s advice: How to play the personnel game

On Sunday I’ll turn 65 (oh my!), so I thought it fitting to post a letter my dad wrote to me. In 1975, I was a college graduate living in northeast Atlanta and working downtown as a secretary in the Administration on Aging. I saw the job as my entry into the federal government, while updating my resume (aka 171 form – now obsolete) with plans to move into a professional “series”. Evidently I sent the form to my dad for his opinion because recently I came across his reply, which I now vaguely remember. It contains the sort of fatherly advice he offered freely throughout my career. I’m showing it off now as another example of Harry’s generosity-driven letters – and how he felt about the bureaucracy. By the way, his general advice is not obsolete, so feel free to pass it around.


Tue. 21 Oct

Dear Elaine,

I’ve looked over your form 171 closely, and I really think you should do the whole thing over. From the point of view of an employer who interviews dozens of people each year for a variety of clerical and professional jobs, I can only tell you how I feel about these applications … but I can also say that I’ve spoken to many other supervisors and all have expressed the same sentiments.

Briefly, then: 1. A form 171 that has obviously been doctored up to reflect your current status is looked upon as a “lazy man’s (woman’s) application.” A freshly made-out form, on the other hand, reflects a serious desire to impress a prospective employer, and he is, therefore, more inclined to take it seriously. 2. In many ways, the government application form is something of a game; both the applicant and the employer know that it contains exaggerations, that it stretches the truth to some extent in order to make the applicant’s previous experience seem more important than it, in fact, was, and that it presents the applicant as a prodigy of virtue whose talents are precisely tailored to the job at issue.

The question, then, is how well do you play the game? If you play it well, it reflects the fact that you displayed a considerable degree of advance preparation and self-discipline in making yourself a saleable commodity. So – let’s face it, the 171 is what you’re judged by, since no employer is a mind-reader and no one can evaluate your attributes by looking into your eyes. Of course, the interview is an essential part of the judging process, but you may never reach the interview stage if your 171 doesn’t impress both the personnel office and the prospective employer.

Dad hand-wrote this eight-page letter.

Now, as to your conduct on the job, I know you have received conflicting reports or opinions, particularly as regards your chances for advancement into professional responsibilities and higher grades. Well, no matter what others may tell you, believe me when I say that such things as a willingness to work, an openly exhibited (cheerful) desire to master all aspects of your job, and an obvious ability to accept and discharge more demanding duties and responsibilities – all these are very rare indeed, and when an employer encounters these things he is quick to note and equally quick to reward. I can cite plenty of cases where people moved from clerical to professional fields because their performance impressed their supervisors.

So – ask yourself, have you displayed those characteristics? When you’re not busy, do you ask around to see if you can help anyone else? Do you seek out work, or do you wait till it’s handed to you? Have you told your supervisor(s) that you are willing to do more and want more responsibilities? And do you actively try to learn everything there is to know about your office, its larger roles and missions, how it fits into the overall organization, what it’s supposed to produce and what it’s actually producing? Can you discuss intelligently what problems your boss and his boss are wrestling with or worried about – and can you make any suggestions to them as to how to improve their organization and their operations?

My own feeling about people who work for me is that it takes them 6 to 8 months – and then, if they don’t come to me with questions to show they’re thinking and/or suggestions that indicate they want to use their talents to help me, well, they’re missing the boat. And that’s the real difference between clerical and professional personnel – between a secretary who will always be a secretary and a secretary who is going to advance into the professional levels. The difference is how much thought and effort you devote to your specific job and your entire organizational efforts.

Now, having said all that, I still think it’s a good idea to keep your applications circulating and your senses tuned to better possibilities. That’s why you need to fill out a new application form and send it out to all the likely places. You should ask your personnel office for all HEW Job Announcements for which you (not they) think you’re qualified so that you can submit an application for each. You should ask the Atlanta office of the Civil Service Commission for Job Announcements in other agencies, and apply for them as well. But, while you’re doing all that, you should be doing everything you can to convince your boss that you’re the smartest and hardest working person he ever had and that if and when you leave he’s going to be the sorriest guy in the world for not hanging on to you. And the way to do that is to take on responsibilities and do so many things that they’ll need two people to replace you.

As to the application itself, here are a few random thoughts: 1. Remember, personnel people are triggered by certain key words and phrases, so they should be used (judiciously) in all job descriptions. These things also impress supervisors or employers. For example: you don’t simply type letters, you compose correspondence; you don’t simply type reports, you draft reports, you provide editorial assistance in the final preparation of reports on (what? the problems of the aging? the use and abuse of dangerous drugs? the love life of the lemming?); you don’t simply research pertinent material relevant to special projects, you exercise initiative in researching pertinent material (where? libraries?, other organizations in HEW?, other agencies?, state and local governmental facilities?, industrial and academic resources?, etc.?), you select the most significant material for inclusion in the report and you integrate it into the substance of the report; and the “special projects” are what? – things such as the absorption of college graduates into the establishment? or whatever!

In other words, no matter how simple or trivial your job – any job – may have seemed to you, you have to write it up as though it were an important and essential operation without which the office or the organization could not have fulfilled its mission. What you’re doing, in effect, is demonstrating to a prospective employer that you are a unique and precious individual (which you are, of course) who is capable of making a real contribution and whose presence in his office will be a valuable addition to his staff. As I see it, your present job should be expanded to 3 or 4 times its present length (which means it must be continued on a separate sheet); and that applies to all the jobs you list. Even your Kelly Girl job can be expanded to indicate what kind of organizations you worked for and how much you did for them and how valuable the experience was in preparing you to do an outstanding job for whoever hires you next.

I just can’t emphasize strongly enough how important I think all these things are in your application form; I honestly believe they often make the difference between being hired or not.

If all this sounds a little pompous to you, blame it on my bureaucratic conditioning. I have been fighting against the “bureaucratic mentality” all my life – but from within – so it’s poetic justice that I should be a victim of the system, after all.

Anyway, bear this in mind, too. When I said the government application form is a game we play, I meant it; unfortunately, it’s the only way to get in. Once in, however, the game becomes more subtle; the same sort of garbage continues to go on between the employee and the personnel office (otherwise, personnel people would have very little to do), but between the employee and his supervisor that part of the game is meaningless. The objective, as I said before, is to take on all the duties and responsibilities you can get, regardless of whether they’re spelled out in your job description or not; then, some day, when the personnel officer/position classifier comes around to do a desk audit of your job, she’ll be so amazed at the extent of your activities that she’ll classify your job at a higher grade, which will astonish your boss, as well. At least, that’s the way it should work if your personnel office is honest – which may be too much to expect. Still, the system does work and if you persevere, you can beat them at their own game.

In the interests of speed, I’m sending this letter out right away so that you can get started on a new application. By the time you get to the references, I’ll have Jenny Klein’s and Nora Levsky’s job titles for you to fill in, as well. And, as soon as you complete it (but don’t sign it), and return it, I’ll make a few dozen copies for you. When you send it to me, use one of these address labels (enclosed).

Love,
Y.E.L.D. [Your Ever Loving Dad]

P.S. Thought you might like to see an article I wrote, to be published some time in December, I think.

Your Dad

Copyright 2016, Elaine Blackman

Harry sounds off on government in letters to Post

It stands to reason that retirees have more time to pursue other interests. In Harry’s case, he loved to express his opinions and share his knowledge through writing. So, if you thought you couldn’t learn any more about him, check out these letters I found to The Washington Post – two to journalist David Broder and one to the Editor. They reveal more bits of Harry’s background – and his views on government.



21 July 1993

Dear Mr. Broder:

I have long admired your column, your writing and your thinking. You set the standard for political reporters or commentators to emulate throughout the world of journalism. Your column in this morning’s Washington Post (7/21/93) is a case in point. As you frequently do, you have hit precisely the right note in describing the Vice President’s efforts to institute a sea change in the way the government operates. A note of cautious optimism.

You note that some of the people helping Al Gore in this project are relatively young and inexperienced, with, presumably, inadequate understanding of how the government works or how to effect changes. I have often observed over the years just how these governmental study programs get their staffs. I worked in the Pentagon for 36 years, the last 25 of which was in a position of considerable responsibility. During those years, I witnessed countless commissions and blue ribbon panels established to study and improve the way the government operates. All of them were headed by distinguished individuals; all of them were staffed mainly by people assigned involuntarily by the various government agencies, or through personal contacts by young volunteers. The volunteers were invariably enthusiastic and uninformed. The assignees were usually people whom their respective agencies were happy to farm out. Almost all the studies thus produced were uninspired and deserved the chance to gather dust on hidden shelves.

What is true of all those study groups is that none of them ever seemed to tap the vast pool of talent represented by the recently retired career government employees. I am talking about the middle management people who rose to their positions through the ranks, so to speak, who know and understand the intricacies of federal organizational arrangements, who know where the levers are and where the roadblocks are, and who know when to move them and when to circumvent them.

Don’t misunderstand. I am not volunteering my services, but I personally know dozens of retirees from the middle management levels of the government who could make a truly constructive contribution to Al Gore’s study effort. And I’m sure there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, more who would happily place their knowledge and experience at the Vice President’s disposal. In all probability, OPM [Office of Personnel Management] could surely give Mr. Gore a short list of outstanding recently retired individuals from each of the federal agencies, from among whom he could choose a few who could bring their accumulated wisdom to bear on the problems being studied. If you think this suggestion is worthy, you might mention it to Mr. Gore or one of his key people. (No need to credit me.)

All that aside, I want to thank you for all those great columns you produce, for the depth and the breadth of the information you impart to your readers, and for the pleasure you give this reader by the quality of your writing.


16 March 1994

Dear Mr. Broder:

Your column in today’s Washington Post moves me to contribute a few random thoughts about the workings of government and the bureaucracy. It is no wonder that the public has a negative view of government, considering the following factors:

1.  Every presidential candidate in recent memory has run for office against the government. It has become fashionable to badmouth the government and the bureaucracy, and every time a candidate says something negative, the press multiplies it a hundred-fold. No matter how well the government operates, the public will not believe it so long as politicians continue to deride it.

2.  The professional civil service, which is to say the bureaucracy, operates at a severe disadvantage. The problem is that every President appoints people to the top positions in all the agencies, and these people are answerable only to the President. Now, here’s the rub. The kinds of people who are appointed to the statutory positions are chosen not on the basis of their professional qualifications for the job, but rather on the basis of their political qualifications. In fact, many of them are completely unsuited for the jobs to which they are appointed, despite the scrutiny by the press and the Senate confirmation process. With few exceptions, they are either campaign workers being rewarded with government jobs, financial supporters being rewarded with government jobs, representatives of industries that do business with the agencies involved, political and/or personal cronies, and an assortment of hangers-on who take any job that’s offered. 

Most of them enter into their jobs with an attitude of unrelenting hostility to the professional civil service. Very few of them, very few, try to work with their staffs of professionals or make a serious attempt to understand the peculiarities or intricacies of government operations. Instead, they staff their second- and third-tier ranks with pals and cronies, and they try in every way imaginable to circumvent the bureaucracy in order to do things that their agencies should not do, or to prevent their agencies from doing things that they should do. 

Rarely do their illegal or unethical activities get public scrutiny, mainly because the press is always too busy scrutinizing the President instead of looking into the less-glamorous conduct of lower-level appointees in the agencies. And, also because the press seldom talks to the professional civil servants who, in any case, are seldom willing to blow the whistle on the statutory appointees. Only occasionally are some of them exposed, either through a Justice Dept. investigation or a congressional investigation, and in those instances, the resultant press coverage solidifies the public perception of the “bureaucracy” as a den of thieves. Most of them are never exposed, either for the “shady” things they do, or for the ineptness of their conduct in office. Still, what they do makes their agencies look bad and you, by which I mean the press, really ought to differentiate between the civil service bureaucracy and the statutory bureaucracy.

3.  As I said in my letter to you last July, I want to thank you for the all the great columns you produce and for the pleasure you give me by virtue of the quality of your writing.


11 May 1993

To the Editor, The Washington Post
Regarding Rule XXII

The articles by Lloyd Cutler, George Will, Howard Baker and Norman Ornstein (today) all miss the mark, though the discussion itself is fascinating. The fact is, however, they all start with the assumption that the United States Senate is genuinely willing to act in the best interests of the country, and that the current policy on filibusters thwart this purpose. In my view, and I honestly believe a great many Americans share this view, nothing could be farther from the truth. If anyone still believes that the Senate is interested in the good of the country or the welfare of the people, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale at a bargain price.

The Senate has displayed time and time again its complete indifference to the best interests of the country. Individual Senators, Bob Dole included, are interested in their own self-aggrandizement and their own reelection first. Secondly, and a far second indeed, they pretend to work on behalf of their own constituents. In that respect, they put up a good front, but it’s all for show, not for real. I do not believe the good of the country enters their considerations at all. All their pious mouthings about their concerns for the welfare of the American “middle class” are sickening, especially coming from Republicans, who did as much as they could during the twelve years when they owned the White House, to eliminate the middle class. And those Senators who point with pride to their years of “public” service are hoodwinking the public. Their service was performed for private or special interests, not for the public.

If the Senate as a body were genuinely concerned with the best interests of the nation, it would find a way to cope with the filibusters that thwart the public interest. Until it does, until it demonstrates a greater degree of active concern for the country, it will continue to be regarded by many of us voters as a joke.

Copyright 2016, Elaine Blackman