One careers site for every state agency, connected to the HR systems you already run

Deloitte's Center for Government Insights put it bluntly: in the war for talent, government is finding itself outgunned. Public managers keep repeating the same line: can't hire them, can't keep them. Pay and pensions are set by the legislature. What a state can change, and quickly, is the first thing a candidate sees: where state jobs are listed and how easy it is to apply.

The real problem: one state, many front doors

Most states grew their hiring technology agency by agency. One department runs PeopleSoft Candidate Gateway, another moved to Workday, a university system uses Taleo, and a few still take PDFs by email. Every system comes with its own job board. To a candidate, the state looks like twenty employers with twenty logins. North Carolina's award-winning NASCIO submission describes the same pattern: disparate systems, manual processes and agency shadow IT, all hurting recruitment in a tight labor market.

Why replacing the HR system is not the first fix

The usual response is a statewide HR system migration. It's worth doing, but it takes years, needs every agency to agree, and does nothing for candidates in the meantime. We took the opposite order: give candidates one front door now, and let the systems behind it stay where they are.

What we built for the State of Georgia

Team Georgia Careers is a single statewide careers site that collects openings from agencies across the state, more than 1,500 at any time, into one search with consistent filters for agency, job family, schedule, shift and location. Every posting uses the same summary layout, so pay, location and requirements are always in the same place. Candidates can apply on the site itself. For agencies that run their own applicant tracking system, the same posting hands the candidate straight to the right PeopleSoft, Workday or Taleo application, so no agency has to change how it hires.

Designed with the people who use it

We benchmarked against the commercial job boards candidates already use, mapped the full journey from search to submitted application, and tested on phones first, because that's where many people look for work. The site runs on one accessible design system, so every agency's postings look and behave the same way.

What changed

The state now promotes one address in every recruiting campaign instead of dozens. Agencies keep their own systems and processes. HR leadership finally sees statewide demand in one place: which job families are hard to fill, and in which counties.

If this sounds like your state

You may be ready for a shared careers platform if candidates have to know which agency to look in, your agencies use more than one applicant tracking system, or recruiting campaigns send people to different sites. We've already built this, integrations included. Let's talk about doing it for your state.

Sources

Deloitte Center for Government Insights, "Government can win the talent race" (Datar, Ruiz, O'Leary et al., 2022). NASCIO State IT Recognition Awards, North Carolina HR Human Capital Management Digital Transformation Project. State of Kansas Office of Personnel Services, HIRE project briefing.