WASHINGTON – Evan Derrow, the Chief of Operations for U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, or DEVCOM, Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center, won the Department of Defense Talent Management Innovation Challenge April 25, 2024, at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
The challenge aimed to drive change in the way the DoD approaches talent management practices by hearing directly from service members and civilians with ideas and solutions to talent management obstacles.
“My pitch was, if LinkedIn can tell me what jobs I might be interested in based on my own resume, why can’t the DoD tell me what current vacancies exist that I might be interested in?” Derrow said. “Let’s mimic the algorithm that LinkedIn uses to recommend jobs and come up with some version of that for the DoD.
“The DoD knows what jobs I’ve had, what projects I’ve worked on, what my education is; why do I need to go out and seek job openings. The DoD should be able to say, ‘here are four jobs that you might be interested in.’”
Derrow’s proposal was primarily directed at improving awareness of current opportunities for existing employees, a critical segment of the applicant pool.
“Our current civilian workforce is already mission driven; they are already working in the building,” Derrow said. “We need to prioritize our advertising to improve awareness of our markets because then we would have a faster time to hire. We’ve all seen the email that announces a job posting, but it’s to everyone. Just having a better ability to match people to vacancies would be incredibly helpful, because we should know whether there is an overlap in competencies and skills.”
As for the process of going through the challenge, it took nearly a year to go from first submission to final presentation.
“The first round of the challenge was in August and September, and there were over 200 submissions,” Derrow said. “Next was a semi-final round in January, where the top 33 submitters did a five-minute pitch to about 20 actions officers from each of the major stakeholders in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. Then from that round, nine finalists were selected, where we briefed senior executives within the OUSD (P&R).”
Though the challenge has concluded, the evaluation of ideas by those within OUSD (P&R) will continue.
“These ideas are still going to be evaluated to figure out which ones they can implement immediately, and which would need a policy change to be endorsed,” Derrow said. “Similarly, I met with the Honorable Agnes Schaefer, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, to discuss what kind of improvements we can make within the Army.”
Having learned about new strategic initiatives from across the DoD as a result of the challenge, Derrow has nothing but fond memories of the experience.
“I felt very confident going into the final brief because I love advocating for things that I’m really passionate about,” he said. “When I was told that I was going to brief senior leaders, people who make decisions, I was thrilled, because time with those kinds of leaders is rare.
“It was a lot of fun participating in the challenge, but the best part was meeting my fellow finalists; hearing their perspectives on major challenges was so cool.”
With some final reflections of all the time and effort he put into the challenge, Derrow is thankful for the support from his leadership.
“My supervisors really supported me because they saw that even though this wasn’t directly related to the DEVCOM mission, it was really embodying the innovation culture of DEVCOM,” he said. “I’m thankful for the opportunity to represent DEVCOM since DEVCOM is about innovating everything, not just technology. We’re innovating talent management, business processes, data collection, and data-driven management.”
To learn more about the Talent Management Innovation Challenge, go to www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3763608/dod-looks-outside-bureaucracy-for-novel-talent-management-concepts/.
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