Recruitment and Retention of Qualified PersonnelINTRODUCTIONOne of the most critical challenges facing public administration is the recruitment and retention of qualified personnel. Although the problem of talent attraction in the public service is not new, with the introduction and rapid expansion of the high-tech industry and the Internet, the problem has reached proportions of crisis. The public and private sectors have embraced the information age and are increasingly dependent on a skilled and versatile workforce. Private industry has responded by developing greater versatility by expanding and contracting its workforce to meet organizational requirements and strategic goals. Public administration has not sufficiently recognized the changes in the private sector that have had such a significant impact on the workforce. Over the past twenty years, the workforce, which previously expected to have a career with a single employer, has adapted to the norm of changing employers repeatedly (and, in many cases, change of career path). This changing workforce expectation requires not only policy changes in public administration, but also much greater flexibility in hiring, rewarding and retention methods. The shift to broader training and advanced skills has changed workforce expectations. Workers are increasingly unsatisfied with remaining in a single professional discipline and have matched the flexibility and agility of their employers. Public administrators increasingly recognize the need to change reward and incentive programs with much greater emphasis on performance than on tenure. The private enterprise, with its ability to change and refocus its strategic goals and objectives...... middle of paper... ...U.S. Department of Defense, Acquisition Managers Recruiting, Hiring and Retention Handbook, “Hiring », April 15, 2001. Available at: http://gravity.lmi.org/acqbook/hiring/index.html. US Department of Defense, Acquisition Managers Recruiting, Hiring and Retention Handbook, “Retention”, April 15, 2001. Available at: http://gravity.lmi.org/acqbook/retention/index.html. U.S. Department of Defense, Acquisition Managers Recruiting, Hiring and Retention Handbook, “The defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA),” April 15 2001. Available at: http://gravity.lmi.org/acqbook/dawia/index.html. US Department of Defense, Acquisition Managers Recruiting, Hiring and Retention Handbook, “The DoD Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project (AcqDemo) », April 15, 2001. Available at: http://gravity.lmi.org/acqbook/acqdemo/index.html.