What It Really Takes to Attract the Best Talent to the Public Sector

What It Really Takes to Attract the Best Talent to the Public Sector

ANALYSIS | Attraction hinges on meaningful work, strategic timing, career mobility, values alignment, and navigating complex stakeholder landscapes.

Authors: Dr Marianne Broadbent and David Baber. 

Originally published on The Mandarin on May 6, 2025

Public Scrutiny is Necessary—But Often Too Narrow

Public scrutiny of the public sector’s size and role is essential. After all, governments are custodians of public value. But what’s problematic is the frequent over-simplification of the issues at hand. Too often, discussions around public service headcount devolve into ideological debates—missing the operational realities and the broader purpose of government.

The recent focus on reducing public service numbers in Canberra is a case in point. Around 70% of federal public servants are based outside Canberra, embedded in other cities, regional hubs and communities, delivering essential frontline services. This context is often ignored. Reducing numbers without understanding where or why those roles exist can weaken policy delivery, affect community trust, and hollow out institutional memory.

Understanding the Real Drivers of Growth

Raw numbers don’t tell us much.  For example, a major reason parts of the APS have grown in the past 18 months is the need to rebuild lost capabilities or service capacity. Some roles were insourced to reduce heavy reliance on external contractors. In other cases, growth enabled critical delivery functions to return to government hands—especially after periods of structural outsourcing.

Take Services Australia, for example. Workforce investment here wasn’t about creating bureaucracy but about improving responsiveness for those relying on frontline social services. The same goes for certain specialist functions—such as data and digital capabilities—that governments must now build and retain in-house to reduce cyber and delivery risk. It is also about increasing the quality and reducing the cost of service delivery over time.

So, what truly matters? Numbers are one thing—but what matters more is capability, deployment, accountability and purpose alignment. This was and is the theme of The Mandarin conferences across 2025 – Building a Better Public Service.

Talent Attraction Requires Systems-level Understanding

A better public service is largely contingent on attracting and well utilising great talent. There’s no single silver bullet to attracting talent. It’s a systemic web of factors, intersecting decisions and actions, consolidated over time. At Future Leadership, we’ve supported hundreds of public sector appointments and worked across jurisdictions, advising departments and agencies on executive search, interim roles, and leadership development.

What we consistently find is that public sector roles appeal to individuals at specific career inflection points. Senior leaders from the private sector often tell us they want something “more meaningful” or “less transactional.” They’re looking to shift their legacy lens—asking not just, “What did I build?” but “What did I change?”

Others seek to broaden their impact, learn how government really works, or bring their external experience to bear on wicked problems like climate adaptation, economic policy, or public infrastructure.

Five Tangible Factors that Drive Public Sector Attraction

Based on our experience and overlaying survey data (e.g., the most recent APS State of the Service Report and the NSW People Matter Employee Survey), the drivers of attraction remain consistent:

1. Purpose and Contribution:
   There’s deep pride among public servants about their work. Public Sector leaders across federal and state surveys report higher than expected levels of satisfaction. Purpose is a strong magnet—especially for those with lived experience of the impact of public policy.
2. Career Runway and Development:
   The ability to move across functions, portfolios, and even jurisdictions is attractive. For example, one of our early career Future Leadership researchers joined the Attorney General’s Department with the ultimate goal of joining DFAT. She is now based in Paris in what she regards as her ‘dream job’.
3. Employment Security:
   Particularly in uncertain economic times, security becomes more than a benefit—it becomes a factor strategic decision-making. In the public sector employment security is immeasurably higher than in the private sector (with the possible exception of Secretaries . . .) While public sector remuneration may lag at the top end, overall career earnings, when adjusted for risk, are likely to even out over time.
4. Flexibility and Hybrid Work:
   In public sector roles there is generally a higher level of expectation and acceptance of both hybrid and flexible arrangements for employees. In recent cases this has been built into awards.
5. Generational Networks:
   Many public servants grew up in households where government service was the norm. The sector is seen highly respected and integral to civic life.

Specific Factors that Appeal to those Outside the Public Sector

Attracting private sector executives, managers and professionals is a practised art, in that the challenges are to attract the right people to the right roles, for the right reasons, and at the right time in life and careers. Timing is important and differs by level and opportunity. For example, a mid-career professional might be attracted to join say the Departments of the Environment or Agriculture for a different career experience.

At a senior level or where there might be salary differentials it is often about timing – is now the right time to use my experience differently? Do my circumstances mean that I can and should take this opportunity now? What will three years in the public sector mean for my CV and experience base? What might this particular role or experience lead to – inside or outside the public sector?

We work through these questions carefully with potential candidates as our best scenario is that the placed candidate has a great experience in the role and that they have made the decision at the right time. On a number of occasions, a potential candidate approached has indicated ‘no the timing is not quite right now’; but then we have gone back to them three or four years later and it is then more timely and they have proceeded as a candidate.

A critical factor throughout the process is an assessment values and demeanour fit. What we mean by that is – as with any role – is that our clients are often seeking candidates where there will be mutual resonance between them and the organisation, but a little bit of positive tension is fine.

We can categorically state that of the hundreds of individuals we have helped bring into the public sector from other sectors, universally they tell us three things: first, it was the right decision for them; second, that their experience of the public sector is that there are far more demands in relation to the complexity and ambiguity of the environment than they imagined; and third, that they are finding the role enormously stimulating and rewarding. And sometimes, yes they are learning to deal with different decision-making styles and the layers of stakeholders with whom they need to deal.

Recently a senior state public servant and head of an agency who is on their third public sector role after 18 years in the private sector indicated to us that ‘I now know that what is critical in any public sector role is to identify the 10 to 20 people I really need know, to know about and to influence’. They also noted that developing and sustaining relationships is even more important in the public sector when compared to the private sector.

Future Capability Matters

At Future Leadership, we look for alignment of context, capability and capacity—not just qualifications and skillsets. We’ve found that when someone is brought in at the right point in their career—and when their value and motivations are understood and matched—they perform better and stay longer.

As one agency head conveyed to us a week or two ago: ‘we want them to be a good fit, but not too good a fit as we need them to push us a little, but to do it in the right way’.

That kind of resonance—based on purpose, capability, and timing—is what builds a resilient, future-ready public service.

But once an employee has joined the public sector, what keeps them there?

Originally published on The Mandarin on May 6, 2025

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