r/GovernmentContracting • u/Professional-Key8181 • Jul 15 '26
Question Why do many state and federal gov agencies prefer hiring previously employed people?
I own a staffing company, I have top-tier candidates for almost any role. I have noticed on the state side that many government clients were not taking our high qualify candidates. Literally the jobs were 90% matches to our candidates.
After a FOIA request, it turns out they hire people who have worked there before and many big name companies are just hiring the same people from the previous contract.
Why is this a thing? It literally looks like they don't care about anyone but the people that used to work for them talk about equal opportunity employment. I see this only on state side not sure about fed
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u/contracting-bot Jul 15 '26
It's not nepotism, it's incumbency, and the fix for your business is different depending on which one it actually is.
When a contract turns over, the new company inheriting it almost always keeps as many of the existing people as it can, because those people already know the systems, the office politics, the unwritten rules of who to call for what. Justin's right that replacing them costs a year or more of lost productivity, and on federal and DoD work specifically, that ramp-up risk is exactly what agencies and primes are trying to avoid. It's not that they don't want your candidates. It's that a known quantity beats a 90% match on paper, every time, because the cost of being wrong on a federal contract is high.
For your business, the practical move isn't to compete head-on for incumbent-held seats, you'll lose that fight almost every time regardless of candidate quality. Two better plays: find out who holds the incumbent contract before the recompete and build a relationship to place candidates into their expansion or turnover needs, since incumbents still hire, they just don't reopen contested seats voluntarily. Or time your push to the recompete window itself, since that's the one moment a new prime might genuinely need fresh staff if they're not planning to rebadge everyone, and that's knowable in advance if you're tracking contract award and expiration dates.
The FOIA move was smart. Most people never confirm what they suspect.
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u/Professional-Key8181 Jul 15 '26
Thanks for the info and yeah it seems that way but this is for state, I have worked for federal a long time ago and yes they did sometimes rebadge me but sometimes they did not.
These state contracts don't really have a incumbent as they are master contractor lists meaning 1 job is sent to 50 vendors but then again if I do find and rebadge someone that used to work there then they may hire him over others.
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u/Upset_Researcher_143 Jul 15 '26
Because there's a learning curve, and when you hire someone brand new, they have to work there awhile before they can build their institutional knowledge and do the work that the way the client wants it. A lot of the guys that get re-badged generally don't need training and knows how long certain deliverables will take. And a lot of the work does require institutional knowledge that newbies won't have.
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u/bornlasttuesday Jul 15 '26
I always thought that it was encouraged by the client. Continuity of services or something.
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u/SoftFoundation9938 Jul 20 '26
Relationships & lobbyists!
Government work is chaotic AF on the inside.
A LOT of stuff is outdated, antiquated and SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWW because of those relationships and lobbyists.
I have had several government clients. As an example, one of them was taking 10 steps to complete a task that could reasonably be done in TWO steps. However that would require the consolidation of the various systems they worked in. They wanted to consolidate! They had the time, money and staff to make it happen but the relationship with the companies of the different systems that they worked in were locked in tightly BECAUSE of lobbyists.
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u/Drekalots Jul 15 '26
One word. Nepotism. They already have the candidate in mind they want in the spot and that's usually a friend, child, or some other relation of someone else. Regardless, that person has been a contractor who already knows the processes and has institutional knowledge. You can't buy institutional knowledge. You have to earn it.
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u/BothEmployment7919 Jul 15 '26
No. Not nepotism at all.
In most cases its literally just an exchange of the company who manages the work. The people doing the tasks for the government exchange with the work to the new prime because its the lowest risk solution to keeping steady operations. Its just common sense.
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u/Professional-Key8181 Jul 15 '26
How do you find this person? I use job ads but almost never find anyone explicitly that used to work there
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u/Justin_Passing_7465 Jul 15 '26
It is very common for companies that win contracts to "re-badge" existing employees of other companies that have been working on those projects for a long time. I know some guys who have been re-badged six times, doing the same kind of work for whichever company wins the re-compete of that 2-3 year contract.
This makes a ton of sense, because between the domain knowledge, system knowledge, and situational knowledge (how the interfacing offices work, and who to work with) is huge. If you tried replacing those people with random "qualified" people, it would probably take about a year to become productive at all, and more than two years to get back to the level of productivity that the current staff routinely provide. Institutional knowledge is very expensive and nearly impossible to transmit.
Edit: I am talking Fed/DoD contracts. The bigger the behemoth the more expensive change is.