White House Issues Executive Order on Federal Hiring

On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order on Modernizing and Reforming the Assessment and Hiring of Federal Job Candidates. The order calls upon agencies to increase use of skills assessments and interviews with subject matter experts in the hiring process, with less of an emphasis placed on degree requirements. The goal, according to the Trump Administration, is to broaden the pool of potential candidates and create a more equitable hiring process.

The executive order notes how the federal government has failed to adequately modernize hiring practices to compete with private sector recruiters. While the private sector has adopted a “competency-based” hiring process, the federal government continues to focus on “degree-based” hiring.

“Employers adopting skills- and competency-based hiring recognize that an overreliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates and undermines labor-market efficiencies.  Degree-based hiring is especially likely to exclude qualified candidates for jobs related to emerging technologies and those with weak connections between educational attainment and the skills or competencies required to perform them.  Moreover, unnecessary obstacles to opportunity disproportionately burden low-income Americans and decrease economic mobility,” the executive order explains.

The order calls upon the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and the heads of agencies to review and revise all job classification and qualification standards for positions in the competitive service. All changes to job classification and qualification must be made public within 120 days of the order’s signing and go into effect within 180 days.

Through the review, these leaders must ensure that all job classifications and qualification standards are consistent with several principles:

•  An agency may prescribe a minimum educational requirement for employment in the federal competitive service only when a minimum educational qualification is legally required to perform the duties of the position in the state or locality where those duties are to be performed.

• Unless an agency is determining a candidate’s satisfaction of a legally required minimum educational requirement, an agency may consider education in determining a candidate’s satisfaction of some other minimum qualification only if the candidate’s education directly reflects the competencies necessary to satisfy that qualification and perform the duties of the position.

• Position descriptions and job postings published by agencies for positions within the competitive service should be based on the specific skills and competencies required to perform those jobs.

In addition to a review of current job classifications and qualification standards, the order gives OPM and agencies 180 days to ensure agencies assess candidates in a “manner that does not rely solely on educational attainment to determine the extent to which candidates possess relevant knowledge, skills, competencies, and abilities.” Agencies are called to develop or identify assessment practices to ensure this manner is upheld.