Reforms Eyed for Federal Hiring Process, Freeze or No Freeze
With a hiring freeze currently in effect until July 15, 2025, across much of the federal government, there is not much attention being paid to the way the federal government hires workers.
But some organizations point out that now is the time to implement reforms and to improve the hiring process for better, so that once the federal government starts hiring again, it can get the best candidates in the door in a timely manner.
The Niskanen Center reviewed the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act of 2024 (CCA), which was signed into law by then-President Biden in December. The CCA directed the federal government to move toward skills-based assessments and away from self-evaluations in the federal hiring process to the maximum extent possible.
However, the Niskanen Center says the “CCA left many structural barriers unaddressed” and failed to note that producing skills assessments is extremely resource intensive and is likely to be “prohibitively expensive.”
Instead, the center recommends that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) lay out a strategy for successful implementation. The center notes that such a strategy should focus on assessments that do the following:
Maintain low unit cost to enable agencies to purchase or develop them given resource constraints
Can efficiently handle law numbers of applicants
Can accurately differentiate applicants of varying suitability for a job and reliably predict which candidates will be high performers.
The report also urges OMB and OPM to “consider a set of broader strategies for reforming other parts of the federal personnel system that are upstream of this transition and would make success more attainable, such as the professionalization of the HR workforce.”
Trump Administration Hiring Changes
For its part, the Trump Administration is making changes to the federal hiring process.
In an executive order issued on Day One, the president laid out his priorities which include implementing the assessments required under the CCA as much as possible, cutting federal hiring time to under 80 days, using modern technology for recruitment and selection, and improving communication with applicants.
“By significantly improving hiring principles and practices, Americans will receive the Federal resources and services they deserve from the highest-skilled Federal workforce in the world,” stated the executive order.
