Recently, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced the Merit Hiring Plan. The plan is in response to Executive Order 14170, Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service.
The goal of the plan, as OPM shared in this memo, is to address inefficiencies in the Federal hiring process and prioritize merit-based recruitment.
As agencies implement the Merit Hiring Plan, candidates can expect several key reforms, outlined in this OPM fact sheet:
- Asking candidates to address their merit, competence, and commitment to the U.S. Constitution in free-response questions as part of the job application process.
- Eliminating unnecessary education requirements in favor of skills-based technical and alternative assessments.
- Decreasing time-to-hire to under 80 days by streamlining background checks and using talent pools and shared certificates.
- Increasing use of analytics to identify workforce gaps and improve recruitment strategies.
- Improving transparency with candidates through regular updates on application status, timelines, and feedback.
- Increasing agency leadership participation in hiring process implementation.
- Creating and implementing Human Resources best practices to enable strategic recruitment and hiring actions.
- Standardizing position descriptions, shared certificates, and talent pools.
- Enhancing Veteran recruitment through strategic partnerships.
As the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) works to implement these reforms, more details and updates to processes will be communicated. To learn more, please visit OPM.gov.
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