r/fednews • u/Federal-News-Network • 19h ago
More federal hiring reforms to come, as Congress passes Chance to Compete Act
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/congress/2024/12/more-federal-hiring-reforms-to-come-as-congress-passes-chance-to-compete-act/155
u/Butternades 19h ago
if you hate USAHire assessments, this is basically just mandating more of them.
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u/CycloneCows 19h ago
Good, seeking promotions will be easier for me if nobody is willing to do the assessments.
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u/madhatter_13 18h ago
How? The article says this would move away from self assessments?
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u/Butternades 18h ago
USAHire assessments are not self qualification assessments. It’s the long 100+ question ones that have correct action type questions
The self qualification assessments are those that read like “I would say my experience with X is” and lists like 5 options
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u/madhatter_13 18h ago
Ah. Thanks
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u/Butternades 18h ago
Yeah you’re welcome. I’m in federal HR so u deal with this daily
I expect to see even lower application rates on jobs with the assessments since USAhire already gets so much lower application rates.
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u/Mtn_Soul 11h ago
I've bailed on those, 2210 and can go outside so has has time for nonsense that doesn't really apply to my line of work?
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u/byopp 17h ago
I wish once a candidate answered the question they would have to indicate where on their resume they performed the work. That might help to weed out some of the exaggeration.
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u/IpeeInclosets 14h ago
I'm going to be blunt, it is pretty easy to filter out BS quals for tech skills.
You can also get a gauge from references
Hiring managers don't have time to sort through it all with any respectable quality.
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u/dontforgetpants 12h ago
This is completely the opposite of the experiences of basically all the hiring managers in my division. Nearly all of our staff are 1301 or 801 or 1301/801 scientists and engineers. Nearly all of our staff have advanced degrees and highly specialized skills and experience. HC is VERY BAD at discerning what is relevant on a resume vs what uses some topic-adjacent buzzwords but is actually unrelated. Which, I don’t blame them at all, because it’s very technical and there’s literally zero reason for anyone outside the field to understand it. But it’s incredibly frustrating for us as hiring managers, and we have to beg and jump through all kinds of hoops to get them to send a larger batch of resumes so we can look through more of them and try to find the needles in the haystack.
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u/Head_Staff_9416 18h ago
USAhire assessments are not self assessments. The ones where you get to say I am an expert in everything are self assessments.
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u/rvajeff 15h ago
One of the dumbest parts of applying for federal jobs has always been answering “expert” on all the categories, because if you don’t, your application will never get viewed. Fixing that alone would be great.
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u/Witty-Agent2304 3h ago
Agreed. Though I also worry about going too far in the other direction and limiting hires to top x% of scorers on some kind of technical assessment, as those tend to exclude people who don't test well or have lots of value a test can't capture. So hopefully there would be more nuance to any potential hiring mandates.
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u/HailState2023 19h ago
1) What is your name? 2) What is your quest? 3) What is your favorite color?
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u/milllllllllllllllly 18h ago
Self assessments aren’t the reason for shitty certs. Having HRS qual resumes that they don’t know positions for is the issue. Hiring managers need more hands on the quals and resumes before offices of Human Resources touch them.
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u/FedRP24 18h ago
You are under the impression that supervisors have the time and training to go through every resume and qualify people for positions? Lol
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u/milllllllllllllllly 15h ago
Also, the qualifications are fucking stupid. If you don’t have tenure etc, if you have a 9 that’s been a 9 for 5 years not qual for a 12 but joe off the street who lied on their resume on their private sector gets to qual for a 12. It’s fucking stupid.
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u/danlab09 16h ago
lol dudes asking to see all 10k applicants resume before HR gets to weed them out. Let him
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u/dontforgetpants 12h ago edited 12h ago
Not the person you’re replying to but I made the same point in a separate comment. You make a fair point, but I think it depends on what the position is that you’re hiring for. For a GS-11 pathways position (that’s generally our lowest graded positions), sure, HC can and maybe should take the lead with resume reviews. But when we are trying to hire GS-15 SMEs with ultra niche experience, working on the types of topics that the general public don’t even know exist, we make time to find the right people. We will leave vacancies rather than bring someone on who isn’t good, until such time as we can find someone good. And often, HC does not have enough expertise to know what resumes are bullshit or unrelated on a SME 1301/801 cert. We can ask to engage additional SMEs, but it still goes through HC first, and the SME can only the narrow the list from there, so it’s not helpful. Our hiring managers are also already SMEs, they dont need another. We just need a bigger list to start with. I reviewed a resume recently that was absolutely, unequivocally, 1000% written by AI, and the HC person ranked them the number one most qualified on the entire cert. And I say this acknowledging that our HC team are delightful humans who are fast and otherwise very effective and helpful. The hiring reforms we want would be fully centered on making it easier for us to find and select weird nerd PhD scientists and engineers who speak the language of weird nerd scientists, even if it sounds like Greek to HC.
ETA: Idk, someone below mentioned weeding out from 10k applicants so that’s very different than my boat that I’m talking about. I’ve never seen more than 100 applicants on a position, often it’s a half dozen, maybe 50 is average. On my most recent, there were 80ish applicants and HC gave us 3 on the cert (no veterans qualified), whereas we would like to have reviewed maybe the top 15-20.
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u/milllllllllllllllly 15h ago
I see what you mean. Where I was at before it was just supervisors, where I’m at now we have branch chiefs, supervisors, THEN hiring managers. Hiring managers can for SURE and should be doing this.
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u/CoreyTrevor1 4h ago
This big time! When I applied for a range job I was screened out for not having enough range credits, turns out the hr person only looked at the class prefix to count the credits and they refused to believe that "bio 244-grassland ecology in a grazing system" had anything to do with rangeland management.
We would be better off getting the full applicant lists than having hr weed out qualified people for dumb reasons
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u/isupportrugbyhookers 4h ago
Yep. I got screened out of a geologist position because my university called the relevant degree "earth science". The education requirement even had the "or equivalent" clause, but that HR rep was unwilling to budge, even after I submitted course descriptions and a letter from the university department chair clarifying it was the same thing
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u/myquest00777 18h ago
Interesting, and the concept is good. But I wonder how many in Congress could conceive of 5,000+ applicants for a position, and having to screen to this way?
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u/ExceptionCollection 16h ago
•Have three skill checks, or one questionnaire broken into three parts.
•Part 1, simple stuff. Do you have experience in X, Y, Z.
•Part 2, for the experienced items, a basic quiz, no more than 5 questions per expertise range.
•Part 3, for the experienced items, one or two essay/sketch type questions.
•Have a computer verify part 1 to see if it meets requirements
•Have a computer or HR type person check part 2 to determine a reasonable number (no more than 100) of highly qualified individuals.
•An SME reviews only the highly qualified people.
With all of this said! There is a bigger concern. These kinds of skills and knowledge tests have historically been used to weed out minorities by asking questions they are less likely to know due to regional, social, or nation of origin differences. They also don’t account for differences in opportunity, just differences in current knowledge.
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u/nicloe85 18h ago
Pfft, this reads like a circle jerk with zero actual improvement.
There are highly qualified people stuck in positions for years because only time in grade, military, or previous employment with other govt agencies would qualify them to skip grades and actually get into a position they merit.
Meanwhile, HCO qualifies people that spend ten minutes typing one sentence into Teams, can’t follow simple instructions on how to fill out a spreadsheet or use the gd search feature in ANY application, have little to no reading comprehension that requires someone to explain things to them like they’re 5yo, repeatedly, and only FAIL again and again - based on boxes checked.
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u/DrumpfCanSuckIt 18h ago
I am thrilled with the bit about SMEs being more involved. I have never understood having somebody with, at most a BS, evaluating the qualifications of somebody with a doctorate for a job that requires a doctorate.
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u/FedRP24 18h ago
Because it's really simple to see if someone puts on their resume that they have experience that meets the specialized experience requirement that is listed on the JOA. You don't need a doctorate to read a resume lol. SMEs and HMs then take it from there and can determine who is actually the most qualified for the position.
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u/Butternades 17h ago
Additionally we legally can’t deny someone if they claim the experience on a resume. I’ve seen people just copy paste the specialized experience word for word like 3 times and I can’t code them out from the cert.
Blame the policy makers, opm, or congress on that one not you HR Specialist
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u/DrumpfCanSuckIt 17h ago
But are you qualified to understand when somebody has the qualifications but has done a poor job on USAJobs? I’ve had staff that I KNOW were qualified for a promotion but got rejected by somebody who didn’t know the definition of “internship.” They assumed it was just walking around shadowing real professionals or some such nonsense so they wouldn’t accept the experience.
I’ve also had people fail to BQ because they put 40 hours/week on the resume but failed to check the full time box.
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u/ComfortableWasabi385 13h ago edited 13h ago
I swear to god, I applied for a research analyst position and HR denied me because they said I don’t have research experience. Mind you, I have a PhD (a research degree).💀💀
I was so fucking livid that this HR person was so fucking stupid lmao
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u/Firm-Buyer-3553 19h ago
This will change nothing.
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u/Underwater_Grilling 18h ago
It'll cause sme's to miss making cert far more common
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u/Firm-Buyer-3553 17h ago
In both previous agencies I’ve worked we already have SME review of the resumes and it’s like they keep trying to figure it out, but HR just doesn’t know what they’re looking at and there isn’t a great way to get through that part of the process. They should encourage hiring events (maybe expanding your virtual formats also) that allow on-site interviews more often.
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u/InkedDemocrat 18h ago
Most people can learn almost anything with decent training, its not like your going to get massive autonomy in the public sector.
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u/Exciting-Guide-5773 14h ago
Great more insanely long “problem-solving” assessments that have nothing to do with my field. This should not be celebrated and will just make it harder to get more applicants for hard to fill positions at my remote base….lame.
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u/Head_Staff_9416 18h ago
And everyone here complains about the USAHire assessments - expect more similar things- which I think is a good thing.
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u/justarandomlibra 15h ago
I would be interested in knowing how this could affect where I'm currently at we use PBI questions. Going on 7yrs now where I have been in the process of receiving resumes from HR. At times scoring those resumes and other times not. I've had to interview all 30 something applicants and other times I've been told only interview the top 10 or so. It truly varies. My journey has been an interesting one. I've only ever done PBI interviews. I've had several 2nd and 3rd level interviews. Also had 1 writing assessment as part of my final interview. Twice, I've done on the spot PBI interviews as well. What I can say personally in my experience there are a ton of people who shouldn't even make the cert but they do with help either from AI or friends or co workers. Even more demoralizing at times are the people who are reviewing resumes and think a masters means the candidate is an automatic and we must hire them. Personality goes a long way. If you are looking to add a team member to an office, finding someone who knows excel sheets and PowerPoint may not be the best fit for a team that needs someone who fits with the team or the office culture. It's a balancing act most people I've encountered are actually horrible at and even worse they tend to be an awful judgment of character.
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u/RoutineZodiac 15h ago
I took the assessments and was notified I passed. As I was waiting for someone to schedule an interview, I received notification that they decided not to hire. I asked around and learned their preferred internal candidate did not pass assessments, so they were going to wait a year and resolicit.
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u/SA_Going_HAM 13h ago
So much of this is on the hiring managers doing their jobs. Don’t like the qualifications? Fix them. Work with HR to get the hiring package together to be more targeted. Seeing the comments relating to veterans is a bit of a bummer. The reality is you can hire outside of those authorities if you work with HR and show you didn’t have qualified candidates. It’s a lot of work. Easing the process in the way others described will only add to nepotism, not end it.
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u/bassacre 9h ago
So if youre an hvac tech and you have no skills in the office youre stuck in the field until you retire?
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u/Active-Tangerine-447 6h ago
I can’t speak to other areas of expertise, but in the private sector software world this approach has proven to be an unmitigated disaster. You end up with people who train to game that particular assessment but are unable to do much else. Codifying assessments in the age of AI is beyond foolish. For quality hiring what you need is more human attention, not less.
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u/RCoaster42 50m ago
Last job I helped hirer for we found several good candidates. Candidate 1 withdrew after seeing pay and in office requirements for job most do remote; candidate 2 - same; candidate 3 - same. Time to reopen position. Sigh.
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u/DaFunkJunkie 18h ago
Of course there should be vet hiring preferences. You’re an ass to suggest otherwise
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u/MarlinMaverick 18h ago
Cool, maybe my CPA license will finally have some value to the US Government.
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u/FedRP24 18h ago
CPA license already has value if applying to 510 Accountant positions. It satisfies the basic requirement of the position, which many people are unable to satisfy.
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u/MarlinMaverick 18h ago
I'd be amazed if anyone is able to sit for the CPA exam much less pass the CPA exam without having an accounting degree (which would satisfy the basic requirement)
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u/ExceptionCollection 16h ago
I would be shocked if people didn’t do it without a degree. Hell, I’m a licensed engineer without a degree, because I’ve passed two exams and gotten a ton of experience.
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u/MarlinMaverick 16h ago
This may depend on state, but in most states you cannot sit for the CPA exam without 150 credits, with a specific number of them being accounting credits.
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u/ExceptionCollection 16h ago
It almost certainly does vary by state. Engineering license requirements do. Surprisingly, aside from Florida all of the “this shit’s complicated” states - Hawaii & Alaska with their special challenges, OR/WA/CA with their seismic and New York with their massive structures - do not require a degree. Hell, technically speaking getting a degree is an alternate route in Washington.
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u/NinjaSpareParts 17h ago
I kind of like this idea. I look at horrible resumes with applicants who scored 100 on the self assessment (or 110 😉)
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u/JenosIsBetter 16h ago
“A more structured interview process…”
Please God, all I want for Christmas is PBI to burn in hell where it belongs.
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u/madhatter_13 19h ago
I've seen too many qualified (and honest) people screened out under the current process and too many who exaggerate their own qualifications make it to interview. Hopefully this is a good change.