Today, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are releasing guidance to improve the Federal Government’s hiring experience and ensure we can attract the talent needed to deliver for the American people. This announcement builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s steadfast commitment to strengthening and empowering the nonpartisan, merit-based Federal workforce and aligns with the President’s Management Agenda Workforce Priority by providing tools agencies can use to improve all facets of the hiring process.

The Federal Government processes over 22 million applications for employment and hires over 350,000 individuals into public service each year. Given this volume, improving the Federal hiring experience is essential to effectively attracting and retaining a capable workforce equipped to tackle the array of challenges and opportunities facing the nation.

This guidance serves as a call to action for agencies to reduce unnecessary time and burden in the hiring process. OMB and OPM are prioritizing tools and approaches that streamline the Federal hiring process in support of a better experience. Today’s guidance identifies critical steps to:

  • Strengthen strategic workforce planning, recruitment, hiring, and data analytics at the enterprise level, taking advantage of the scale of the Federal workforce;
  • Design and build an improved Federal job applicant experience;
  • Improve the hiring manager experience by ensuring applicants who are referred are appropriately qualified; and
  • Empower human resources (HR) professionals and minimize HR burden by simplifying processes and advancing hiring policies that increase the number of selections made from hiring actions using effective assessments.

Applicant Experience: An efficient and straightforward hiring experience is critical to ensuring agencies are able to attract and hire from a qualified and diverse applicant pool and bring onboard the talent agencies require to best serve the American people. The guidance outlines several practices agencies should leverage to improve the experience, including:

  • Clear and Consistent Communication. The guidance identifies steps like providing clear communication to applicants and developing improved application processes that are user-friendly, accessible, equitable, transparent, efficient, and responsive to the public.
  • Investing in Talent Pools. Strong applicants for Federal employment often apply for dozens of similar job postings to land their first Federal position; similarly, hiring managers and HR professionals hiring for comparable roles too often duplicate work. The pooled hiring actions and tools showcased in this guidance leverage the Federal Government’s size to unlock economies of scale, allowing applicants to apply once and be considered for many similar roles, within and across agencies, and the guidance encourages agencies to share qualified applicants across the Federal enterprise. Today, OPM is hosting several pooled hiring certificates available to agencies covering budget, contracting, data scientists, human resources, and information technology positions. Subject matter experts in these fields helped identify and assess on common job requirements that will meet the needs of multiple agencies to maximize the number of hires made from a single job announcement.

Hiring Manager and HR Professionals Experience: During the hiring process, hiring managers need the support of HR professionals with the depth of expertise to guide them to recruit, retain, and advance talent required to deliver. The guidance identifies several relevant tools and practices:

  • Enhancing Collaborative Talent Management and Planning. When hiring managers are fully engaged in identifying and forecasting talent needs and included at every stage of workforce planning, recruitment, and hiring, it results in a pool of high-quality applicants. The guidance suggests that agencies encourage hiring managers to work with HR professionals to identify subject-matter experts who can improve and support agency qualification processes, including through the use of structured resume reviews.
  • Strengthening Talent Teams. The guidance encourages agencies to create and sustain empowered agency Talent Teams to enable strategic recruitment and innovative hiring actions, including the use of assessments and shared hiring actions, and to recommend additional hiring tools to effectively recruit and assess candidates with critical specialized skills.
  • Encouraging Flexible Rating and Ranking Approaches. The guidance encourages the use of any rating and ranking method allowed by law and regulation and appropriate for the given hiring action when initiating a competitive recruitment action, giving hiring managers more control in designing hiring processes relevant to their talent needs.
  • Streamline Information Sharing and Data Use. Practices include:
    • Developing automation tools to streamline sharing of information regarding applicants within and between agencies, to the extent allowable; and
    • Prioritizing resources that aid agency strategic hiring efforts by providing timely, accessible analytics, including with regard to the use of agency-led assessments and shared certificates to streamline recruitment, to the extent allowable.

Agencies will be asked to track and share their progress on improving the hiring experience and present results on the implementation of this memorandum at the quarterly workforce meetings of the President’s Management Council.

In addition, OMB, OPM, and other agencies are undertaking related initiatives:

  • Reducing Applicant Burden. OMB’s U.S. Digital Service in partnership with OPM will conduct a retrospective review on recent pooled hiring actions and will provide a set of recommendations on ways to increase adoption and minimize barriers for applicants and agencies.
  • Investing in USAJOBS Product Enhancements to Ease Applicant Experience. OMB will work with OPM to support priority product enhancements to the USAJOBS tools suite, including conducting and incorporating user research.
  • Modeling Strategic Recruitment. The Office of the National Cyber Director in partnership with OMB, OPM, and other agency partners will kick off a “Service for America” engagement campaign to apply hiring experience practices focused on technology, AI, and cybersecurity as mission critical occupations.
  • Supporting the Hiring Experience of Military and Veteran Spouses, Caregivers and Survivors. Joining Forces, in coordination with Federal agencies and the Presidential Innovation Fellowship Program, will develop a journey map of the hiring experience for military and veteran spouses, caregivers, and survivors applying for federal jobs.
  • Improving Recruitment and Hiring for The Acquisition Workforce. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy will explore possible ways to enhance the recruiting and hiring experience in the acquisition workforce.
  • Improving Information Sharing. OMB and OPM are working to curate a centralized position description library for use when scoping roles and positions, and to launch a hiring data and dashboard group to explore expanded approaches to evidence-based hiring metrics for us by hiring managers and HR professionals.

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