Federal Managers Association
FMA Working for You
- FMA Supports OPM's Proposed "Rule of Many" for Recruitment and Selection - July 28, 2023
Recruitment and Selection Through Competitive Examination, and Employment in the Excepted Service (Rule of Many)
Last week the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) proposed a new rule on the federal register regarding hiring for federal agencies. All comments are due on or before September 19, 2023, and FMA plans to provide comments in support of the proposed rule. We welcome hearing from you about any concerns you may have. Additionally, you are invited to comment directly to OPM if you are inclined to do so.
Here is a short summary of the proposed rule:
As agencies use more rigorous and skills-based assessments, the “rule of many” provides more effective selection and a finer distinction among highly qualified candidates using scores generated by those assessments. For many years agencies have been assessing candidates and placing them into general categories where the candidates were of equal quality within the category.
Under the “rule of many” procedures, an agency is not limited to making selections from the highest level or group of the general categories (I.e., category rating), or considering a specific number of candidates, as was the case with the “rule of three”. Instead, this change allows agencies to certify a sufficient number of names to meet their hiring needs (using a cut-off score or other mechanism established by OPM).
This change will give hiring managers more flexibility and hard data to make the best selection for an open position.
You can view the proposed rule here: