The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently shared new guidance in support of Executive Order (EO) 13932 - Modernizing and Reforming the Assessment and Hiring of Federal Job Candidates. That EO is aimed at helping managers hire the best and most qualified talent for positions, and helping agencies transition to “skills-based” hiring assessments. The goal is to move away from an over-reliance on degrees and occupational questionnaires as a proxy for ability.

OPM offered the following guidance:

• An updated General Schedule Qualifications Operating Manual to help agencies improve hiring by using minimum qualification requirements and competency-based assessments. This 51 page manual details the description and application of qualifications standards.

• Qualifications, Assessment, and Hiring FAQs, including the most frequent policy questions OPM has received related to the EO. This is a 13 page document including questions such as waivers or modifications of OPM qualification standards, the steps to effective personnel assessment, and more.

• A Guide to Developing Better Occupational Questionnaires to help agency HR professionals develop better and more rigorous occupational questionnaires as part of their assessment process. This is a 49 page document with detailed information on conducting a job analysis, different types of rating scales, and other tools for better occupational questionnaires.

The documents linked above can also be found on our website at: fedmanagers.org/Resources-and-Links. FMA is continuing to work with the administration and legislators on modernizing and reforming federal hiring, and will share additional information as we receive it.