Administrative Careers with America (ACWA)
Questions and answers
The Administrative Careers With America (ACWA) rating schedule is a set of online occupational questionnaires used to evaluate applicants' relevant personal, educational, and work experiences. An individual questionnaire takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete.
The questions are related to fundamental competencies, such as Problem Solving and Oral Communication. The questionnaire gives credit for experiences applicants have gained through a wide variety of sources, for example:
- School,
- Volunteer work,
- Military service,
- Paid employment,
- Hobbies, or
- Professional, charitable, religious, community, social, or other organizations
The ACWA rating schedules, or occupational questionnaires, were developed to provide agencies with another option in addition to the written tests for selecting individuals. A separate occupational questionnaire was developed for each of the 111 occupations. The occupational questionnaires assess different competencies from the ACWA written tests and can be used either alone or in combination with the ACWA written tests or a structured interview (see Section C of the Delegated Examining Operations Handbook, http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-authorities/competitive-hiring/deo_handbook.pdf).
More information about ACWA is provided in Chapter 2 of the Delegated Examining Operations Handbook: http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-authorities/competitive-hiring/deo_handbook.pdf
If you would like to find out more about ACWA, please contact Assessment_Information@opm.gov.