Washington, D.C. - Today, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a joint memorandum to provide guidance to federal agencies on how to improve the hiring experience for job applicants, managers, and HR professionals.

“We aim to continuously improve the federal government’s ability to recruit, hire, and retain a diverse and skilled workforce to strengthen the way agencies deliver on their missions for the American people,” said OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver. “This memorandum builds on that success and is a culmination of years of data-driven and innovative thinking about the federal hiring experience.”

“Improving government hiring is essential to bringing onboard the next generation of leaders who reflect our mission and possess the skills needed to meet mission and serve the public,” said Volcker Alliance President Sara Mogulescu. “I am glad to see OPM and OMB collaborating to ensure that agencies thoroughly integrate this important suite of hiring reforms into their operations and culture.”

"This memo is a strong step forward in improving the federal hiring experience," said Tech Talent Project Co-Founder and Executive Director Jennifer Anastasoff. "Many tech, data, and AI professionals - and beyond - are eager to serve their country. It's exciting to see the federal government looking to best-in-class recruitment and retention strategies to attract and keep folks who are critical to delivering services, enforcing laws, and protecting our country. This initiative will allow agencies to build the diverse talent pool necessary to meet today's challenges."

The memorandum will provide guidance to federal agencies to:

• Strengthen agency’s strategic workforce planning, recruitment, hiring, and data analytics.
• Improve the federal applicant experience, including expanding recruitment efforts to bring in diverse skills and experiences, and developing improved application processes that are user-friendly, accessible, and efficient for the public.
• Provide hiring managers with tools and training to improve their hiring strategies, processes, and internal customer experience.
• Empower HR professionals with innovative actions and hiring strategies that enable them to recruit, retain, and advance talent to support agency missions, programs and requirements.

To support federal agencies with the implementation of this memorandum, OPM issued the following Fact Sheets on resources and tools:

• Regulations, Policy, and Guidance Resources
• Automation and Analytics Resources
• Training and Support Services

Agencies will be asked to track and share progress on improving the hiring experience and present results on the implementation of this memo to the President’s Management Council. Additionally, OPM will be monitoring progress through key Hiring Experience metrics.

This memo builds upon work OPM has done over the last three years to improve federal agency hiring. For example, OPM has:

• Helped agencies successfully hire over 8,000 targeted federal positions in support of Bipartisan Infrastructure Act implementation. 

• Supplied skills-based assessments, when requested, to agencies in support of quality federal hires, with over 100 available skills and competency-based assessments ready to be used, on-demand. 

• Issued several rules to improve hiring, including a final rule updating the Pathways Programs to enable more early career talent to join government and to facilitate easier conversion to permanent positions. Interim final rules on the College Graduates Hiring Authority and Post-Secondary Hiring Authority further help agencies built their pipeline of talent for the future; a final rule on the 10-year Term Appointment for Certain STEM Professionals allows agencies to make a 10-year term appointment for certain STEM employees for specific roles; and a Reinstatement final rule gives agencies the discretion to reinstate certain former federal employees noncompetitively at any grade level for which the individual is qualified.
  
  
• Made strategic changes to USAJOBS to support hiring, including a redesigned USAJOBS homepage based on job seeker feedback to improve applicant experience, an improved search functionality, publishing a series of videos on how to apply for federal positions, a new functionality in the USAJOBS Agency Talent Portal allowing federal agencies to view and select candidates more easily; and a new Agency Talent Pools feature to support the sharing of certificates across government. 

• Created a new Hiring Experience (HX) Group that is partnering with agency Talent Teams to drive innovative assessment and hiring practices. 

• Created new data dashboards to support talent management and the hiring process.
  
  
• Issued a Talent Surge Playbook and Hiring Authorities Fact Sheet, a Workforce Planning Guide and Workforce of the Future Playbook to support agencies in hiring and workforce planning for the future.
  
  
• Launched key actions supporting the AI Talent Surge to recruit and hire Artificial Intelligence (AI) professionals, including establishing an interagency Tech to Gov Working Group to share best practices and coordinate efforts to hire AI and technical talent, facilitating governmentwide hiring actions for Data Scientists, coordinating a Tech to Gov Forum and Virtual Job Fair focused on AI and AI Enabling talent, granting flexible hiring authorities, issuing pay flexibility guidance for federal agencies to hire AI talent, and issuing Skills-Based Hiring Guidance, Classification Policy, and Competency Model for AI Positions. 

• Updated and published 80 occupation-specific general competency models that serve as resources for agencies to leverage in their skills-based hiring practices. 

• Led cross-government hiring actions in numerous fields including Data Scientist, Budget Analyst, IT Specialist, and Contract Specialist and supported agencies’ increased use of agency shared certificates.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has championed the use of shared certificates to streamline the Government’s hiring process which has helped ensure that it continues to recruit and hire top talent for its mission critical work. “By using shared certificates, we expedite the hiring process by filling vacancies from the shared certificate of candidates who have already completed rigorous assessments and have been determined qualified,” said HHS Chief Human Capital Officer Bob Leavitt.  “Specifically, we hire as many qualified candidates as possible from every solicitation, which reduces hiring timelines and processes.” Over the past four years, HHS has made over 13,000 hires from shared certificates across the Department. “The use of shared certificates is an extraordinary opportunity to improve the federal hiring experience by simplifying and streamlining the hiring process,” said Leavitt. 

OPM continues to support agencies to help drive federal hiring improvements and innovations through its HX Group. In addition to the tools and resources already in-place to support this work, over the next several months OPM will host a hiring manager symposium and additional trainings and webinars for HR professionals and hiring managers to help reinforce the actions and initiatives outlined in the memo. to help reinforce the actions and initiatives outlined in the memo.