Major changes have transformed the federal hiring process through the 2025 Merit Hiring Plan that aims to reduce hiring timelines to under 80 days. The system’s complete overhaul now puts merit, competence, and dedication to American values at its core.
On top of that, this new approach brings several reforms that will affect both current federal employees and future applicants. The OPM hiring process now evaluates job applicants purely on skills and qualifications. Race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin no longer play a role in the evaluation.
The plan includes some controversial elements too. All applicants for GS-5 positions and above must write essays to explain how they will carry out the President’s agenda. These changes took effect in May, along with other updates. Résumés now cannot exceed two pages, and many agencies have dropped their previous self-assessment requirements.
This piece will look at what these changes mean for the merit-based hiring system and how they might affect the process of firing federal employees. You’ll learn to handle this new landscape with confidence.
Understanding the Merit Hiring Plan framework
President Trump signed Executive Order 14170 on January 20, 2025. This order directed a complete overhaul of federal hiring practices. OPM announced the Merit Hiring Plan on May 29, 2025 in response to the Executive Order, and it marked a major change in government employee recruitment and evaluation methods.
Overview of the OPM hiring process changes
The Merit Hiring Plan brings extensive changes to what the administration calls a “broken, insular, and outdated” federal hiring system. The plan wants to make recruitment “more efficient and focused on serving the Nation.” It ensures hiring decisions rest on “merit, practical skill, and dedication to our Constitution.”
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) lists seven goals the plan must achieve:
- Recruit people who want to improve government efficiency and uphold the Constitution
- Stop hiring based on race, sex, or religion
- Add technical and alternative assessments required by the Chance to Compete Act of 2024
- Cut government-wide time-to-hire to under 80 days
- Keep candidates better informed about their application status
- Use modern technology in recruitment
- Make agency leaders take part in implementing new processes
OPM will create a central Talent Team to coordinate implementation across agencies. Each department will have its own Talent Team to lead reforms on the ground. Agency Chief Human Capital Officers must send monthly progress reports starting June 30, 2025. These reports will track recruitment efforts, assessment usage, and hiring timelines.
How merit-based hiring is being redefined
The Merit Hiring Plan completely changes what “merit” means in federal employment. The administration believes federal hiring “long ago abandoned any serious need for technical skills and adherence to the Constitution” and instead “overemphasized discriminatory ‘equity’ quotas”.
The plan removes all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs from hiring, recruiting, training, and promotion. Agencies must stop collecting or sharing workforce demographic data about race, sex, color, religion, or national origin. The plan tells agencies to “take prompt and appropriate disciplinary action” against managers who practice what it calls “unlawful race preferential discrimination”.
Merit now means:
- Hiring based on skills without unnecessary degree requirements
- Job-related assessments that test competence
- Simplified processes with fewer bureaucratic barriers
The plan focuses on recruiting “patriotic Americans.” It targets state and land-grant universities, religious institutions, homeschooling groups, and faith-based organizations—different from previous recruitment targets.
The plan includes several bipartisan reforms from both Trump and Biden administrations. Multiple agencies can hire from the same applicant pool. Resume requirements are simpler. Talent analytics capabilities have expanded.
Critics point out potential issues. New essay requirements for positions at GS-5 and above might add subjective merit measures by testing candidates’ commitment to administration policies. Some question whether these changes will help or hurt federal hiring efficiency.
Elimination of DEI programs and data tracking
The Merit Hiring Plan stopped all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in federal agencies. Departments received orders to “terminate all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, priorities, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear”.
Agencies can no longer collect or share workforce statistics based on race, sex, color, religion, or national origin. This change completely reversed the previous system where demographic data shaped recruitment and retention strategies. Federal departments disbanded their diversity councils. The Department of Education took the lead by dissolving both its Diversity & Inclusion Council and Employee Engagement Diversity Equity Inclusion Accessibility Council.
This change brought substantial financial consequences. The Department of Education alone canceled DEI training and service contracts worth over $2.6 million. The administration placed career staff who worked on DEI initiatives on administrative leave. Agencies had to submit written plans “for executing a reduction-in-force action regarding the employees who work in a DEIA office” by January 31, 2025.
New essay requirements for GS-5 and above
The federal hiring process now includes mandatory essay questions for most positions. Since June 2025, anyone applying for positions at GS-5 or above must answer four short essay prompts. These prompts ask about their:
- Commitment to the Constitution and founding principles
- Ideas for improving government efficiency
- Plans to advance the President’s executive orders and policies
- Personal work ethic and achievements
Responses must stay within 200 words. Applicants must confirm they wrote their answers without help from consultants or artificial intelligence. A scoring system rates essays from 1-5, and low scores might disqualify candidates.
The third question sparked controversy. Rep. Stephen Lynch, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, called it a “blatant loyalty test” and demanded its removal. The American Federation of Government Employees labeled the requirement “a glaring violation of merit principles” that makes “glorification of a political leader” necessary for federal employment.
Recruitment focus on religious and homeschool networks
OPM has completely changed its recruitment strategy. The Merit Hiring Plan tells agencies to build talent pipelines through “targeting recruitment at state and land-grant universities, religious colleges and universities, community colleges, high schools, trade and technical schools, homeschooling groups, faith-based groups, American Legion, 4-H youth programs, and the military, veterans, and law enforcement communities”.
The new strategy excludes historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), tribal colleges, and disability advocacy organizations that were once key recruitment targets. Critics say this selective approach “narrows the pipeline to fit cultural and political molds rather than merit or diversity goals”.
The Department of Education warned schools receiving federal funding to end their diversity initiatives or lose financial support. This warning covers “Title IV, student loans, state funding for curriculum development, free or reduced lunch programs, and support for students with special needs”. The administration’s policy changes reach beyond federal employment to affect institutions that receive government funding.
Operational and compliance challenges
The Merit Hiring Plan’s implementation creates big hurdles as agencies rush to meet new requirements. Federal agencies need to make major operational changes that go beyond just updating policies.
Monthly reporting and data transparency gaps
Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs) will need to send monthly progress reports to OPM and OMB starting June 30, 2025. These reports should track recruitment efforts, assessment usage, time-to-hire metrics, and steps taken to remove discriminatory practices. The reports must show how agencies eliminate DEI initiatives, build recruitment programs that line up with the Merit Hiring Plan, roll out technical assessments, and use shared certificates.
OPM plans to create a federal dashboard to track merit reform compliance. We have a long way to go, but we can build on this progress in data transparency. A 2020 survey showed this is a big deal as it means that 92% of federal managers didn’t know about USAspending.gov, which serves as the government’s main spending transparency tool.
Training HR staff on new procedures
OPM states there’s “an urgent need to upgrade the skills and capabilities of Federal HR professionals” to roll out these workforce reforms. They will run government-wide training sessions about assessment techniques and Merit Hiring Plan compliance.
Training becomes even more crucial especially when you have a federal hiring process that has become “exceedingly slow, complex, confusing and imprecise” over time. HR specialists must become skilled at new procedures while following both old and new rules.
Technology and assessment tool limitations
The reliable infrastructure that supports these changes faces tough constraints. Federal HR systems must meet specific requirements. These include Section 508 compliance, FedRAMP security standards, and authorization protocols that most commercial software doesn’t have.
USAJOBS has seen a huge jump in applicants—from 17.3 million in FY 2013 to 22 million in FY 2015. This puts extra pressure on assessment capabilities. Agencies often lack “the time, resources, and expertise to develop high-quality assessment tools”. Yet the Merit Hiring Plan asks for better ways to evaluate candidates.
This highlights the biggest problem: “automating the hiring process is a waste of time and other vital resources” until organizations can tell the difference between candidates of varying quality.
How federal employees and unions can respond
Federal employees have voiced their concerns about changes to the federal hiring process. Legal experts and union representatives now suggest specific actions to protect worker rights and maintain fair practices.
Filing EEOC complaints and legal reviews
Federal employees who face discrimination have specific rights under Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regulations. Employees must reach out to an EEO Counselor at their agency within 45 calendar days of the alleged discriminatory action. The counseling phase takes 30 days, while Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) can extend up to 90 days.
Employees can file a formal complaint if these original steps don’t solve the issue. The agency gets 180 days to finish its investigation. After that, employees can ask for a hearing before an EEOC Administrative Judge or request an agency decision.
Union representatives suggest getting an independent legal review if you think new hiring practices violate constitutional or employment laws. The American Federation of Government Employees has clearly stated that “federal employees should be hired based on their ability to do the job and their commitment to following the Constitution and other laws – not on their allegiance to any one president”.
Conclusion
The 2025 Merit Hiring Plan marks a major change in federal employment practices, the biggest we’ve seen in decades. Federal workers now face a system without DEI initiatives. They must write essays and meet new merit standards. These changes impact everyone in government agencies.
Supporters say these reforms will make hiring faster and focus on core skills. However, critics point to real issues with constitutional rights, equal opportunity, and civil service becoming too political. The new essay questions about presidential policies have created tension among job seekers.
Federal employees concerned about these changes have several paths forward. They can file EEOC complaints, work with their unions, or join independent monitoring groups to ensure accountability. At the same time, agencies struggle to put new assessment tools in place and train their core team on updated procedures.
These reforms will prove successful only if they speed up hiring without violating constitutional rights or shutting out qualified candidates. The goal to reduce hiring time to under 80 days looks promising, yet questions linger about whether personal judgment can pick the best candidates.
The government workforce needs to watch this new system carefully. The next few months will show if these changes actually improve efficiency or just swap old problems for new ones.
