Why The Federal Hiring Process Keeps Changing
Successfully getting hired for a job with the federal government often appears to outsiders (i.e., those who do not work for Uncle Sam’s civil service workforce) to be an impenetrable morass, creating barriers and obstacles for smart, well-qualified people to become federal employees (many of whom are likely to be employed there for decades).
For decades, the federal government attempted to streamline this morass by using massive, centralized testing programs. The most famous was the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE), a uniform yardstick used to rank applicants across the board. However, the era of the “one-size-fits-all” entrance exam is effectively over—and it’s not coming back—at least in the foreseeable future.
Another problem, as highlighted in a narrative by OPM Director Scott Kupor, who oversees human resources for the federal government, is the extreme decentralization of HR services and technology across the government.
There are currently over 100 unique core human capital management systems across the federal government. As OPM described in a request for proposal from May of last year, this “patchwork of aging, siloed systems . . . . suffer from significant functional and architectural limitations.” Among other things, these systems “do not reliably validate or audit changes, cannot properly sequence concurrent personnel actions, and often propagate incorrect data across records — creating widespread downstream effects on payroll, benefits, and employee entitlements.” These systems are also very costly to maintain.
That is just on the systems side. HR services across government are also siloed, decentralized, and very expensive. At the beginning of the Trump Administration, there were nearly 42,000 HR employees governmentwide costing $5.4 billion in hard-earned taxpayer dollars annually. The ratio of HR professionals to employees in the federal government is almost double the private sector average. And often, agency HR office have little visibility into what is happening within the agency’s components.
There is now a shift toward a more flexible, skills-based system—one that mirrors the private sector. It is the result of decades of legal challenges, policy shifts, and a need for specialized talent.
The Legacy of PACE and the Luevano Decree
To understand why federal hiring looks the way it does today, the legal collapse of the old testing model is the obvious starting point. In 1981, the Luevano v. Campbell consent decree fundamentally changed the landscape, as pointed out by OPM Director Scott Kupor.
The lawsuit alleged that the PACE exam had a discriminatory “adverse impact” on Black and Hispanic applicants, leading to a court-mandated phase-out of the test.
In an attempt to replace PACE while satisfying the decree, the government introduced Administrative Careers for America (ACWA). While ACWA used both written tests and “Rating Schedules” (which considered education and experience), it eventually met a similar fate. By the mid-2000s, OPM also began de-emphasizing ACWA, finding it too rigid and generic for the complexities of modern government work.
Today, OPM has moved entirely away from these legacy systems because they:
- Failed the “Job-Related” Test: They were often too generic to assess the technical skills needed for specific roles.
- Stifled Diversity: As highlighted by the Luevano decree, broad standardized tests can unintentionally exclude qualified candidates.
- Slowed the System: Centralized exams created massive administrative bottlenecks.
What Replaced the Old Exams: A Private-Sector Model
Instead of a single, government-wide exam, federal hiring now relies on a multi-step evaluation process that focuses on skills, competencies, and job fit.
1. Tailored Assessments via USA Hire
The closest modern equivalent to a general exam is USA Hire, but it is far from a universal test. It is a modular platform where agencies select specific “assessment batteries”—such as reasoning, situational judgment, or behavioral exercises—that align with the job description.
2. Skills Over Pedigree
Following the lead of major private-sector employers, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is championing skills-based hiring. This moves the focus away from just educational credentials or years of experience and toward:
- Work Samples: Performing a task related to the job.
- Job Simulations: Testing how a candidate reacts in a real-world work environment.
- Competency Evaluations: Proving specific “know-how” rather than just listing a degree.
3. Structured Interviews
The “informal chat” has been replaced by structured interviews. This means every candidate is asked the same standardized questions and scored against defined criteria. This mirrors corporate best practices to ensure consistency and reduce individual hiring manager bias.
4. Beyond Self-Ratings
For years, the federal system relied on self-assessment questionnaires where applicants graded their own skills (often leading to inflated scores). These are now being supplemented or replaced by objective, validated testing tools to ensure a candidate’s claimed expertise matches their actual ability.
Where DEI and Merit Meet
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are a key part of this evolution, but they are not the only story. The lessons learned from the Luevano decree showed that moving away from generic exams toward job-related assessments naturally creates a more equitable playing field rather than forcing predetermined outcomes based on race or cultural groups.
By focusing on what a candidate can do for a specific role—rather than how they perform on a broad aptitude test—the government upholds merit system principles while simultaneously reducing barriers for a diverse range of qualified applicants.
Why This Shift Is Permanent
The federal government is now in direct competition with the private sector for top-tier talent. To win, they have adopted the private sector’s playbook for:
- Speed: Modern assessments reduce the time-to-hire.
- Accuracy: Evaluating performance, not just test-taking ability, leads to better job fit.
- Legal Defensibility: Validated, job-specific tools are more robust against legal challenges than past exams.
The Bottom Line
The era of the single, government-wide entrance exam is over. PACE and ACWA have been replaced by a system that is more complex, more targeted, and more aligned with how the world’s most successful companies hire. For applicants, success now depends on demonstrating real-world skills; for agencies, it hopefully will result in a more accurate way to build a modern, high-performing workforce.
