The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has released a new “handbook” for Federal agencies that encourages them to focus more on a job candidate’s skills as opposed to whether or not they received a certain educational degree.
OPM published the Federal Workforce Competency Initiative (FWCI) Competency Handbook on Thursday – along with an updated competency library – that Federal agencies can refer to for a broad set of government occupational series.
The FWCI is a governmentwide effort led by OPM that updates a selection of general competencies, or skills, from OPM’s MOSAIC (Multipurpose Occupational Systems Analysis Inventory – Closed-Ended) studies. These competencies will support the expanding use of skills-based hiring across the Federal government, according to OPM.
“OPM will continue to support agencies and collect critical data that strengthens our workforce and enables us to deliver services for the American people,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a press statement. “This update to the Federal Workforce Competency Initiative will help agencies hire the talent they need and expand opportunities for positions that do not require certain degrees.”
The handbook includes job-specific competency models for 80 select occupational series by grade. Within each job category, agencies can find a list of skills that OPM has confirmed to be applicable or useful.
In developing the handbook, OPM conducted a governmentwide survey to identify critical skills for 214 occupational series. Over 90,000 Federal employees and supervisors from over 300 job series provided input for the development of the general competency models.
“Agencies are responsible for conducting job analyses for work responsibilities outside the identified series and grades in this handbook,” the handbook says. “Similarly, agencies must determine the applicability of these competencies to positions that do not perform the full range of work within the identified series.”
OPM issued similar guidance on skills-based hiring last year, implementing a Trump-era executive order that instructs agencies to expand skill-based hiring and decrease reliance on educational accomplishments and self-assessments to evaluate prospective employees.
Additionally, skills-based hiring aligns with the President’s Management Agenda’s (PMA) priority to strengthen and empower the Federal workforce.
There are other pushes for skills-based hiring underway across the Biden administration, including for cybersecurity jobs as outlined in the White House’s National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy (NCWES).
The strategy encourages skills-based hiring and workforce development in order to expand and enhance the national cyber workforce.
There have also been calls for skills-based hiring in recent legislation, such as in the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., introduced the bill earlier this year, which would put in place a Federal workforce hiring policy that places greater emphasis on prospective employees’ work experience, rather than their educational credentials.
Specifically, the legislation would shift evaluations of prospective Federal employees to a skills-based assessment, and allow for agencies to share these assessments with each other – an effort that promotes efficiency and cross-agency hiring.
