Agencies need better ways to assess job candidates, report says

Federal agencies need better tools to judge potential hires, according to a new Merit Systems Protection Board study. When Congress amended the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act six years ago, it decentralized federal hiring, giving the Office of Personnel Management authority to let federal agencies hire their own employees through the use of Delegated Examining Unites (DEUs). The 684 DEUs in the government today select and develop assessment tools, perform assessments and refer job candidates to selecting officials. According to MSPB's report "Assessing Federal Job Seekers in a Delegated Examining Environment," effective assessments tools, such as writing tests, interviews and resumes, are critical to merit-based hiring. "Poor assessment approaches can contribute to poor selection decisions," the report said. In turn, poor hiring decisions ultimately lead to increased costs, the report said. For example, it costs money to train an unskilled employee, to spend extra time supervising a poor hire, to re-do someone's work, to do the work of an unproductive employee and to fire an employee whose work does not meet agency standards. "By investing in better methods for assessing job candidates, there probably is not an agency that would not realize long-term savings," the report said. But MSPB found that the quality of the candidate assessments varies across the government. Small agencies that hire infrequently do not have, and often cannot afford, high-quality assessment tools. Also, managers often have to decide between hiring the best person and hiring the best person as quickly as possible, thus putting merit-based hiring at risk, MSPB said. "Before [managers] resort to selecting from among shallow or meager applicant pools, they should do everything possible to improve both the number and the quality of applicants in those pools," the report said. The report also cautioned managers not to use a new employee's probationary period, the time when new employees can be fired with few appeal rights, as an assessment tool. Good assessment tools should eliminate candidates during the hiring process, not after it, the report said. "A high financial and emotional cost is often paid by the employee who fails to satisfactorily complete the probationary period," the report said. "Time and resources spent on the initial recruitment and selection process will have to be repeated and a low return will be realized on the salary and time spent on each probationary employee who has to be removed." To ensure examining units use the best tools available when choosing employees, the Office of Personnel Management should find out how many agencies can't afford to develop good assessment tools, then work to help those agencies, MSPB recommended. According to the report, OPM should also:

• Create an environment in which examining units can use assessment tools regardless of agency size or frequency in hiring.
• Identify skills that are important to measure for different jobs and different grade levels and develop tools to assess those skills.
• Focus attention on how well examining units observe OPM's regulatory requirement to ensure assessment tools are effective.
• Review automated staffing systems to ensure they comply with merit system rules.
• Ensure managers use the probationary period as a last resort when assessing employees.