Exclusive: White House rolling out new "merit-based" federal hiring plans
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After firing more than 100,000 people, the White House is sending out new "merit-based" guidelines for hiring federal workers, implementing a law passed with bipartisan support last year.
Why it matters: The Merit Hiring Plan released to agencies Thursday afternoon by the Office of Personnel Management — the administration's HR department, basically — is a major overhaul to how the federal government hires employees.
- It also explicitly orders agencies not to take race and gender into consideration in hiring.
Catch up quick: The memo implements a law, the Chance to Compete Act, that was so noncontroversial it passed the Senate in late 2024 with no opposition.
- "These ideas have been around for a while, but hadn't been done in a comprehensive way," an OPM official told Axios.
Between the lines: What surely will be more controversial is the memo's provisions furthering the White House push to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
- Agencies are ordered to immediately stop releasing data on workforce demographics, and to stop hiring people based on race and gender.
- That data was key, proponents say, to understanding if there was widespread discrimination in hiring practices. The numbers will still be collected, just not released.
- At its core, merit- and skills-based hiring is considered to be a key method to recruiting a diverse workforce.
- Some of the policies described in the memo are also in line with typical DEI practices — like having interviewers ask a standardized set of questions to applicants to better provide an objective evaluation.
The idea here that has widespread support is to speed up and improve the hiring process to take less time — under 80 days is the goal.
- Instead of evaluating applicants merely on education, hiring managers are meant to look at skills — a big talking point in the tech industry, in particular.
One of the key changes is how job candidates are assessed. Currently, they fill out "self-assessments," a widely criticized practice, where applicants rate themselves on their experience and knowledge.
- Going forward assessments will look at actual skills — either in interviews or using different tests.
By the numbers: The push to speed hiring follows an aggressive push to fire people.
- The White House doesn't have an official tally, but since Trump came to office about 59,000 workers have been fired, and 76,000 took buyouts, according to the New York Times tally. (Some workers were reinstated, per court orders.)
- Another 150,000 cuts are planned.
The bottom line: "The government obviously is gonna hire again," the OPM official says.
