Summary

The American government's strength increasingly depends on its technological capabilities, yet its hiring processes actively prevent it from hiring essential technical talent. While private sector companies can quickly hire skilled workers, federal agencies' bureaucratic processes deter qualified candidates, particularly in critical areas like artificial intelligence, semiconductor policy, and cybersecurity.

We propose reforming federal hiring through improved assessments and streamlined authorities. These changes would enable agencies to build the technical workforce needed to effectively implement defense, innovation, and industrial policy. By modernizing its hiring practices, the US government can position itself to lead through the technological revolutions that will define this century.

Problem

The US government's technological capabilities increasingly determine its global competitiveness and national security, yet current processes actively prevent it from hiring the technical talent it needs.

While private sector technology companies can hire skilled workers in weeks, federal agencies often take six to nine months to fill critical technical roles. This bureaucratic process particularly hurts high-priority programs in artificial intelligence, semiconductor policy, and cybersecurity.

In hiring for technical talent, the US government faces several institutional disadvantages. It often cannot offer competitive compensation and its bureaucracy — including long security clearance timelines — repels technologists accustomed to the entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley. Rigid job classifications and specialized experience requirements limit the candidate pool, as does the federal practice of posting obscurely titled positions that may not be legible to technologists (e.g. calling a technical AI policy role "IT Specialist"). In short, too many tech professionals overlook federal opportunities or are turned off by the process.

Nevertheless, many brilliant private-sector individuals would be interested in making the leap into public sector work, if only the government's hiring process selected them. But impediments to smooth hiring have meant that even willing candidates are left untapped.

Currently, 90 percent of open positions are evaluated by government human resources professionals with no background in the subject-matter for which they are hiring. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidelines require candidates to complete questionnaires about their abilities, and OPM advances candidates who self-report expertise in all domains, without verifying such self-reports. Human resources then looks for similarities between the job description and a candidate's resume to determine whether the applicant is advanced to the next stage. This process selects for those savvy enough to know that government resumes succeed when they closely match the original job description, even if the candidate does not in fact possess the desired skill. After all that, veterans' preference is applied and only the top three resumes are passed on to the hiring manager for consideration — if the hiring manager does not see any resumes suitable for the role, their only hope is to restart the process. The system, designed to foster meritocracy, has turned into a box-checking exercise.

The current system functions so poorly that only 51 percent of the jobs posted on USAJobs lead to hires (and of course not all of those hires are of truly qualified applicants).

Innovation, industrial, and national security policy rely on talented staff. Capable government employees can be the difference between American techno-industrial leadership and billions of dollars of wasted funds. In many cases, qualified staff are the bottleneck.

A February 2025 report from the Government Accountability Office found that workforce challenges were at the heart of many of the "high-risk" challenges to the federal government. Areas for improvement included improving capacity for weapons acquisitions — where the Department of Defense (DOD) struggles to source software engineers and procurement specialists with experience in software — identifying staffing gaps in cybersecurity, and hiring nuclear safety specialists and electrical engineers at the Department of Energy.

Other examples abound. Analysts have identified talent as a critical bottleneck to the success of export controls, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) ability to approve rollouts for AI medical devices, safe adoption of AI in the airline industry, the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act (the National Institute of Standards and Technology was chosen as the bureau to run the program "because of its deep technical expertise"), and even the security of the southern border.

The United States is undertaking its largest-ever investment in technical and industrial capabilities through programs like CHIPS and AI integration in defense systems through initiatives like the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office's (CDAO) AI Rapid Capabilities Cell. These massive investments will succeed or fail based on the government's ability to bring on qualified personnel to implement them effectively.

Solutions are within reach. Programs like Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessments (SME-QA) — initiated during the first Trump administration — demonstrated significant improvements in federal hiring, without hiking salaries. These proven models could be scaled immediately across federal agencies, transforming technical hiring from a liability into a competitive advantage. Early data shows that reformed hiring processes reduced the average selection timeline from 45 to 16 days at the Department of Interior (DOI) while simultaneously improving the quality of hires. With President Trump's return to office, there's a unique opportunity to expand these successful pilots across the federal government while remaining consistent with cost-cutting initiatives.

This combination of urgent need and validated solutions creates a unique window for reform. The government has committed unprecedented resources to technical initiatives — now it must ensure it has the talent to implement them effectively. Without immediate hiring reform, billions in federal investment risk being mismanaged or ineffectively deployed. The tools for improvement exist; they simply need to be deployed at scale.

Solution

Executive

• Process: Agencies should expand the use of pooled hiring to allow hiring managers to share the same certs. While each federal agency currently has the authority to run pooled hiring grounds, the practice should be systematically encouraged, supported, and tracked by OPM.
• Assessment: Agencies, in partnership with OPM, should scale up use of Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessments (SME-QA) to critical hiring rounds for roles requiring significant subject-matter expertise, both political and programmatic.
• Review: OPM should launch an audit of the Delegated Examiners Operating Handbook to identify further efficiencies.

Congressional

• Oversight: Exercise thorough oversight over the 2024 Chance to Compete Act to ensure agency compliance with intent to streamline hiring.

Justification

The proposed reforms build on proven successes while addressing known implementation gaps.

Process: Pooled hiring transforms federal hiring by allowing multiple agencies to tap into a single, high-quality candidate pool simultaneously. When agencies share a certificate of eligibles or "cert" for qualified applicants, they dramatically expand their access to talent while reducing administrative burden. In early 2024, OPM set a goal of facilitating 28 pooled hiring rounds which it hopes will lead to 700 new hires by September 2025. That would be a 25-fold increase in the number of hires for each position listed, massively reducing administrative overhead for each individual hire. But the real power of pooled hiring lies in its network effects: as more agencies participate, the talent pool becomes larger, and qualified individuals are more likely to find a spot across any number of jobs. These dynamics create a virtuous cycle which in turn makes government service more attractive to top candidates. Agencies can also share assessment costs and best practices, making the entire federal hiring system more efficient.

Assessment: Pilot programs at HHS and DOI demonstrated SME-QA's effectiveness in improving technical hiring. Though the process surfaced fewer total qualified candidates, it dramatically increased the proportion of qualified applicants reaching hiring managers (from 0 percent to 52 percent). Meanwhile the hiring time decreased by 63 percent. Most importantly, the process eliminated the problem of unqualified candidates gaming keyword systems — every candidate reaching final review had been vetted by technical experts. These results suggest SME-QA could transform government technical hiring if implemented more widely.

SME-QA is specially useful for pooled hiring, where the returns from up-front investment in the hiring process can pay out for tens of hires at once. Additionally, SME-QA should be considered for individual technical hires when a critical hiring need exists. For even broader adoption, agencies should consider increasing their recruitment capacity (see the Defense Innovation Board's recommendation for SME tech hiring).

Review: At 318 pages, the Delegated Examining Operations Handbook exemplifies the bureaucratic complexity that plagues federal hiring. While some procedures are statutorily required, many are self-imposed executive branch policies that prioritize process over outcomes. A thorough audit could identify numerous opportunities to streamline hiring while maintaining merit principles and fairness. For example, simplifying position classification requirements, reducing documentation burdens, and modernizing assessment tools could significantly accelerate hiring without compromising quality. The handbook should be reimagined as a tool for enabling effective hiring, rather than a barrier to it.

Oversight: The 2024 Chance to Compete Act marks a crucial shift toward skills-based hiring by requiring agencies to prioritize technical assessments over self-reported qualifications. However, implementation will determine its impact. Transitioning to a new assessment system will require upskilling existing HR staff and adopting new systems. Congress should establish clear metrics for success — including on success rates in hiring and proportion of hires made through skills-based assessments — and require quarterly progress reports from agency hiring leads. Additionally, oversight should focus on identifying, celebrating, and scaling successful assessment practices across agencies. By maintaining consistent pressure for reform while highlighting wins, Congress can accelerate the transformation of federal technical hiring.