OPM outlines merit hiring plan, new SES process ahead of hiring freeze end

The Office of Personnel Management released two guidance documents Thursday outlining its plan for the hiring and recruitment of federal workers, roughly a month-and-a-half before the administration’s hiring freeze is set to lift.

In its Merit Hiring Plan, the administration detailed steps to reform the hiring process, including ending consideration of race and ethnicity in the hiring, recruitment, and retention cycle and “recruiting patriotic Americans.” And, in a separate document, OPM moved to change the recruitment process for the Senior Executive Service, which includes senior managers and leaders across the federal government.

The two memos come as the government prepares for the July 15 lift of President Donald Trump’s freeze on hiring in civilian government roles. While Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency team have moved quickly to reshape the government, that work has been focused on firing workers, restructuring agencies, eliminating functions, and canceling grants and contracts. 

By contrast, the new OPM memos provide a profile of the federal workers the Trump administration actually wants within its ranks and how it wants to hire them.

OPM’s merit-based hiring memo regurgitates anti-diversity, equity and inclusion language that has been a staple of nearly all communications and policies since Trump took office in January. Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell and Vince Haley, assistant to the president for domestic policy, write in the memo that an “overly complex Federal hiring system overemphasized discriminatory ‘equity’ quotas and too often resulted in the hiring of unfit, unskilled bureaucrats.”

Ezell, an OPM branch chief in Macon, Ga., before being plucked by Trump to lead the government’s personnel agency, and Haley, a longtime Republican operative, referred in their memo to previous Trump executive orders on merit hiring. This memo and those EOs bar “racial quotas and preferences in Federal hiring, recruitment and promotion” as well as DEI “programs in hiring, recruiting, interviewing, training, professional development, internships, fellowships, promotion, and retention,” programs that they say “must end immediately.”

The memo demands that agencies stop “using statistics on race, sex, ethnicity or national origin” in personnel decisions, and no longer disseminate information about “the composition of the agency’s workforce based on race, sex, color, religion, or national origin.”

Trump has wasted no time in his second term in gutting the federal workforce, overseeing the job losses of tens of thousands of Americans. The federal firings directed by Trump and DOGE, the Elon Musk-created tech group, have spared no agency or type of worker, from veterans to PhDs. At the same time, Trump has stocked his administration with individuals best known for Fox News appearances. 

Other callouts in the OPM memo on hiring pay lip service to leveraging the agency’s HR team, with a focus on the recruitment of STEM talent and veterans — priorities that the previous administration also pursued. 

Ezell and Haley say they intend to reform the candidate ranking and selection process “to emphasize merit and competence,” and implement skills-based hiring while eliminating some degree requirements — initiatives the Biden White House also undertook.

Self-assessments would be eliminated under OPM’s new edict, while technical or alternative assessments would be explored. The agency aims to improve the job application process and reduce the hiring time to 80 days, according to the memo.

Applicants at GS-05 levels and above would be required to answer four essay questions: one about personal work ethic, one about how to make the government more efficient, one about commitment to the Constitution, and one about how applicants would “help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities.”

The memo contains seven references to the recruitment of “patriotic Americans.”

The White House has stated that once the hiring freeze ends, agencies will be allowed to hire only one worker for every four who have left government service, with some exceptions. It also said that once a merit hiring plan is adopted, hirings that were exempted from the freeze must be consistent with the new plan.

For the SES roles, the new guidance from Ezell seeks to streamline a traditionally cumbersome process by nixing requirements such as 10-page narrative essays. “Instead, they shall adopt a resume-only initial application method, with resumes capped at 2 pages,” Ezell wrote. The resume-only requirement is effective immediately and the 10-page essay will be replaced with structured interviews.

The document also altered the core qualifications for SES roles to reflect Trump administration policies and “eliminate DEI factors,” per the memo.

Those new core qualifications now include “driving efficiency” and “merit and competence” in the mix. A qualification titled “results driven” also appears to have been tweaked to “achieving results” and “leading people” was maintained. Previous qualifications on “leading change,” “business acumen” and “building coalitions” were eliminated.  

SES employees will also be subject to new training under the memo via “an 80-hour video-based program that provides training regarding President Trump’s Executive Orders and other matters necessary to ensure that SES officials uphold the Constitution and the rule of law and effectively serve the American people.”

That training will be developed by OPM, Ezell’s memo said.