The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has begun a sweeping overhaul of federal hiring practices, launching a lengthy effort to rewrite all 604 occupational series to prioritize skills- and competency-based qualifications.
Under the revised approach, applicants’ qualifications will be determined through formal assessments rather than minimum education requirements or years of experience, according to a blog post from OPM Director Scott Kupor.
This week, OPM rolled out the first updated classifications, which are for the 2210 series of federal information technology positions.
Kupor said the changes are intended to address what he described as an overreliance on credential-based hiring, sometimes referred to as the “sheepskin effect,” in which earning a degree serves as a proxy for ability rather than a direct measure of skills.
“Finding great people takes a lot of time – sourcing, interviewing, evaluating – so we take shortcuts. We look for proxies of skill that might ultimately predict success in the job instead of doing the hard work of truly evaluating the actual skills demonstrated by the applicant and determining their fitness for the task at hand,” Kupor wrote.
“We’d rather rely on a university’s conferral of an academic degree as a shortcut for doing the hard work,” Kupor said, adding that these proxies can exclude qualified applicants who lack formal credentials but possess relevant skills.
As part of the changes, the agency is also eliminating the long-standing practice of allowing candidates to self-attest to their qualifications. Instead, hiring managers will be required to use formal, skills-based assessments to evaluate applicants’ abilities.
For example, Kupor said candidates applying for software development roles will no longer simply indicate expertise in a programming language. They will be required to complete coding assessments to demonstrate competency.
“For the first time, your fitness for the job will be determined via a formal assessment rather than based upon whether you have a bachelor’s degree or some minimum amount of work experience,” Kupor wrote.
Additionally, Kupor announced that during this change, OPM plans to reduce the total number of occupational series by about 25%.
Bipartisan push supports competency focus
The shift toward skills-based hiring has drawn bipartisan support across multiple presidential administrations.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, he signed a 2020 executive order that directed OPM to review job classifications and qualifications, including educational and experience requirements.
In 2024, officials from the Biden administration advanced similar efforts to boost skills-based hiring. The Biden administration also decided to start the transition to a skills-based hiring approach with the 2210 series.
Congress also passed legislation reinforcing the move toward skills-based hiring, underscoring bipartisan interest in reducing reliance on educational attainment as a primary qualification.
Kupor said the broader goal is to ensure hiring decisions are based on demonstrated merit, while improving the government’s ability to attract and appropriately compensate skilled workers.