Assessment Strategy

Customize the assessment strategy template and upload it to your case file before posting the job announcement.

Participants
  • HR Specialist
  • Hiring Manager
Time

2-4 hours

HR Outcomes
  • Completed assessment strategy document, with appendices.

Toolkit

The assessment strategy describes the intended process for each phase of your hiring action, including how job analysis was conducted and the results, what you'll describe to applicants in your job announcement, how you'll conduct resume reviews and phone assessment interviews, and how you'll issue certificates. This information will be useful to auditors reviewing this hiring action.

The authority for SME-QA

Read OPM reference materials on the ability of agencies to use this assessment strategy.

Keep it legal: What not to do

  • Do not set quotas for the maximum number of applicants who may pass from one phase to another.
  • If you have more than one interview then they must measure two different things. This allows you to disqualify applicants from the second interview if they don't pass the first. For example:
    • "Breadth of knowledge" and "depth of knowledge"
    • Core competencies and specialty competencies
    • First half of competencies and second half of competencies
  • In order to use a pass/fail assessment, you must explain this to applicants in the "How You Will Be Evaluated" section of your job announcement. Once the announcement is posted, you cannot change this process.
  • Any pass/fail assessment, including structured interviews, must be developed with SMEs in coordination with Agency HR Specialists with measurement expertise, and/or Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychologists if available, in order validate the assessments.
  • If you are hiring using a Direct Hire Authority and using the SME-QA process, you may not assign category ratings or apply veterans' preference. Instead, SME resume review and structured interviews are all pass/fail against the minimum qualification bar only.
  • If you are hiring using Merit Promotion and using the SME-QA process, you must first look at your collective bargaining agreement and/or merit promotion plan to see if they are consistent with the SME-QA process.
  • In order to prevent bias in the selections process, Hiring Managers who are selecting officials on the hiring action should not serve as SMEs for assessments with passing scores. It's also best if hiring managers not serve as SMEs in resume review, but this is sometimes hard to avoid.