§3319 Competitive service; selection using category rating

Summary

Lets agencies use category ratings instead of giving each job applicant a numeric score. The Office of Personnel Management (or an agency it gives authority to) can group applicants into two or more quality categories. Within each category, people with hiring preference (like many veterans) are listed before others. For most jobs, qualified preference-eligible veterans with a service-connected disability of 10 percent or more must be put in the highest category, except for scientific and professional jobs at GS–9 or higher. A hiring official can pick anyone in the highest category. If fewer than 3 people are in the highest category, the official can pick from a merged group of the top two categories. A hiring official can share a list of eligibles with another hiring official only if the job announcement said the list might be used that way. The other hiring official may hire from the same job series and a similar grade, but must notify their own employees, give them up to 10 business days to apply, and review their applications. You cannot skip over a preference-eligible in the same category unless the law’s special rules for passing over preference-eligibles are met. If a preference-eligible has already been passed over for good reasons, they may be skipped for later hires; if passed over three times from a standing register, their certification can stop but they must get advance notice. Each agency that starts a category rating system must send Congress a report in each of the 3 years after it begins. The report must show how many people were hired, how the system affected hiring of veterans and certain minority groups (American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander), and how managers were trained. The Office of Personnel Management can write rules needed to run this system.