As part of its study, MSPB surveyed HR staff on a range of questions including why competitive examination was not used to fill a vacancy. The most common response was that there were plenty of qualified internal candidates, but the second-most commonly cited reason, by 38 percent, was that the hiring manager already had someone in particular in mind to fill the vacancy.
“In response to a different question on our survey, 79 percent of HR staff reported a perception that at least some of the time management had someone in mind to fill the position prior to advertising the vacancy,” MSPB said. In one unnamed agency, 92 percent of them said managers had someone in mind at least some of the time, “which can be perceived as pre-selection.”
“While it is not illegal for a manager to be impressed by the quality of employees that he or she has personally observed, hiring managers need to ensure they are not tailoring the job, announcement, assessment, or any other part of the hiring process to favor a particular candidate. Valuable and job-related [knowledge, skills and abilities], and other characteristics that may be held by individuals can and should be deliberately sought—specific individuals cannot and should not be deliberately sought,” it said.
MSPB also examined the related issue of whether agencies are using techniques that effectively prevent block out veterans. Twenty-eight percent of the surveyed HR staff said they have avoided competitive examination because a veteran may “block the list” and 24 percent reported that veterans’ preference hampered their ability to hire the most qualified applicant.
“However, hiring managers and HR staff should not limit a vacancy’s area of consideration in order to circumvent this long-standing public policy goal of providing preference to veterans in Federal hiring,” MSPB said.
Further, MSPB said, agencies may post vacancies only for a short time to limit qualified candidates from outside—one agency accepts applications for two-thirds of its vacancies for less than two weeks and overall just a third of announcements are open only that long—in which case “an outside observer may wonder if fair and open competition is suffering.”
The report is here: http://www.mspb.gov/netsearch/viewdocs.aspx?docnumber=1118751&version=1123213&application=ACROBAT
