Trump Administration Ending 19th Century Federal Hiring Rule (1)

The Trump administration is again rewriting the playbook for government hiring, allowing managers to select from a broader list of qualified candidates instead of having to choose from the top three scorers on a competitive exam.

The new rule, published Friday and set to take effect in November, is part of a broader effort to remake the federal workforce and reshape more than 100 years of civil service protocol dating to the presidency of Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant.

The policy replaces what’s long been known as the “rule of three,” under which civil service examiners narrow down a list of qualified applicants for a position while still giving the president and other senior officials the final say.

Scott Kupor, the former Andreessen Horowitz managing partner who now heads the Office of Personnel Management, said the federal hiring process “has been shaped by outdated rules that limited hiring managers’ ability to bring in the best candidates.”

That’s been a bipartisan view. For decades, administrations of both parties have complained that the existing rule was too restrictive. A 2018 defense policy bill called on OPM to “provide federal agencies flexibility in setting the minimum number of candidates who must be considered on a referral list for each vacancy.”

Read: Federal Job Seekers Will Be Quizzed on Trump’s Executive Orders

The change will also give hiring managers more latitude on which job candidates they exclude — allowing them to eliminate applicants if they’re passed over more than three times for the same position.

Separately, some of the hiring changes President Donald Trump has backed have drawn opposition for being too political, including having OPM add essay questions that include asking about a job applicant’s favorite executive orders.

The latest revision unfolds as Trump has charged Kupor with overhauling a federal workforce that he says is unaccountable.

In his first months in office, Trump has sought to remove career job protections from tens of thousands of federal employees, strip collective bargaining rights from national security employees and fire workers who are still serving their initial probationary periods after getting hired.

Among the supporters of the latest change is the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering the federal workforce founded by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

“By offering hiring managers alternative methods to narrow down qualified candidates, agencies can fine tune selection methods to the specific needs of their agency and broaden the candidate pool for key positions,” the alliance’s president, Sara Mogulescu, said in public comments on the rule.

(Adds guidelines published and link to report in second paragraph.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Gregory Korte in Washington at gkorte@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net

John Harney

© 2025 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.