By Richard Johnstone on 16/04/2026 | Updated on 16/04/2026
Image by Satheesh Sankaran via Pixabay
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has set out new skills and competency standards for the US federal government that aim to make it easier for those without degrees to get government jobs.
The updated guidance, set out by OPM director Scott Kupor, is intended to move the US government from relying on degree classifications to “truly evaluating the actual skills demonstrated by the applicant and determining their fitness for the task at hand”.
Setting out the changes in a blog, Kupor said that the OPM was determined to hire for merit, and that proxies for this – such as degree qualifications and minimum work experience – were imperfect.
“So, we have begun a (too) lengthy process of re-writing all 604 federal occupational series – yes, there are really 604 – to ensure that any of these imperfect proxies for merit do not serve as gating mechanisms, and that skills-and competency-based hiring methods may be used to determine position qualifications.”
He added that the government aims to reduce the total number of series by at least 25%.
Read more: US government sets out merit hiring plan in line with Trump priorities
The first of the new job classifications developed by the OPM – for technical IT-related jobs in the federal government – has now been launched. “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 said.
He said that this change is based on meeting the Trump administration’s focus on merit-based hiring in the civil service.
Last June, the government set out a new hiring plan for the federal workforce with an objective to recruit “the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans” to work for government, providing guidance to departments and agencies on how to implement Donald Trump’s presidential order on reforming the federal hiring process.
Government ‘should not refuse college dropouts’
In the blog post this week, Kupor said “I hope it’s non-controversial that hiring decisions should be made on demonstrated merit”.
He added: “Relying on proxies for merit is unfair to candidates who may be well-qualified for the job based on their skills yet may have had the misfortune of being born into the wrong zip code.”
He said government “should not refuse to hire college dropouts, unless dropping out of college is somehow representative of their ability to work successfully on behalf of the American people”.
“If they are in fact world-class engineers, then we should pay them at the level at which they are performing versus force-fitting them into a lower pay level because they have no prior work experience.”