The State Department is bringing new talent onboard through a hiring process that’s gaining momentum across the government. They are one of the latest agencies to launch a Subject-Matter Expert Qualification Assessment (SME-QA) pilot focused on hiring grant management specialists and foreign affairs officers.
The State Department launched its SME-QA pilot to hire grants management specialists at the GS-12 level and GS-13 Foreign Affairs Officers. By the end of the pilot, the State Department made more than 70 new hires through one hiring action.
The SME-QA process is meant to address some of the biggest hurdles in the federal hiring process. The SMEQA process puts candidates through multiple stages of review to determine their experience and skill level. Subject matter experts also work with the agency’s human capital offices to conduct those reviews.
The U.S. Digital Service developed the SME-QA process to help agencies assess applicants’ qualifications for technical positions. The process has agencies bring in current employees who are experts in a given field to help the human capital office vet and hire candidates.
The agency also brought in employees who have held those positions, or are at a higher grade level to serve as the subject-matter experts for the pilot.
To help increase the diversity and quality of the applicant pool, State developed a strategic recruitment plan for each stage of the pilot. The agency also reached out to industry and professional organizations and sent automatic notices to diversity and affinity groups through its talent acquisition system.
Following resume reviews and structured phone interviews, the State Department developed a certificate of highly qualified candidates, which is a pool of the most candidates deemed most qualified.
It takes more time to prepare an SME-QA hiring announcement than a traditional federal recruitment action, but the agency under the SME-QA pilot was able to hire multiple employees through one hiring action.
At the time of the pilot, one hiring announcement would usually yield one or two hires, and all the remaining qualified candidates could not be further considered for additional vacancies beyond 60 days.
The team shared these SME-QA certificates with more than 70 hiring managers. The agency also modified its internal policy to allow all certificates to remain available for sharing for a full 240 days instead of the 60 days that was previously allowed.
State Department human capital officials said the pilot far exceeded expectations, and helped the agency rethink how it hires new employees across its civil service ranks.
Based on the success of the pilot, the State Department created a new centralized shared certificate team focused on regularly announcing positions for high-volume vacancies that managers can recruit from at department-wide scale.
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