Trump's New Hiring Plan

The Trump administration has announced a "merit hiring plan." Of course this is partly an attack in DEI, but there is much more to it. The "key elements" are stated as follows:

1. Reforming the Federal recruitment process to ensure that only the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans are hired to the Federal service;
2. Implementing skills-based hiring, eliminating unnecessary degree requirements, and requiring the use of rigorous, job-related assessments to ensure candidates are selected based on their merit and competence, not their skin color or academic pedigree;
3. Streamlining and improving the job application process; and
4. Reducing time-to-hire to under 80 days by emphasizing the use of talent pools and shared certificates and streamlining the background check process.

The push to reduce degree requirements has been around for more than a decade now, and states like Florida and Texas have also tried to "elminate unnecessary degree requirements." People who have studied those state policies say, though, that while degrees may not be required, they are still a decisive advantage in actual hiring choices.

People who claim insider knowledge say that in part this is a deliberate attack on any kind of "disparate impact" standard. That legal doctrine made it hard to employ a variety of tests, because black people scored lower on them; the intent here is to bring back IQ testing and civil service exams. Again, this is framed in part as an attack on education credentials, but people who have been to college score much higher on such tests, so that aim will not be achieved.

I think the assumption is that this process will help white people, but that is almost certainly not true; if they really hire by test results and patriotism, Hmong and Filipino immigrants will stomp all over white applicants.

The plan has goals, of course, which are mostly nebulous. But these two stand out:

1. Prioritize recruitment of individuals committed to improving the efficiency of the Federal government, passionate about the ideals of our American republic, and committed to upholding the rule of law and the United States Constitution;
2. Prevent the hiring of individuals based on their race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling to defend the Constitution or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch;

I would say that at present it is absolutely impossible to both "faithfully serve the Executive Branch" and "uphold the United States Constitution," and I think I know which the administration really cares about.

There still seem to be some DOGE folks around, giving us goals like:

Integrate modern technology to support the recruitment and selection process, including the use of data analytics to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities in hiring, as well as leveraging digital platforms to improve candidate engagement.

I am very much in favor of changing the Federal hiring process. It is woefully bureaucratic, intensely political, and otherwise broken. Many Federal jobs are advertised only for applicants already working for the agency in question – this is true for all National Park Service archaeology jobs beyond "Archaeology Intern" – but that isn't necessarily because they want to exclude outsiders. The process of advertising an "open" position and reviewing all the applicants it would draw is just so cumbersome that nobody has time for it. Even if the posting is limited to internal applicants jobs can still take a year to fill.

A shared background check process would also be a huge boon, especially if it were publicized so that job applicants would know what documentation they're going to need.

I think we can see here both the promise and the huge problem with the Trump administration. There is a willingness to make changes, and the government could use a lot of changes. There is a glee in tossing out racial preferences, which are highly unpopular with Americans. There is a lot of rhetoric about replacing political intrigue with the pursuit of excellence.

But who believes them? I don't. I think their motives are entirely political, and none of them give a damn about how the government actually works. Because of this, they have no incentive, and no ability, to work through the hard problem of government reform. Once they have achieved their basic goal of ending anything that smacks of anti-white bias, they will lose interest and move on to something else that will get more clicks and likes from their fans.