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By Natalie Alms
The push to focus on skills-based hiring for federal jobs dates back to the first Trump administration. The Biden White House has continued these efforts.
The General Services Administration will be using a skills-based hiring approach for IT cybersecurity jobs in its planned Polaris and Alliant 3 governmentwide contracts, the White House announced Wednesday.
Skills-based hiring is a method that de-emphasizes requirements for educational degrees and years of experience for jobs where they’re not necessary, instead stressing the use of testing for actual skills needed to do the job.
Just over half of the U.S. workforce has post-high school education, per 2022 data, according to the Lumina Foundation.
GSA is removing “unnecessary” degree and experience requirements for IT cybersecurity jobs at the master contract level, the White House says, for the estimated $100 billion in agency task orders.
The announcement is part of a Classroom to Career summit hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden on Wednesday. The White House reported a series of actions and new commitments on career and technical education, community college training, registered apprenticeships and White House “workforce hubs” created during this administration.
The Trump White House also pushed to move the government to skills-based hiring with an executive order on the topic that directed the Office of Personnel Management to review requirements for the government’s competitive service and only use educational requirements when legally required.
