Head Staff's Guide to Federal Job 5A Category Rating- You won't believe this one weird trick!

Head Staff’s Guide to Federal Jobs

Part 5A Category Rating- You won’t believe this one weird trick!

Okay- we have applied, been found eligible, been assessed, learned about veterans’ preference and now it is time to be referred (or not) to a selecting official.

A reminder, we are talking about jobs open to the public in the competitive service. Currently, unless agencies get a waiver from OPM, they are required to use category rating. Category rating is not used for internal merit promotion announcements. Excepted service agencies can use a category rating like system, but they are not required to.

The purpose of category rating is to increase the number of eligible candidates from which a selecting official can choose, while still preserving veterans’ preference rights.

So, what is category rating? It is a referral method where eligible candidates are ranked by being placed in one of two or more pre-defined quality categories instead of being ranked by individual numeric score order.

Every agency must have a category rating policy. There must be at least two quality categories. Most agencies use three- but theoretically there is no limit to the number of categories. The quality categories have to be defined before use.

Most agencies use numerical scores to establish the categories. For example- Gold, 90 and above, Silver 80-89, Bronze 70-79. Agencies can name the categories whatever they wish.

The names of all eligibles in the highest quality category are referred on the Certificate of Eligibles to the selecting official for consideration. The selecting official can select from any eligible in the highest quality category as long as veterans’ preference is preserved. We will get to that in a minute.

So, let’s say we have – without applying veterans’ preference

Happy 90

Doc-100

Grumpy 90

Dopey 80

Bashful 80

Sleepy 80

Sneezy 90

White 70

Charming- 100

We would place everyone 90 and above the Gold category- it’s a GS-0802-05 Engineering Technician (Mining) Job.

Our Tentative Gold certificate would look like this:

Title: Engineering Technician (Mining)

Series and Grade: GS-0802-05

Duty Location: Black Forest

Charming

Doc

Grumpy

Happy

Sneezy

(Usually there are no numerical scores on the certificate)

And our selecting official can pick anyone in the Gold category.

Dopey, Bashful, Sleepy and White do not make it into the Gold Category and are not referred. They were qualified but did not score high enough on the assessment.

BUT WAIT- WE FORGET TO ADJUDICATE AND APPLY VETERANS’ PREFERENCE!

VETERANS’ PREFERENCE APPLIED

Let’s do that-

Happy 90 TP

Doc-100 NV

Grumpy 90 NV

Dopey 80 NV

Bashful 80 TP

Sleepy 80 CP (at least 10%)

Sneezy 90 NV

White 70-CPS (30 % or more disabled)

Charming- 100 TP

A few rules about Veterans’ Preference in Category Rating:

Preference eligibles are listed ahead of non-preference eligibles within each quality category.

(Remember, not all veterans are preference eligibles and not all preference eligibles are vets)

Absolute veterans’ preference is within each quality category.

It’s important to realize that for veterans’ preference in category rating, we DO NOT ADD EXTRA POINTS TO THE SCORE. We still talk about 10 point and 5 point vets, but we are not adding points. There are no 110 pointers. But, preference eligibles rise to the top of each quality category and 30% or more eligibles (CPS) and those with more than 10% but less than 30% (CP) float to the top quality category (except for scientific and professional positions at the GS-09 or higher level)

So, applying the veterans’ preference to our eligibles,

Title: Engineering Technician (Mining)

Series and Grade: GS-0802-05

Duty Location: Black Forest

Gold Category

White CPS

Sleepy CP

Charming TP

Happy TP

Doc NV

Grumpy NV

Sneezy NV

Silver Category

Bashful TP

Dopey NV

Bronze Category

(Empty)

The HR office is required to list the preference category of each candidate on the certificate. Usually, there are no scores, candidates are listed in preference order and alphabetically within each category.

Depending on the agency’s category rating policy, usually only the preference eligibles in the top quality category are referred- remember as long as there are preference eligibles in a category, they must be selected before non-preference eligibles. Assuming there is only one position to be filled, out final certificate that is sent to the selecting official would look like this-

Final Gold Certificate

Title: Engineering Technician (Mining)

Series and Grade: GS-0802-05

Duty Location: Black Forest

Gold Category

White CPS

Sleepy CP

Charming TP

Happy TP

All the other eligibles are not referred and should receive a you were qualified, but not referred letter.

All right, you are the hiring manager and you have this certificate, who can you select?

The answer is any candidate they are all preference eligibles and in the top quality category. A vet is a vet is a vet, so Charming could be selected even though he has “only” TP preference and there are disabled veterans on the list.

If additional positions become available- additional names can be added- so if there were 5 positions, after the preference eligibles have been hired, declined or removed during an objection process, the non-veterans in the gold category could be considered. If the non-veterans in the gold category are exhausted, we can move on to the silver category. And if silver is exhausted to the bronze.

We’ll cover objections in the next session. Questions, comments, corrections always welcome.

When I used to teach this, I used post it notes, which enabled it to be a much more dynamic presentation.