BACKGROUND PRESS CALL
BY SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS
ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SKILLS-BASED HIRING EXECUTIVE ORDER
Via Teleconference
10:01 A.M. EDT
MS. HURLEY: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining this call on the President's executive order today for skills-based hiring. I have Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump, Acting Director of DPC Brooke Rollins, Acting Director of OPM Mike Rigas here to answer some questions about this. The beginning of this call with be on the record, and then we will follow with some on-background, attributable to a senior administration official Q&A.
Ivanka Trump will step out after the beginning of this call as she has a number of meetings and other things to attend to, but we have a number of subject-matter experts that will answer the questions afterwards. So with that being said, I'm going to defer to Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump to start this call.
MS. TRUMP: Thank you all for joining the call this morning. Today at the White House, we will host the sixth American Workforce Policy Advisory Board Meeting. Co-chaired by myself and Secretary Ross, this group of private sector CEOs, leaders in education and training, governors, and other leaders from across the country will continue our efforts to get Americans back to work, off the sidelines, and skilled for the jobs of both today and tomorrow.
In just over a year, this board has met across the country and has seen firsthand the success we have when government and the private sector work together to advance opportunities for American workers. And now, more than ever, we must focus on ensuring Americans have the skills necessary to fill the vacant jobs.
Today's meeting will be unique in that we will have the National Council for the American Worker also joining us, which is the U.S. government council. And together we will be reporting on the work and progress both of the board and the council.
We have been implementing one of the most notable alternative education pathways with proven results, expanding apprenticeships so that workers can learn while they earn. There are now 750,000 new apprentices alone since the administration took office. The creation of industry-recognized apprenticeships will expand these opportunities for Americans in new and emerging fields.
Further, understanding the value of vocational education, this spring, the President called on Congress to increase funding to a level that will ensure every high school student in the country has access to high-quality career and technical education and can learn a vocation if that is their choice.
We have expanded our data collection to fill major data gaps on labor demand, hiring, and separation. Prior to this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics could only provide such data points on a national level. Today, we will present changes to that system based on the advisory board's recommendation.
This builds on the earlier work of the administration to improve data collection and transparency on education and training programs at a program level.
Today, the President will sign two executive orders. The first is extending the term of the advisory board for a year, due to the critical nature of this work now more than ever. The second EO will modernize recruitment and hiring in the federal government to look for specific skills and knowledge, rather than asking for college degrees and years of experience alone. This will ensure that we're able to hire based on talent and expand our universe to qualified candidates -- all qualified candidates -- and ensure a more equitable hiring process.
Both the board and the council have continued to ensure that no matter what and no matter the economic circumstances, American workers are preferred.
I'd also like to mention that this is -- this executive order is really another example of us as the nation's largest employer, the federal government, leading by example as we seek to recruit and retain the best and brightest to serve the American people.
Last December, the President fought for and secured paid leave for every federal worker -- a first -- creating a workplace that reflects our American values of work and family and helps us retain our talented workers. It is also why we fought so hard when COVID struck this spring to secure paid sick leave for Americans employed by small businesses and additional funding for childcare providers, helping millions of Americans remain employed and providing relief to small businesses. This will ensure a faster, stronger recovery.
The President built the most inclusive workforce in the history of this country prior to the pandemic and will rebuild it once again. These steps further that goal.
Thank you all very much for joining us today. And now you'll hear from Director of the Domestic Policy Council, Brooke Rollins.
MS. ROLLINS: Good morning, everyone. And thank you so much for being with us. I want to thank the amazing Ivanka Trump for her leadership. Today is a banner day, an extraordinary day. And how grateful we are to be part of this -- basically a transformational effort to lift all Americans up and get all Americans a real shot and a pathway to the American Dream.
As you know, since taking office, President Trump has championed Americans who were too often overlooked or left behind. This executive order, the second one that Ivanka outlined for you, that one will recognize the value of learning wherever it occurs and will level the playing field for workers who learned on the job and those who also learned in the classroom.
Unnecessary job requirements, like overly burdensome occupational licensing requirements, impose an unneeded toll on aspiring workers. And we have long, in this White House, talked about the need for significant occupational licensing reform, whether at the federal level, but also at the state level.
And I know today we've got two of our greatest governors -- Governor Reynolds and Governor Holcomb -- who are both a part of the council, who are going to be in town to participate. They themselves, just recently, had some significant occupational licensing reform wins in their state, as have so many of our great governors, both Republican and Democrat, across this country.
As we know, those burdens fall most heavily on our lower-income Americans and especially those aspiring to fulfill their American Dream to have their shot at a sustaining career with work filled with dignity and productivity that, again, until this President and this economy, many had never experienced before.
The federal government, specific to this executive order, currently employs more than 2.1 million people and is America's largest employer. So this executive order will have a significant impact not just across the current workforce, but really the transformational effect hopefully across all workforces, even in the private sector. We have a responsibility to ensure that the American people are served by individuals with the skills and capabilities necessary to succeed on the job.
Today’s executive order -- again, the President will be signing this afternoon -- will create more pathways to family-sustaining careers for the two-thirds of American adults without a bachelor’s degree.
I am going to stay on the phone. The Director Trump had to leave, but I will be here to answer questions. And I’ll turn it back over to Carolina.
MS. HURLEY: And then we’ll hear some quick remarks from Acting Director of OPM Mike Rigas.
ACTING DIRECTOR RIGAS: Good morning, everyone. I'm Mike Rigas, the Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, which is the agency that serves as sort of an HR department for the federal government.
As you may know, the federal government employs more Americans than any other entity, public or private. And under law, OPM is responsible for classifying federal jobs and determining what qualifications are required of job candidates to be eligible to work in the hundreds of occupations in which the federal workers are employed: from laboratory scientists, to law enforcement officers, and everything in between.
Today, as you may know, a college degree or a graduate degree is necessary to work in many of these occupations. For many other fields, though, those without a degree are at a major disadvantage in the federal hiring process. While education credentials are critical in many lines of work, such as the medical and legal fields, their necessity is far less clear in other areas.
The federal job classification and qualification framework was put in place decades ago, well before the onset of the 21st century. And as you know, a lot has changed since then. Education has changed. The nature of work itself has changed. But federal hiring has been largely unchanged.
Leading private employers, including several represented on the President's American worker advisory board have been pioneers in recent years in recruiting talent from among those who took a non-college path. Many assessment tools exist to identify such individuals. The federal government should also welcome job seekers with needed skills, regardless of how they acquired them. Employment and advancement based on ability is the underlying principle of the civil service. Hiring based on the skills and competencies of job seekers, the civil service will create a more merit-based system.
So I'm very eager to pursue the directive the President will sign today. I will overhaul federal job qualification standards where they are limiting opportunity for those with diverse job backgrounds, and I will work to ensure they have a fair chance to demonstrate all they have to offer to federal hiring managers.
So it's important to realize that while OPM sets the ground rule for federal hiring, it's individual federal agencies that vet candidates for specific openings. And under this executive order, the agencies will shift from vetting candidates based largely on education credentials and written questionnaires to using assessment methods that more directly determine whether jobseekers possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the job that they’re applying for.
MS. HURLEY: Thank you, Director. And I just have one closing comment from Brooke, and then we'll go ahead and take some questions.
MS. ROLLINS: Great. Thank you, Director. And again, so inspiring to be with such great leaders on these issues. One other quick thing that I failed to mention; I apologize for that: Today, we're going to have many of our current council members, several of the pledge signers. As you may know or remember, the Council for the American Worker now has more than 16 million pledges for re-skill and retraining opportunities in this country.
And specifically today, and in the environment we are in -- where this President is fighting every day to bring this country back for the great American comeback, to take back to where we were just a couple months ago -- what this council has done, with Ivanka’s leadership and with the pledges that we had even before the pandemic hit, now becomes particularly relevant, particularly important, and we'll hear today from those pledge signers, several of them who are working to fulfill those commitments, especially in today's environment.
So I wanted to make sure that we made that point for all of you as well. Thank you, Carolina.
MS. HURLEY: All right. And, Operator, if we can go ahead and take some questions.
As a reminder, these -- this Q&A is on background attributable to a “senior administration official.” We’ll have [senior administration officials]. Thank you. You can open the lines.
Q Hi, this is Andrew Feinberg with Breakfast Media. Thanks for doing this call. My question is for [senior administration official]. Under 5 U.S.C 3308, educational requirements are generally not allowed for federal jobs except under certain circumstances. So I'm wondering what this order is doing besides, unless you’re removing the educational requirements for those jobs for which it’s allowed under 3308.
And also, how do you plan on showing that the criteria you're going to use, the practice you're going to use has a rational relationship to performance in the position? Is that going to be the agency's job, or will OPM be developing blanket guide -- you know, blanket guidelines for that?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Hi. Thank you very much for that question. So what the executive order will allow us to do is -- to the second half of your question: OPM already has developed assessments for a number of federal positions. And what this will allow us to do is expand those assessments which measure candidate skills for the ability to do the job rather than relying solely on the candidate having a college degree, which can allow -- can meet the minimum standards for qualification for a job position today, even when the degree is not directly relevant to the position. So what this will do is it will require -- we’re going to move more to a skills-based assessment, rather than saying someone has a college degree and therefore we can assume they have met the minimum qualification standards for a position.
Q Hi. This is Lisa Rein with the Washington Post. Could you describe: What exactly is a “skills-based assessment”? I know that a couple of years ago there was discussion of this. Is this basically a test, you know, that kind of gets someone on the cert list? Could you describe what that is, please? Thank you.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah, so -- that’s a great question. Thank you, Lisa. So I think the point of the process is it doesn’t have to -- skills assessments will be part of that, but it does not have to be the only way for an agency to assess skills of qualified job applicants.
So some of the skills assessments we do and the agencies do are online tests which are tailored toward the specific job classification that the candidate is applying for. Other methods of assessing skills are through having subject-matter experts participate in the interview instead of having candidate self-assessments.
So you would have a panel of -- for instance, if someone is applying for a job in information technology, presently they can just self-assess on a questionnaire to rate themselves the most highly qualified in all the categories that an agency is seeking. And the result of that is: Today, about 40 percent of certs go completely unfilled. No one is hired from them because the assessment is a self-assessment.
By having qualified subject-matter experts assess candidates first and then put them into the pool for further interviewing, you really reduce the amount of unqualified candidates that are getting through the process right now.
Q Hi, this Eric Katz with Government Executive. First, I just wanted to follow up on the first question. I don’t think you got to the part about how this is affected by Section 3308 of Title 5. And then also, what’s the timing of this, and when will this take affect? And how will OPM coordinate with agencies to ensure that they’re taking all the necessary steps here?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Great. Thank you for that follow-up question. So the part you referenced of the U.S. Code is -- we actually like that part because what it says is you cannot -- you can use a college degree only when someone without the degree is not qualified to do that job. So you can think of, you know, doctors, lawyers, engineers -- other kinds of positions where, without a degree in that specific area of expertise, an individual would not be qualified. So this would not affect those kinds of positions where a degree is necessary.
What it does affect is other jobs where someone putting down -- where you can use a college degree in an unrelated discipline to qualify a candidate for a position for which that discipline might not even be relevant.
And as for the timing question: We’re going to be working with agencies to implement this over the next few months using assessments, and qualified subject-matter interviews is already something that has actually been underway for some time in the federal government. And the qualified subject-matter interview has been a pilot that this administration has already rolled out in the last three years with great success.
Q Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking the call. My question is: Where about eliminating the college degree requirement, isn’t that kind of like -- kind of twofold? Because shouldn’t you be incentivizing people to go to college, maybe saying, “Hey, because you don’t have -- you have a degree, but you don’t have the -- or you don’t have the experience, we’re willing to pay for you to get a degree to be a better worker”? Wouldn’t that be a better solution than just eliminating the college degree requirement? Because what it does -- it would make people want to get out of high school and just get a job and not go to college.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah. I would just say -- I mean, that’s a great point. You know, but I would also add to that that 3 out of 10 people with college degrees are working in areas that do not relate to their college degree. And what we’re going in terms of the civil service -- you know, employment and advancement on that has always been based on the underlying principle of skills and competencies for a merit-based system.
And I just want to reiterate and make clear that we are not eliminating the college degree requirement. We are simply saying that those who have -- you cannot use that to force out someone else from a certification who has qualifications for the job, but because they don’t have a college degree that’s not directly related to that, they are not going to be qualified for a position where someone with a completely unrelated college degree can now be deemed qualified for a position and outcompete someone under the current rules that is qualified for the job based on their skills and abilities who would not be able to get that job. And that goes counter to the merit-based system principles of our civil service and, I think, counter to fairness and getting the best person for the job.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And I would also add to that. Again, I know I mentioned this at the beginning, but two thirds of American adults today do not have a college degree, and yet many are thriving and leaders in their communities. Our private sector was built by some of the greatest entrepreneurs that don’t have a college degree.
I think that this is really an effort and this President’s vision is to move our workforce -- and, frankly, Ivanka’s vision too is to move our workforce away from this idea that you always have to have a college degree. In fact, so many of our great Americans do not.
We don’t ever want to take away the incentive or the aspiration if that’s your dream and that’s your path. But also, there are so many great jobs out there, so many great opportunities. Our private sector continuing to build on this idea of bringing in the best and the brightest and continuing the trajectory towards America leading the world -- we think this is an important piece of the President's vision to fight for all Americans to have a shot.
Q Hello, my name is Stephanie from Intelligent Luxury, and I wanted to know how the government can help college graduates compete with people who don’t have a college degree now that the government is going to help people without a college degree earn more income. That’s my question, ma'am.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think [senior administration official] just spoke to that pretty clearly that -- again, and like [senior administration official] said, we're not eliminating the requirement, we're just making sure that it isn’t the sole factor that qualifies somebody. So it's just making it an equal playing field. It's not disadvantaging those with college degrees, anything like that.
And [senior administration official], you can, kind of, finish that off.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah, I think it's important -- this isn’t a binary choice, right? It's not do we like this group people better or this group people better. It truly is about lifting barriers for our Americans, especially those potentially living in vulnerable communities, who are living on the margins who potentially never had the opportunity for a great K-12 education. We're fighting on that on every level -- school choice, et cetera.
But ultimately, what [senior administration official], what the Council for the American Worker, what this President, what Director Ivanka Trump is really fighting for, and what our White House is fighting for is opportunity for everyone in this country, not just for a certain select few. And I think that most Americans believe in that vision, love that vision, agree with that vision. And again, this isn’t at the expense of those with a college degree; this is truly just opening the playing field for all.
MS. HURLEY: Thank you, Operator. That'll be the last question.
As I mentioned earlier, this is, one, immediately reportable; two, all attributable to a senior administration official. The earlier statements with Ivanka, Brooke, and Director Rigas are on the record. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to email me: Carolina.L.Hurley@who.eop.gov.
Thank you very much.
END 10:25 A.M. EDT
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