To: Heads of State Agencies and Human Resource Directors

Subject: New Type Of Eligible List

Issue Date: May 1, 1996

The recent history of the Examining Division of Civil Service is marked by a continuing trend to streamline hiring procedures, reduce bureaucracy, and grant agency hiring authorities more discretion in selecting candidates even when the applicant pool is large. Examples are the Rule of Five Grade Groups replacing the Rule of Three Names and the Certifiable Score Rule.

We are establishing another innovation along this line. We have many jobs for which our recruiting efforts result in marginally competitive situations such as five to ten available applicants. In some cases these are continuously open jobs such as a number of Trades and Food Service jobs. Looking at the total number of applications received per year on a statewide basis, these appear fairly active and competitive. But because the vacancies are scattered throughout the state and often not in large metropolitan areas, most vacancies end up being noncompetitive or marginally competitive. We normally use Experience and Training ratings for these jobs. We are scoring these applications for little gain. A similar situation often occurs with even higher level jobs on special announcements. We go through a time-consuming announcement process and get a noncompetitive or marginally competitive result.

We intend to analyze the applicant flow data on jobs using Experience and Training ratings and where the competition is low, we will simply require applicants to pass the E&T (i.e., meet the Minimum Qualification). We will establish registers of unranked applicants who have been screened to be sure they meet MQ's and are "eligible" for appointment but are not scored. RATHER THAN RECEIVING NUMERICAL GRADES APPLICANTS WILL RECEIVE GRADE NOTICES THAT THEY ARE "ELIGIBLE".

When agencies submit an SF-2 for these jobs, the grades of all persons on the certificate will be "Eligible". Appointment may be made of any "Eligible" on the list and if fewer than five are available, provisional authority will be granted.

We consider this proposal preferable to alternatives such as making these jobs shortage or noncompetitive. By announcing the jobs and collecting applications, we do ensure an open centralized access to the jobs that would not be there if we made the jobs noncompetitive. Also we provide the agencies with a referral list of candidates prescreened for MQ's and therefore eligible for appointment. Thus we are retaining our responsibility to agencies to provide them with a list of qualified candidates as well as hiring authority.

In addition, we eliminate the need to develop dozens of special Experience and Training rating schedules for jobs which have only a few applicants but which when taken in total represent hundreds of applications a year.

As a pilot for establishing these types of registers we've studied the applicant flow on the continuously open jobs of Cook 1 and Maintenance Repairer 1 and 2. They fit the profile we've established considering such factors as score distribution of current E&T, ratio of appointments to qualified applicants recruited, number of certificates issued with fewer than five applicants, provisional appointments made, reject rate on applications, and agency and geographic locations of positions. Implementing this procedure for these three job titles will reduce the number of E&T's scored by ten percent per year without reducing service to agencies or applicants. Subsequent to the pilot we will systematically gather profile data on other jobs that are continuously announced and convert them to this new category where appropriate. We will use this category for continuously announced jobs as well as jobs on special announcements with small applicant flow.

We may also study some shortage classes with a view toward moving them to this new category since we would prefer to guarantee open access to such jobs and to provide agencies lists of qualified applicants, not just hiring authority.

This innovation will optimize use of our resources in serving both applicants and agencies while meeting our constitutional obligations at the same time.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact Max Reichert, Assistant Chief of Examining at 504-342-8536 or LINC-421-8536.

Sincerely,

Herbert L. Sumrall
Director