General Circular No. 001319

To: Heads of State Agencies and Human Resource Directors

Subject: Clarifying Policy On Selective Certification

Issue Date: June 5, 1998

When the department making the request provides adequate

justification, Rule 8.5(a) authorizes the Director to

selectively certify from a list of eligible candidates, the

names of eligibles who possess particular qualifications. The

intent of this rule is to allow departments to require

position-specific knowledges and skills when justified. To

justify the selective certification, the requesting department

should submit an up-to-date position description (SF-3) which

supports the requirement and a letter of justification fully

explaining the need for the requirement. A selective

certification is supposed to be an absolutely necessary

requirement, not a desirable requirement. Once established for

a particular position number, a selective certification must

continue to be used whenever that position becomes vacant

unless the hiring department requests in writing and gets Civil

Service approval to discontinue or change the selective

certification.

In order to be fair to employees and applicants and to keep

them informed, our policy requires that requests for selective

certification be submitted with the SF-2 (request to fill a

vacant position) and approved before a certificate is issued.

For jobs requiring special or promotional announcement, the

selective certification must be requested and approved prior to

announcement and must be stated on the announcement.

If a department wishes to request a selective certification

after an announcement or certificate has already been issued,

we require that they cancel the certificate/announcement and

send in a new SF-2 and request for selective certification

properly justified. If the request is approved and the job is

one that normally requires special or promotional announcement,

we will require that the job be reannounced with the selective

certification specified on the announcement. We believe the

requirement to reissue and reannounce is necessary since it is

not appropriate or reasonable to applicants for us to change

requirements in the middle of an announcement or selection

process.

Sincerely,

Allen H. Reynolds

Director