News

On August 23, 2023, MonsterGov hosted its latest Federal User Group to explore ideas for the future of the MHME federal talent acquisition system with its client agencies. 25 HR participants from 13 representative federal agencies joined us virtually to collaborate and exchange viewpoints on their MHME priorities for 2024 and beyond. We enjoyed the dialogue and are thrilled they did, too! 92 percent of survey respondents were either satisfied or very satisfied with the event!

As of September 1, 2023, OPM issued final regulations for the Fair Chance to Compete for Jobs Act of 2019 (Fair Chance Act), which prohibits (with some exceptions) a hiring agency from collecting information on criminal background and history prior to a conditional offer being made for federal employment. Building on previous initiatives to “ban the box”, the vision for the Fair Chance Act was to expand the hiring pool for federal agencies while broadening opportunities for previously incarcerated individuals. Included in the regulations, job applicants can report agency violations of the Fair Chance Act and hold federal employees accountable. For a deeper dive, read Drew Friedman’s article on Federal News Network here.

On July 21, 2023, OPM published proposed regulations to implement changes authorized by the NDAA to provide agencies with more flexibility in the selection of candidates under delegated examining procedures and excepted service appointments. In 2019, the NDAA eliminated the “Rule of Three” and tasked OPM to determine a more blended approach of leveraging a numerical system while offering more than three candidates to choose from. 

With the huge spotlight on the federal workforce and continued competition against the private sector, OPM and other agencies are rapidly pushing hard on new hiring initiatives, including the launch of new job sites within USAJOBS, such as the Federal Tech Portal and agency-branded search pages. In order to support these pages, MonsterGov implemented custom MCO tagging capability into the MHME federal talent acquisition system (Release 4.15.2), which complements the existing MCO tag functionality. With this custom MCO tag capability, agency administrators can determine which portals are applicable to their agency and quickly make them available to their user community without needing configuration support from MonsterGov. Agencies now have the flexibility and control to participate in new and upcoming job promotion pages more quickly.  

On March 31, 2023, OPM released updated guidance on gender identity and inclusion in the federal workplace. According to OPM, “The new guidance reflects several major changes in law and executive policy that have occurred since this guidance was first written in 2015 and updated in 2017, expands the guidance beyond workplace transition, and ensures the guidance language is inclusive of all gender identities.” And just last week, OPM hosted a webinar on DEIA to provide an overview of recent DEIA accomplishments and plans to continue advancing on these efforts in the future.

In February 2023, OPM, OMB, and DOL announced the launch of a portal on USAJOBS (intern.usajobs.gov) to offer a one-stop place to search and apply for internship opportunities across the federal government. This new Federal Internship Portal comes just after the January guidance by OPM and OMB in January to increase opportunities for internships and other emerging workforce programs, per the President’s Management Agenda.

MonsterGov agencies who designate the appropriate vacancies in MHME with the Internship Appointment type and/or the Student Hiring Path will automatically have their opportunities fed into the new portal. For any additional guidance, MHME agency users can refer to this guide on posting internships to the portal. 

On December 23, 2022, the FedRAMP Authorization Act was signed into law by the President as part of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). According to FedRAMP, “The Act codifies the FedRAMP program as the authoritative standardized approach to security assessment and authorization for cloud computing products and services that process unclassified federal information.”