Trump administration urges US government agencies to remove jargon from job titles
The Office of Personnel Management has urged government department and agencies to remove jargon from job titles as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reform federal hiring processes.
The guidance, which the OPM said forms part of efforts to “ensure recruitment is efficient, merit-based, and focused on practical skill and dedication to the US constitution”, says that jargon, abbreviations or acronyms in job titles can “be difficult for non-governmental job seekers to understand”.
Therefore, the OPM has sent guidance to all chief human capital officers urging them to “improve clarity and understandability” of job adverts to make it easier for jobseekers to find jobs that match their skills, and accurately convey the nature of the work.
There is also an aim to “better align federal job announcements with private-sector terminology to attract a broader talent pool” through ensuring that federal job announcements use functional, plain language job titles that are “not generic or jargon-laden”.
The guidance recommends that job announcements use job titles that resonate with jobseekers, and urges hiring officials to use a US government plain language guide.
The OPM has called on all HR managers “to audit and revise job titles and descriptions to ensure they are descriptive, organisational, or functional job titles that resonate with jobseekers – not generic descriptors”.
This should apply to new hires, and lead to a review and update of titles for incumbents “to ensure consistency, clarity, and alignment with evolving roles and responsibilities”.
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Part of US government reforms to hiring rules in line with Trump priorities
The move to improve US government job announcements is part of the Trump administration’s new hiring plan with an objective to recruit “the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans” to work for government.
The overall guidance for recruitment into the US government, published last June, set out four key priorities to revise how federal government recruitment is undertaken.
These are:
- Reviewing recruitment process “to ensure that only the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans are hired to the federal service”.
- Implementing skills-based hiring procedures, including what the OPM calls “unnecessary degree requirements”, and an updated requirement “to ensure candidates are selected based on their merit and competence, not their skin color or academic pedigree”.
- Streamlining and improving the job application process.
- And reducing time-to-hire to under 80 days by emphasising the use of talent pools and shared certificates and streamlining the background check process.
Read more: US government sets out merit hiring plan in line with Trump priorities
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