Federal agencies use AI to cut hiring time and assess mid-career skills

Federal agencies are deploying AI to reduce the time and effort required to classify jobs and assess employee skills, according to senior human capital officials speaking at an event sponsored by SAP and produced by GovExec. Arron Helm, chief human capital officer at the General Services Administration, said AI now drafts initial job classification narratives and factor evaluations, cutting the time from up to eight hours to about two hours per classification. GSA performs 500 to 600 job classifications each year, and the time savings contribute to a broader effort to identify one million work hours that can be eliminated, optimized, or automated across the federal government.

Helm emphasized that while AI accelerates the initial drafting and evaluation steps, human reviewers still review and finalize classifications. He added that the quality of candidates has improved under the new process, with hiring managers reporting higher caliber applicants compared to prior self-assessment approaches. The agency has identified 600,000 hours of potential savings so far under the initiative.

Colleen Heller-Stein, executive director of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, highlighted plans to consolidate more than 100 agency personnel systems into a single platform. This would enable agencies to quickly identify employees with relevant skills across the federal workforce during emerging challenges. She cited her experience during financial crises as motivation for a government-wide talent repository that could surface skills beyond immediate proximity.

Both officials framed the shift toward formal skill evaluations—moving away from self-assessed applications—as a return to merit-based hiring, particularly for AI-related roles. They praised the current administration’s emphasis on structured evaluations over self-reported qualifications.

Heller-Stein and Helm also stressed the need to develop mid-career employees, noting that cuts to the civil service have accelerated leadership transitions. They pointed to Tech Force, an initiative to bring early-career technologists into government with private-sector manager rotations, and GSA Labs, which pairs early- and mid-career employees to solve cross-agency problems such as measuring AI value and improving contract oversight.