Three Strikes

[intermezzo]

Let me echo the sentiments of others that JH has important information to share. The information can be reassuring to some of us. Thank you JH for your input. It is appreciated.

[retread]

I agree with previous posters. Jagghagg is "the one." If you wonder where you stand in this frustrating quest, she has the answer. In my case, it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, but results may vary. Thanks, JH!

[legalrep]

Thank you JH. I appreciated your input.

[Asterisk]

JH is a very gracious, and giving contributor, and I offer my greatest personal thanks to her for selflessly sharing her info with me as well as the rest.

She is one of the few bright spots in this whole process.

[tenacious]

Thanks for your info as well, JH.

[blackswan]

I am unclear on a couple of things that you may know. The reg says the official is not required to consider the applicant more than three times. Does that not mean they can if they want? Also, is SSA bound to the OPM grade at all? If so, why do they have a separate interview? Aren't they placing an "ultimate" grade of sorts on the candidate based on their interview? In other words, a candidate with an OPM 58 and a brilliant SSA interview could end up outranking an OPM 80 with a poor SSA interview, based on this ultimate SSA grade. And doesn't this routinely happen: where an individual had a high OPM grade but SSA vetoed them after the SSA interview.

[diablo]

Jagghagg,

You rock. Thanks for the very helpful information and suggestion. When I find out more information, I'll be happy to share with you and others. Thanks again.

[flannery]

Jagghag, I am curious. Do you feel it was just SSA who might be acting in an arbitrary way? Did you interview with other agencies, as well, like DOL and Medicare? Did they interview you and then pass? I'm assuming with what must have been a high score, including veterans' preference you must have received invitations to interview from agencies in addition to SSA. I'm just trying to get a grasp of what you are alluding to Do you feel it is references that are at play or discrimination against vets--what exactly do you think is working to your disadvantage when you suggest there was arbitrariness? Just trying to get a handle on what you are alluding to so I might have a better idea of what to expect..... In the meantime, wishing you and all our compatriots only the best as we all move along.
Flannery

[jennifer]

So there's a "non-selection heap" largely composed of people without social security experience? That's not good for me, but I guess it's not unreasonable.

[valkyrie]

Are agencies prohibited from determining that an applicant is not suited for a position? What is an agency supposed to do with a candidate that has a high score, but had an interview experience or reference that suggested significant negatives that did not appear on a resume or OPM assessment? A high score and/or a veteran's preference guarantees a candidate an earlier look than the other candidates, that's all. There's no rule that says the "three consideration" rule cannot be used by the agency to eliminate an unattractive candidate.

Look, I'm not saying that everyone that has been "blackballed" deserved it. Just like in any hiring process, sometimes the candidate's personality is not the only factor, or there is a stab in the back from a reference. Maybe its just a matter of the agency seeing a seriously negative result trend from candidates with a particular type of background. I am an "insider" with a mid-range score that was in the mix the past two times, and for all I know, I have been considered three times, or even blackballed. I can tell you that based upon my contacts, both personal and secondary, the candidates hired were some of the best yet seen, which should not give anybody reason for bitterness. I have had to, and continue to personally deal with some of the agency ALJ personnel mistakes, and therefore, aside from my personal loss in getting passed over, I face the additional loss of having to work with an idiot if the agency screws up. That said, I feel that while I was not selected, this time around the agency picked some great candidates that will make my job easier.

[barkley]

In the interest of shedding some light into the darkness, can you explain how people are selected for consideration per slot? It is my understanding that if SSA has 100 slots, OPM will send a list of 300 names. What does SSA do with those names? How does it determine which 3 are considered for Slot A?

As an example, Slot A has 15 people off the list of 300 willing to go there. Is SSA supposed to consider the three with the best scores? If SSA knows person with the 10th best score and thinks that person would be the kind of judge they want, do they have to "dispose" of seven folks with higher score before they can "consider" Number 10? Seems like an extraordinary number of hoops to manipulate to reach a particular candidate.

[valkyrie]

"Seems like an extraordinary number of hoops to manipulate to reach a particular candidate."

You've got it. I have heard rumors of a "big board" not unlike what you would see in an NFL team front office on Draft Day.

[valkyrie]

"Let's face it. SSA wants who it wants and they have shown they will do whatever it takes to hire their preferred candidates."

What if their preferred candidates are the ones that SSA has determined are most likely to succeed? I don't know about the rest of you, but I think that SSA's primary purpose in the hiring process is to choose the BEST candidates from the list that OPM gives to them. I can say from personal experience that people with better qualifications, but lower scores than myself were hired over me. Should I find that unfair? Trust me, if I found out that there were a bunch of little inexperienced fair-haired proteges with low scores hired, I would be as pissed off as anybody.

If it is all about the score, why even involve SSA in the process? If you really think your score doesn't mean anything, why don't you explain that to the people who didn't make the agency interview, or those that were found unqualified.

"The real problem is that when you stack the deck with agency insiders, you begin to lose the perspective that non-agency ALJs may bring to the table. You lose the balance, you increase the potential bias, and you undermine the purpose of the impartial adjudicator."

I don't mean to sound snide, but this argument is usually made by people who don't understand how ODAR works. THERE IS NO BIAS. We run on a non-adverserial European style system. The claimant has a representative, but the government does not. The only focus of SSA management and SSA attorneys is getting the dispositions out, favorable or unfavorable, within the laws and regulations. Call us fast food assembly line lawyer wanna-be's, but please don't suggest that we're biased. That's insulting.

This has been pointed out before, but can you name an employer that does not prefer to hire somebody that is a well-known quantity, qualified candidate, over a qualified on paper, but otherwise unknown candidate? The system is not perfect, and there certainly is the possibility of some abuse. The OPM scores are there to insure against an obvious attempt at nepotism, not as handcuffs upon a hiring agency.

My overall take is that as soon as the agency hires its "favored" candidates, there will be more room for those of us that are not as well-qualified. If you feel that you have been treated unfairly, just be patient, and you may be pleasantly surprised. If you really, truly think that a high score from the Office of Personnel Management entitles you to more than an Agency interview, you will probably not make a very good judge.

[mrjones]

It seems that a majority of high OPM scorers were selected, PF, based on jag's info. And we are talking about what, 7-10 successful candidates whom SSA allegedly favored out of a pool of how many hundreds? Surely SSA has some minute discretion to set aside high scorers after 3 shakes where the bottom line is they might be a better fit in another Agency setting, one not predicated on mass justice like SSA. For example, an indiv. with a background deciding or trying protracted anti-trust lawsuits for Justice would likely have a very high OPM score, or should, but that doesn't mean that they will fit well in SSA's hearing scheme. Didn't Pixie always say that the OPM score has no real intrinsic value at the matching stage, no doubt because 1) everyone meets a certain high level of qualification (the opm screening) , 2) SSA can fairly give more consideration to the candidates it likes - its own numeric ranking -based on its interview and needs, and 3) SSA has lawful discretion to give less consideration - 3 shakes minimum - to others. I mean, vets and other candidates with high OPM numbers have been passed over before in SSA hirings, back when there were zero "insider" competitors (in the 30 plus years prior to this hiring). Id also argue that SSA needs some flexibility in hiring for such a large # of locations, and you are being coy about the important issue of your location availability (big cities A,B, and C vs. podunk X, Y and Z?).

[aljkeb123]

Is there a rule that you must start at SSA first, or can you be selected by another hiring agency after making the register?

[Asterisk]

PF made what I consider to be very valid points, in particular:

"What appears to have happened to those of us "blackballed" (I'll define that term below) is that we were "in the way" of SSA's desire to hire certain favored candidates. We scored higher than the preferred candidates, and they needed to "get rid of us" to reach the desired goal of hiring candidates they wanted to hire, whether that person be an SSA insider, connected person, or whatever.

In short, SSA approaches the OPM regulations as something to be avoided not followed.

SSA bends the regulations and the process into a pretzel to get to the favored candidates, usually insiders or folks with SSA connections (not all but probably a small majority on the last cert). This does not mean that the folks who were ultimately selected were not qualified, and neither myself nor Jagghag nor the others are saying that they are not qualified. We are simply suggesting that all of the high scorers who were bypassed were at least equally qualified as those selected, and were equally deserving of a position even though we lacked an internal connection. And under a fair reading the OPM regualtions, we were actually MORE QUALIFIED than many of those selected.

Had SSA followed the spirit and intent of the regulations, the majority of high scorers would have been selected for open ALJ positions and the lower scorers would have moved up the ranks on the register for the next certificate, putting them in a better position to be selected in the future. Few would argue that such a result is unfair."

I will point out further, however, that the majority (I believe, I don't have that info - yet) of "insider" candidates were also passed over/blackballed; it appears the only insiders selected were in fact management darlings, and friends of friends (connected, as PF said), and that a significant # of extremely specifically SSA qualified individuals were not selected or "deselected" (as JH said); and that the only real criterion is whether an individual is qualified to GET the job, NOT DO the job. SSA has never expected nor required ALJ's to do the job as set out in specific detail in their various program manuals, nor held them accountable for any standard of even minimally acceptable competence, even outside the issue of judicial independence; there is no reason to expect they would this time, regardless of all their flowery and untrue announcements and statements before Congress.

[valkyrie]

"One might question SSA’s motives when they bypass the #1 on the cert to hire the #100, which – as a matter of fact - they did."

Lets look at this realistically. Do you honestly think that the agency would pass over #1 on the cert if it had not decided that it did not want the #1 on the cert? Do you really think that SSA has not considered the thought that someone might ask questions, and that they had better have a very defensible reason?

"I’m simply suggesting that what might appear to be “lawful discretion” is actually unacceptable favoritism."

You have yet to define the "unacceptable" or "favoritism" in any way other than an arbitrary OPM score and agency connections. As strange as it may seem, ODAR employees with lots of experience, who put out quality work in quantity, and who have also assumed and performed management responsibilities effectively, get noticed by upper level management. Upper level management has noticed that people with this background have had a consistent record of becoming the most productive ALJs. On the other hand, upper level management has also noticed that the OPM numeric scores have never consistently predicted the quality of ALJ candidates one way or another.

The agency is going to pick its best and brightest first. They know that these people will perform well, and perform well immediately. This is not about you, the OPM scores, or the "spirit" of the rules and regulations. This is about Congress and SSA wanting to reduce the backlog of cases as quickly and effectively as possible to serve the claimants. Some of us have been temporarily bypassed, and some of us have been blackballed, but unless you have reason to believe that a rule of regulation was actually violated, rather than some quaint "spirit," get on with the selection process and/or your life.

[chinook]

Another problem with SSA circumventing the intent of the rules is that SSA is the gateway to becoming an ALJ in another agency. While agencies can, and sometimes do, hire off the register, most seek transfers of experienced ALJs, usually from SSA. Another agency doesn’t have the ability to hire its insider – with experience etc. – because it cannot manipulate the process like SSA.

If an individual wants to become an ALJ in another agency, the easiest way to do that is to pay your dues with two years at SSA and then look for a transfer. With SSA taking mostly insiders, non-insiders have a more difficult time getting hired. An additional problem (and for this comment I expect to receive a ton of flack) is that somebody who has spent his entire career with SSA – as a decision writer then ALJ issuing 500 cases a year – probably doesn’t have the skills to preside over an adversarial proceeding that might have weeks of hearing (I have seen too many former SSA judges who transfered take a very long time to become competent outside SSA.) However, the future pool of potential non-SSA ALJs will now have significantly fewer individuals with non-SSA experience.

On this board, most of the discussion focuses on SSA because it is the 800 lb gorilla, but remember there are other agencies whose needs are also to be met by the OPM ALJ process. When SSA manipulates that process, the impact has the potential to be government wide.

[deaddisco]

I currently work with 2 new ALJ's from the last hire. Both had relatively low scores and neither had any connection to SSA or any background in SS law. Read into that what you will in the context to this thread.

[jagghagg]

Dec 9, 2008 13:47:56 GMT -5 deaddisco said:

I currently work with 2 new ALJ's from the last hire. Both had relatively low scores and neither had any connection to SSA or any background in SS law. Read into that what you will in the context to this thread.

NOBODY has suggested any selectee is not qualified, nor that they will not succeed and succeed well in their position as an ALJ. This isn't about the selectees.