re-open the application

[jagghagg]

Mar 23, 2009 7:42:37 GMT -5 valkyrie said:

Did someone call?

This may sound sinister if you choose to forget the history of the ALJ hiring process and the fact that before 2007 ODAR insiders were heavily disfavored in the process by both OPM and ODAR.

I've never understood this alleged history since every COSS since 1988 has requested special dispensation from OPM to hire ALJ applicants with SSA-specific experience. ( 1988, SSA Commissioner Dorcas Hardy; 1989, SSA Commissioner Gwendolyn King; 1996, SSA Commissioner Shirley Chater; 1997, the SSA Associate Commissioner, Rita Geier; and, of course, the current Commissioner himself has published his own belief that the agency requires ALJs with agency-specific experience.) Not much of a history of the agency disfavoring its own...

[jennifer]

Helpful post, Patriot's Fan! Depressing, but helpful. Anyone have an estimate as to how many insiders are in the top 450 on the register?

[northwest]

Mar 23, 2009 11:26:31 GMT -5 @patriotsfan said:

If that same person ends up in 3 'Groups of Three" with SSA insiders or other pre-selectees, the person was officially bypassed for good (Rule of Three).

I believe you're referring to the "3 strikes" rule. My understanding was that the agency has the discretion not to consider someone after the 3rd strike. However, it could if it wanted to.

[valkyrie]

"I've never understood this alleged history since every COSS since 1988 has requested special dispensation from OPM to hire ALJ applicants with SSA-specific experience."

It was not so much ODAR management as it was OPM and the ALJ association that were against the hiring of ODAR attorneys. The most dramatic recent change in the system is the OPM application allowing for litigation or administrative law experience to count toward qualification. Prior to 2007 an ODAR attorney could know the regs backwards and forwards, make favorable determinations on the record, help promulgate new regulations, sit in on hearings to assist the ALJs, and design and write the training courses and manuals of the ODAR ALJs, all without being considered minimally qualified to be an ALJ by OPM. The ALJ association actively worked to continue this situation as long as possible. Even prior litigation experience was devalued if ODAR experience was involved.

The interview process was also different in that it was not a centralized process. Interviews were held in multiple locations by various ALJs, many of whom were openly hostile to ODAR interviewees. Some locations were notorious for the way the interviewees were treated.

So in summary, as an ODAR attorney prior to 2007, it was almost impossible to get a competitive score from OPM due to the way experience was weighted and the way the interviews were conducted. Also, there was a considerable chance that an ALJ would shred an ODAR candidate during the reference checks. There were some infamous incidents where ODAR attorneys actually obtained copies of letters "blackballing" them that were written by ALJs who had promised a glowing reference.

As a point of reference, I was never eligible prior to the hiring freeze that preceded 2007. But I do know of several ODAR attorneys that spent close to ten years studying and fighting the system before they successfully became ALJS before 2007. These are not the type of people to just make something like this history up, and it is pretty much common knowledge within ODAR anyway.

[valkyrie]

Patriots Fan,

On what factual basis do you make your assumptions? I don't recall seeing anything to suggest that more than roughly one third of the new hires meet the criteria of being an insider. I have never heard a number as high as 50% mentioned. Also, your statements regarding fairness make the assumption that nowhere in the process of matching up scores was there a situation where an insider had the higher score. Finally, the assumption that nobody makes an ass of themselves in an interview, let alone committing tactical/strategic errors is ridiculous! We have no idea who did any of these things, but statistically its a probability that at least some did. You can probably go to the bookstore today and find something in the HR business section with numerous anecdotes from HR managers who witnessed outright stupidity in a high level interview.

I personally think that tactical and strategic errors were much more deadly in the SSA interview than anyone here thinks. SSA law is an extremely narrow and essentially dead area of law. But if anyone goes into the ODAR interview unmindful of the fact that SSA law practice is also very different, they may find themselves disappointed in May.

[Legal Beagle]

Hopefully that is a good omen for those of us private attorneys who have spent a good part of our practice representing claimants at ODAR.

[valkyrie]

"Hopefully that is a good omen for those of us private attorneys who have spent a good part of our practice representing claimants at ODAR."

I expect there are few who know what makes a good ODAR ALJ better than the reps and staff attorneys.

[Legal Beagle]

From your lips to God's ear! I know that we sure are sorely aware of the toll that the backlog is taking on the claimants, which is one reason I want to help solve the problem - at least one little starfish at a time.

[valkyrie]

"We can just agree to disagree."

Thanks for keeping it friendly Patriotsfan. I have heard first hand from trainers and attendees that the number of SSA insiders was closer to 1/3. 1/3 was also the gist of internal memorandums congratulating the successful candidates. I know of no "official" numbers though.

My question is regarding your certificate information. I have been under the assumption that nobody other than SSA and OPM have seen the certificates, geographic specs, scores, and match-ups in their entirety. I had thought that we were dealing with imperfect projections from the limited unscientific cohort of information derived from this board. Have you gotten access to such info through a FOIA? That would be huge.

I have never denied SSA's interest in hiring its own. Its possible to check the statistics of the SSA ALJs, and as a class the former SSA attorneys tend to outperform other classes, other than former state ALJs, where the performance is about equal. My contention is still that there is no "overwhelming" bias towards the SSA insiders. I think ODAR took the cream of the inside people, which amounted to about 1/3 of the class last year, while still providing plenty of opportunity for the outside people. I can see two reason for keeping the number around 1/3. First, you aren't the only person who has suspicions of bias, and it would just be asking for trouble to go as far as a 50% ratio. Second, you forget that the insiders who were selected were doing critical jobs in management and other places where they were top performers. Filling the ALJ openings with quality candidates is important, but it would be counterproductive to remove some of the best performing 75 to 100 SSA attorneys from the hearing offices every year for several years. Just a thought.

[northwest]

I've avoided any foray into discussions about the fairness of the hiring process. However, I was at a Leonardo da Vinci exposition in Portland over the weekend, and enjoyed some of the aphorisms posted on the wall by the exit. This one struck me as fairly a propos, so I'll share it:

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Here's another good one: It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

A bunch of other great da Vinci aphorisms can be found here: www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/leonardo_da_vinci.html

But, really, was the guy all that smart? Most of those inventions didn't work for beans.

PS: This is not meant to be any comment on whether the other posters understand or don't understand what's going on. I just know that I don't, particularly on the interesting issue of which order they select cities to fill.

[jagghagg]

It may well be that, overall, that the hire was "only" 1/3 Insiders. Val makes a good case for the reasoning for such a circumstance. I will say that, both the COSS and announced at the last August training class, the percentage was 50%.

For another observation, no one --- and I do mean NO ONE --- on boards has seen ALL the documentation: certs, geographic preferences, selections, interview notes, background checks, etc. (Well, no candidate and I expect no sitting ALJ or SSA Attorney.). We speaketh - to a large degree - in a void.

[jennifer]

Okay, but Jaghag & Patriot's Fan, if ODAR is trying to reach this gang of 30 insiders, how will it advance that end to reopen or refresh the register?

[valkyrie]

"For another observation, no one --- and I do mean NO ONE --- on boards has seen ALL the documentation: certs, geographic preferences, selections, interview notes, background checks, etc. (Well, no candidate and I expect no sitting ALJ or SSA Attorney.). We speaketh - to a large degree - in a void."

Jagghagg, you have essentially stated the purpose of my "blind defense" of ODAR and OPM. We all have two methods of improving our odds of being selected; understanding the rules of the game and adjusting our plans to the rules, or changing the rules. Changing the rules should be a last ditch option due to the time and mess involved, but if someone were to determine to a level of certainty that the deck is significantly stacked against them in violation of the regulations, who am I to argue with their next obvious course of action? But my point is that it does none of us any good to jump to conclusions about anything in this process. We have only seen OPM score two rounds of applicants and ODAR select one large and one small cert of candidates. Based upon how long it took many very qualified people from inside and outside the agency to "beat the system" prior to 2007, it is the height of hubris to draw any sweeping conclusions from our minimal base of acquired knowledge. I am not here to defend OPM or ODAR. I am here to add my 2 cents to the group-think of this site and hopefully figure out how to maximize my odds of being selected as an ALJ.

One theory that hasn't even been thrown out yet is the possibility that ODAR actually did go all out to get as many high value insiders in 2008 as possible, at the expense of all of the other candidates, as Patriotfan suggested. BUT, what if that was a one time-only move to get the most immediate bang for the buck in the first hiring? Take a little gamble with a hiring rules violation in order to assure early success and therefore continued money for more hirings. Based upon the management experience of the 2008 hires they can also provide a cadre of hearing office chief judges to improve the effectiveness of the later classes. From 2009 and on they will toe the line on the hiring regs because they won't want any problems after assuring their success. Just a thought. But of course how can we know having experienced only a single year's hiring?

[Legal Beagle]

I have been told that some of last year's class of ODAR ALJs had no SSA experience at all. Frankly, to me as a claimant's rep, that is a disadvantage to the claimant to have someone who is new to the area of law hearing my case. Of course, the reality may be the opposite - getting more favorable decisions from someone who is not already jaded by hearing the mountain of "sob stories." I wonder if anyone is going to do a statistical study on that - the affirmation / denial ratios of non-SSA experienced ALJs versus ones who are "insiders" and / or have SSA legal experience.

[okeydokey]

The way I see it, there are three things that give an applicant an upper hand:

1. Insider status.
2. Veteran preference.
3. A high score.

One would presume that a candidate with all three (and I think there are few of them out there) would have a very good chance.

Veteran preference, especially of 30 percent, should give one a leg up over an insider without preference. I would think that ODAR would not want to do a justification. But I could be wrong.

The high score just gets the applicant on the list. Veteran preference being equal, it does not matter much.


I don't like the fact that SSA gives so much priority to insiders. But it is a fact. Social Security law is very complicated. I have read a few appeals decisions (there appear to be a great many of them, rivaling immigration appeals court decisions) and they are mind-numbing.

[jagghagg]

"Take a little gamble with a hiring rules violation in order to assure early success. . .". Oh, Val... And I had such hopes... So "the end justifies the means"? Never, ever. There is a REASON for those "rules" and an effort, if it took place and even if with good intent, to circumvent them is to the detriment of other things, and those other "things" would be the Merit Principles.

[privateatty]

Mar 24, 2009 8:30:04 GMT -5 @patriotsfan said:

Quick couple of points.

(1) To a large extent, whether the insiders are 1/3 or 50% is irrelevant because the beef that has been expressed is the process of reaching down into the certificate, through a manipulation of the selection order of vacancies and cities, to reach pre-selected people, most of whom were low scoring SSA insiders. The issue is whether or not SSA violated certain regulations in doing so. It is a fact, however, that SSA did manipulate the order of selection of cities and vacancies to create "Top 3" groups that contained at least one of these preferred candidates. Some say that it is OK under the regs, others, including myself, say it is not. The basic argument is that prior SSA experience is simply not a merit factor, and cannot be used as the cirteria to accept or reject a candidate. SSA has tried multiple times in the past to get OPM to change the regualtions and allow agency-specific experience as a factor, and they have been repeatedly rejected. So, they just did it anyway under the assumption that no one would ever be able to prove it.

(2) The only reason SSA wants to reopen or refresh the register would be to reach candidates that they have pre-selected for ALJ positions but whose scores are so low they cannot be reached even through a manipulation of the selection order, thus a new register gives them the chance to re-test, or a "refresh" is necessary to assist SSA in that SSA insiders who failed to make the cut last time around have a better shot at making the register, thus allowing SSA to hire these folks on the next certificate.

SSA has already decided NOT TO HIRE a great deal of high scorers on this register. We can argue until our faces turn blue about why these people were "blackballed", but the truth is SSA's application of the Three Strikes Rule, random as it seems, allows SSA to bypass these candidates and reach their preferred candidates with lower scores, at least that is what SSA contends it is permitted to do.

What we have is a great number of folks, all of whom with reasonably high scores, say top 50% for the most part, who are, for all intent and purpose, out of the running for a position with SSA under the Three Strikes Rule. For SSA's purpose, its as though these people did not exist. Thus, SSA wants more "fresh" names to replace the "stale" names they have already rejected. That's basically why they want to refresh or reopen the register.

The reason why these well qualified folks were bypassed is really only truly known to the few people at SSA that made the decision, but my best guess is that it had nothing to do with the people or their qualifications, it was just that they were "in the way" of preferred candidates with lower scores.

This post and Pixie's recent post about the issue of "scores don't matter" should give great comfort to those insiders with "middlin'" scores.

And legal beagle (as well as your brethren), being a rep with I assume an excellent reputation, your chances are equally good.

Call me old fashioned, but I think SSA should just follow the law.

[comfortablynumb]

Unless I misunderstand the process or his interpretation, Patriotsfan's analysis of the reason SSA desires to "refresh" the register is faulty. The only way that the desirable insiders with lower scores that have previously been unreachable can be reached is either by closing the current register (which will not happen until Oct 2010) and then reopening it for the receipt of new applications or by having an even larger hire than the current one without adding new bodies to the existing register, thereby lowering the cert cutoff score.

[valkyrie]

"Take a little gamble with a hiring rules violation in order to assure early success. . .". Oh, Val... And I had such hopes... So "the end justifies the means"? Never, ever. There is a REASON for those "rules" and an effort, if it took place and even if with good intent, to circumvent them is to the detriment of other things, and those other "things" would be the Merit Principles."

You have noted before that the agency has sought to change the rules through the proper channels without success. Theoretical "purity" of the ALJ cadre is the ends for which OPM has justified its means of refusing to weight agency specific experience. The "purity" of the last 30 years has left ODAR with a destructive number of ineffective ALJs-for-life that were selected based upon an OPM dog-and-pony show and a two hour agency interview. In the end it has been the claimants who have suffered the most. You want blind allegiance to merit principles in a system that has already been tainted by an "ends justify the means" failure. OPM can have its merit principles, I serve the claimants.

[jagghagg]

And such is why PF suggests your allegiance is blind. You may think the statement "I serve the claimants" is altruistic but at the very least your vision is short- sighted. OPM cannot - repeat - CANNOT "weight" agency-specific experience without independent ( and neutral) testing which proves the benefit. The testing of the proposition that agency-specific experience makes better agency-specific ALJs has, this far, NOT proven true. And you are also saying that , if SSA did this (if they favored agency insiders without permission to do so) that it is justified because SSA asked for such authorization in the past and could not get it. So this time they just did it. (Why ask if you will just be told "no"?) That's the argument of a child when they take a cookie without asking; not the justification to be utilized by the Social Security Administration which uses and spends taxpayer money.