Senior-level human capital advisory for federal agencies, GovCon firms, and the professionals navigating the most complex employment system in the country.
Work a ten-applicant Chemist announcement, GS-1320-09/11, from preference adjudication through certificate building at both grades. Twenty questions modeled on the certification exam, a direct taste of the DE prep.
Strategic HR advisory for senior leaders navigating workforce transformation, organizational restructuring, and long-range human capital planning in federal and GovCon environments.
Assessment, risk identification, and remediation support for federal HR operations — staffing, performance management, personnel action processing, and service delivery.
Designing how federal HR actually delivers — consolidating fragmented processes into shared services, defining who owns what between HR and the mission, and building tiered service models that hold up under real workload.
Applying AI to the real mechanics of federal hiring — job analysis, assessment design, workload triage, audit readiness — without ever putting merit system principles, veterans’ preference, or your compliance posture at risk.
It used to be an online module you could retake until you hit 100%. Now it’s 50 questions in 90 minutes, proctored, pass or fail. And in its FY 2023 Annual Performance Report, OPM cited a roughly 40% failure rate on the certification assessment.
If you’re staring down this exam — or sending your staff into it — here’s what changed, why it’s hard even for people who do this work every day, and how to walk in prepared.
Or read: 5 things people get wrong on the exam →
More from the practitioner's desk: Why 40% fail (OPM's own numbers) · The 2026 exam format, rule by rule · Free practice questions
15 years inside federal human capital — senior roles at the Department of Commerce, advisory work at Deloitte, and now an independent practice built around translating federal HR complexity into clear, confident action.
Full Bio →The biweekly briefing for federal staffing practitioners: what changed, what it means at the DEU level, one practical tip. Sourced, dated, plain English. Free — no spam, ever.