What kind of creature slips into a workplace, burrows into a lair and stays there for the rest of its life?

No, it’s not a mole, but a particular breed of federal employee who bypasses the normal rating, ranking and selection process and gains an inside track to a permanent, benefits-laden government job.

In government personnel circles, these workers are called “conversions,” political appointees who convert to permanent federal jobs once the administration that hires them leaves office or lets them go. Colloquially, it’s known as “burrowing in.”

There’s nothing new about it.

“Burrowing in is a Washington tradition,” said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association. “It happens in every administration. Several years ago there was a call for a one-year cooling-off period for political appointees before they could be converted to career employee status, but [politicians] argued that it was unfair to keep their friends from being considered for positions for which they were qualified.”

The Office of Personnel Management requires agencies to follow proper procedures when political appointees convert to federal career employee status. Agencies, for example, are required to properly document who the conversion candidates are, their qualifications, background data and other pertinent information.

These measures are designed to ensure that conversion employees don’t bypass traditional hiring scrutiny or fail to jump through the same hoops the career employee in the next cubicle was required to leap through.

Three years ago, members of Congress asked the Government Accountability Office to review the status of conversion employees and determine whether agencies followed proper procedure when hiring them.

The resulting GAO study, Personnel Practices, Conversions of Employees from Non-Career to Career Positions (GAO-6-381), investigated records surrounding 144 conversions between May 2001 to April 2005, and found that that in 18 of those conversions, agencies failed to document the employee’s history, merit standing and other supporting paperwork. Some agencies even created new career positions to serve particular individuals. In most conversions at the GS-12 level and higher, agencies followed proper procedures, GAO said.

In 19 cases, GAO said it didn’t have enough information to make a determination as to whether proper procedures were followed.

Four agencies accounted for 95 conversions, roughly 66 per cent of the conversions in the four-year period. The agencies with the most were the Health and Human Services Department, which had 36; Justice, 23; Defense, 21; and Treasury, 15.

Among the biggest agency transgressions were creating positions for political appointees or rewriting job descriptions and requirements to fit a political hire’s resume. GAO cited seven examples of reserving jobs for favored applicants, among them:

• The Homeland Security Department created a career-excepted service position and gave the job to a former political appointee without letting other candidates apply.
• HHS in two cases changed mandatory job requirements already posted in job announcements to closely match a Senior Executive Service job candidate’s experience.
• The Defense Department preselected a political appointee for a career position, giving him an unfair advantage over other applicants.

In other instances, agencies failed to award military veterans preference points, which help them win jobs; showed preferential treatment to underqualified applicants over others with more experience and knowledge; and ignored standard merit-system procedures.

GAO recommended that OPM review the 18 conversions it identified as flawed and determine whether conversions to career-excepted service positions—jobs at agencies that are exempt from competitive civil-service hiring procedures—should be subject to OPM review. For excepted positions, OPM does not require agencies to follow its competitive-hiring provisions.

In a letter responding to the report, OPM director Linda Springer agreed to review the 18 conversions and to improve oversight of conversions to excepted positions by incorporating a review of agency practices in this area into its normal review of agency-delegated examining units.

The bottom line is that it’s worth an agency’s time to make sure hiring procedures are followed, Bonosaro said.

“If you are an agency manager, and you’re hiring for a position, you have to cross all your t’s and dot your i’s,” she said.

A major benefit is that by following proper procedures, executives can’t help but hire people whose qualifications match the job description, she said.