If you read through my PolyWogg HR guide, Be the Duck, you know that the general approach to a federal government competition looks like this:

1. POSTER: Job goes up with elements for eligibility, experience, knowledge, abilities, personal suitability, language, security and conditions of employment
2. APPLICATION: People apply and are screened in/out for eligibility and experience;
3. WRITTEN TEST: Remaining candidates are tested for knowledge and some abilities;
4. INTERVIEW: Remaining candidates are tested for some abilities and some personal suitability;
5. REFERENCE CHECK: Remaining candidates are tested for some abiliteis and some personal suitability;
6. LANGUAGE TEST: Candidates are tested by PSC for French and/or English oral, written and reading;
7. POOL ESTABLISHED: All candidates who have passed steps 2-6 are put in the pool, which means they are all considered fully assessed and can be offered a job.
8. SECURITY CLEARANCE and CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT: As part of the letter of office process, the selected candidate will be assessed for security (if necessary) and asked to agree to conditions of employment (most often travel or overtime, as required) before the letter is issued.

That is the whole process start to finish, generally speaking, for a fully-assessed pool. By contrast, a partially-assessed pool would be if they stop / pause their process any time before Step 6 (the last assessment phase before language testing).

Let’s look at an example

Let’s assume someone wants to hire three junior analysts and they have nine very basic common elements:

1. Eligibility 1: Lives in Ottawa
2. Eligibility 2: Already works for government aka an employee
3. Experience 1: Experience analyzing policy
4. Knowledge 1: Knowledge of quantitative statistical methods
5. Ability 1: Ability to work well with others
6. Personal Suitability 1: Judgement
7. Language: BBB/BBB
8. Security: Secret
9. Conditions of work: Willing to work occasional overtime

Now let’s assume that there are three OTHER knowledge elements, as if there were three streams:

1. ASSET Experience 2: Experience in economic trends
2. ASSET Knowledge 2: Knowledge of economic trends
3. ASSET Experience 3: Experience in environmental policy
4. ASSET Knowledge 3: Knowledge of environmental policy
5. ASSET Experience 4: Experience in Indigenous issues
6. ASSET Knowledge 4: Knowledge of Indigenous issues

Now, they don’t need one person to have all three of those, just one of them. So they’ll have to test.

They start the process, screen everyone on eligibility 1 and 2, and experience 1, no difference from normal process. They screen everyone on K1, as everyone has to have that. No difference in process. Same for Ability 1 and PS 1, all good. And then they decide to stop. They have at this point partially-assessed the candidates, for the first five of nine elements. That may have taken them from 200 candidates down to 50 left.

Here’s where it gets interesting. For a hiring manager, say for economic trends, they don’t want to assess EVERYONE for K2. They ONLY want to assess those who want into that stream so they can now assess the original application against ASSET EXPERIENCE 2 aka who had economic trends…from the group of 50, maybe that is 23 people. that manager will NOW just test those 23, not the full 50. By contrast, maybe the environment manager applied ASSET EX3, found 15 people, they will then test them on ASSET K3, not the full 50. And so on.

Why?

The initial stopping point — after all the basic common stuff — is a branching point. They’ve assessed a bunch of stuff, which cost them a bunch of money. From that point on, they DON’T want to spend money on ALL the remaining candidates, they’re basically fast-tracking the first bits and then saying to hiring managers, if you want to keep going, you can sub-divide what’s left and do a smaller group.

So, here are some examples:

• The economic trends manager only had to look at 23 people, not the full 50 who were left at the previous stage;
• The environment manager only had to look at 15 people, not the full 50;
• The Indigenous manager maybe only had to look at 20 people, not the full 50.
• Another manager comes along, doesn’t need any of the assets, just wants to go based on the common elements, and they find perhaps three candidates that meet their selections. They can decide now to proceed with language testing ONLY those three. They don’t have to fully complete the other 47, just the ones they are interested in.

Stopping before language testing is the most common element- it is costly, so why do it for someone you are potentially not going to hire? Instead, HR frequently stops at a partially-assessed pool for all the common elements, and then the pool is ready for anyone to pick up where they left off and complete the steps for a particular candidate or three.

The second most common stopping point is just before a reference check. Many managers like to do their OWN reference checks for someone they are going to hire. But in HR theory, if someone has already done the reference check and you have a fully assessed pool, and then I come along as a hiring manager but want to “double-check” the reference check, I can’t. In theory, I’m not supposed to — they’ve already been assessed, so I can’t call their ref check and ask if the person was good at x or y, that’s already been tested, and the candidate found successful. But in addition to managers WANTING to still do it, it is also REALLY time-consuming. So many pool processes will stop “early” and let individual managers complete the reference check for their narrowed sub-group.

This sucks for you

If it was a fully assessed pool, say EC-03, and you make the pool but they don’t hire you, you can call someone else and say, “Hey, I made a pool” and the other manager can “match it” based on the fact you made a pool. You would be fully qualified. But you didn’t make the full pool…the assessment was never finished. Take language, for example. You don’t have a piece of paper saying you’re BBB/BBB because they never did the language test. Or perhaps they never tested judgement in the reference check.

So now you aren’t fully qualified; you’re partially qualified. If another manager wants to appoint you? They have to complete all the rest of the steps. And the more pieces that are missing, the less valuable it is to you to try and leverage your result elsewhere.

Equally, you’re stuck in limbo — in a process, but the process hasn’t really finished. It’s kind of like getting a haircut. Going through an elaborate haircut process at a salon is great, IF THEY FINISH. If they stop after an hour and go, well, that’s all we’re doing today, not so great an outcome.

Some people liken it more as a metaphor for surgery — surgery went well, but nobody sowed you up. Or a paint job on your car that they only did the doors.

In the end

There’s nothing you can really do about it, the HR process has “stalled” or “intentionally stopped” at that point. They’re calling it officially paused, and saying you’re in a partially-assessed pool. If the only thing left is language, that’s not bad. If they also need to assess language, judgement, working with others, blah blah blah, it’s not that attractive to other managers.

You can still market yourself, but if you are in partially-assessed pool, that’s not that much of an advantage to another manager — they still will have to do a lot of work to appoint you. If you were fully assessed, that would have reduced their workload quite a bit; partially-assessed may not do enough for them.