ABSTRACT
On May 27, 1977, the General Accounting Office (GAO) sent a letter to the Civil Service Commission (CSC), summarizing the results of a survey on the efficiency and effectiveness of recruiting qualified persons for competitive clerical and technical positions. The rapidly changing labor market for clerical and technical employees adds to the need for a fair and equitable applicant examination and referral system that responds quickly to agency requirements. Although CSC's new centralized and automated system for scoring written tests reduces processing time somewhat, agency personnel offices are still concerned that long processing time leads well-qualified clerical and technical applicants to accept other jobs. In a limited sample of the San Francisco area office, the GAO found that many certificates for clerical and technical positions that CSC issued to agencies were returned unused, without the applicants having been contacted or the positions filled.
