Federal compliance

How Career Consults works within federal hiring rules: no hiring decisions, identified contractor staff, USAJOBS referral, merit system principles, privacy, and Section 508.

The line we do not cross

Federal recruitment support has one boundary that shapes everything else. Under FAR 7.503(c), selecting or not selecting individuals for Federal employment, including interviewing them for employment, is an inherently governmental function. Qualification and eligibility determinations, assessment, referral, and appointment belong to agency officials under Title 5 and OPM rules. Our services are designed to stop before that point.

Career Consults does

Talent market researchWhere the candidates are, what they earn, and what moves them.
SourcingNamed leads matched to your written sourcing criteria.
OutreachApproved messaging, sent as an identified contractor.
Talent pipelineInterested candidates tracked and kept warm.

Candidate applies on USAJOBS

Your agency decides

Qualification and eligibilityYour HR specialists apply OPM qualification standards.
Assessment and referralYour assessment process ranks and refers applicants.
SelectionYour hiring manager selects.
AppointmentYour agency makes the offer and appoints.

Our work ends when a candidate applies through your official announcement. Every qualification, referral, selection, and appointment decision stays with your agency.

What we never do

Tell a candidate they are qualified, eligible, referred, selected, or approved for Federal employment
Promise an interview, grade, salary, appointment, or any other personnel outcome
Interview candidates for employment or take part in selection
Make commitments on behalf of your agency
Help a candidate get around competitive hiring procedures or veterans’ preference
Coach candidates on their application materials
Obtain candidate information through deceptive or unauthorized means
Use candidate or Government information for any other client or purpose

Non-personal services

We deliver against defined deliverables and standards. Your agency does not supervise our staff, assign tasks to individuals, or set their schedules; we manage our own people and methods. If anything starts to look like a personal-services arrangement, we notify the contracting officer immediately, consistent with FAR 37.104.

Contractor identification

Everyone who works on your contract identifies themselves as contractor personnel in meetings, emails, calls, and at events. Every message to a candidate says that we are a Government contractor doing recruitment outreach for your agency and that we have no hiring authority. Email signatures show our company name.

USAJOBS and merit system principles

Every interested candidate is sent to your USAJOBS announcement or designated application channel, and every candidate receives the same public information. Our outreach is broad and nondiscriminatory, consistent with the merit system principles in 5 U.S.C. 2301 and Federal equal employment opportunity requirements, and we avoid anything that could be a prohibited personnel practice under 5 U.S.C. 2302, such as giving one applicant an advantage that others do not have.

Privacy and candidate data

Candidate information is treated as personally identifiable information and collected only for the contract.
Access is limited to staff working on your contract, and data is stored in encrypted, access-controlled systems.
We follow the Privacy Act and FAR privacy clauses your contract includes, and our staff complete the privacy training your contract requires.
Suspected breaches are reported to your agency on the timeline your contract sets.
At contract end, Government records transfer to your agency, and remaining copies are disposed of as you direct.
Data held under third-party platform licenses is referenced by link, not copied, so transfers respect those licenses.

Accessibility

Recruitment materials, reports, and event content are produced to conform with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which references WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Virtual events include captioning and accessible materials. See our accessibility statement for this website.

Conflicts of interest

Career Consults offered paid career coaching to individual job seekers until 2026. We retired those services so that no candidate we contact for an agency is also a paying customer. If a former coaching client applies to a vacancy we are supporting, we disclose it to the contracting officer. Any other potential organizational or personal conflict of interest is disclosed as soon as we identify it.

Questions about compliance

Is recruitment support an inherently governmental function?

Recruitment support is not, but hiring decisions are. FAR 7.503(c) lists the selection or non-selection of individuals for Federal employment, including interviewing for employment, as inherently governmental. Sourcing, outreach, market research, campaigns, and events can be contracted, as long as the contractor makes no qualification, referral, or selection decisions.

Can a recruitment contractor screen résumés for a Federal agency?

A contractor can match public professional information to the sourcing criteria an agency provides, to decide whom to contact. That is a sourcing screen, not a qualification determination. Rating, ranking, and qualifying applicants for a Federal position stays with the agency’s HR specialists and assessment process.

How do you make sure candidates are not misled about their chances?

Outreach uses Government-approved information, identifies us as a contractor, and states that we have no hiring authority. Staff are trained never to predict outcomes, and outreach accuracy is checked by sample under our quality control plan.

Planning a recruitment support requirement?

We answer RFIs and sources-sought notices, and we brief program and contracting staff on how recruitment support can be scoped and priced.