What Is the Civil Service Exam?

A civil service exam is a competitive, merit-based examination that governments use to rank applicants for public jobs. In the United States today there is no single national civil service exam: the federal government's last general entrance test ended in the early 1980s, and testing now happens through state, county, and municipal exams tied to specific job titles, plus the federal USA Hire online assessment platform run by the Office of Personnel Management. This article traces how the system got here, what today's exams contain, how scoring and eligible lists work, and how to prepare.

The American civil service exam was born in 1883, when the Pendleton Act replaced the "spoils system" of handing government jobs to political supporters. The law, approved on January 16, 1883, provided that federal jobs be awarded on merit and that employees be selected through competitive exams, and it created a three-member Civil Service Commission to oversee the testing. The statute even specified what the exams should be like: "practical in their character," relating to matters that "fairly test the relative capacity and fitness of the persons examined."

Coverage started small. The National Archives notes that the Act initially covered only about 10 percent of the roughly 132,000 federal employees of the day, and that merit-system coverage has since expanded to most of the federal workforce. The core Pendleton machinery, competitive exams feeding merit-ranked hiring lists, is still how a large share of government hiring works, just no longer through one central test.

Through the 1970s the federal government did run a general entrance exam: the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE), used to fill roughly 110 occupations at the GS-5 and GS-7 grade levels. A 1979 class-action lawsuit alleged that the PACE had an adverse impact on the selection of African American and Hispanic applicants. On November 19, 1981, a federal district court resolved the suit through what became known as the "Luevano consent decree," which ended the PACE and required alternative assessments for the occupations it had covered. The Office of Personnel Management developed the Administrative Careers with America (ACWA) written tests and rating schedules as those alternatives.

Since then, federal examining has been decentralized and modernized. OPM's current platform is USA Hire, which it describes as delivering "valid, reliable, and fair skills-based assessments" developed by its industrial-organizational psychologists. More than 80 federal agencies use it, and it evaluates nearly one million applicants each year. Applicants are invited to complete an assessment after applying through USA Staffing, can finish it "anytime, anywhere" by the due date or in a proctored setting, and the results are scored automatically, sometimes in combination with other assessments an agency chooses.

Because exams are now run by many jurisdictions for specific titles, content varies, but a few verified examples show the range.

• Federal: USA Hire: Online, competency-based assessments attached to specific job announcements, completed on the applicant's own device or in secure proctored environments, and scored automatically.

• State: New York's PCO exam: The Professional Career Opportunities examination is one test that state agencies can use to fill more than 150 entry-level professional job types. It is open to bachelor's degree holders and rates candidates in five areas: Analytical Reasoning, Customer and Client Service, Professional Relationships, Reading Comprehension, and Written Communication. Every New York exam announcement lists the job titles, exam date, subjects tested, salary, and application deadline.

• County: Westchester's clerical exams: Westchester County's Office Assistant exam tests spelling, alphabetizing, record keeping, and "clerical operations with letters and numbers," meaning alphabetizing, comparing, checking, and counting. Our guide to the clerical aptitude test covers that format in detail.

Uniformed titles run on the same legal machinery. Police officer hiring typically starts with the police written exam, and fire departments screen with the firefighter aptitude test; both are civil service exams applied to specific job series.

A civil service exam does not produce a simple pass or fail. Written tests yield numerical ratings, and passing candidates are ranked on an "eligible list" from which agencies hire in score order. In New York, official scores usually arrive within 90 to 120 days of the exam, and candidates track job canvasses through the state's Eligible List Management System. Lists also expire: names stay on Westchester's continuous recruitment clerical list for one year, and eligibility on New York's PCO lists ends within 30 days after the next round of lists is established.

Veterans' preference then adjusts the ranking. Under the rules in OPM's Vet Guide, five points are added to the passing examination score of veterans with qualifying service periods, and ten points are added for categories including veterans with a compensable service-connected disability rating of at least 10 percent. Preference eligibles with a compensable disability of 10 percent or more are listed at the top of the register ahead of all other eligibles, and everyone else appears in order of numerical rating. Two details matter for accuracy: points are added only to a passing score, and preference changes list position rather than waiving the exam.

Look across the verified examples and the content is familiar to anyone who studies cognitive testing: reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, arithmetic record keeping, clerical speed and accuracy, written communication, and judgment. These are samples of general cognitive ability applied to office work, which is why civil service exams are historically the largest scale application of ability testing in hiring. The research behind that choice is strong: Schmidt and Hunter's review of 85 years of selection studies found general cognitive ability among the best predictors of job and training performance. A 2022 reanalysis by Sackett and colleagues revised those classic estimates downward by .10 to .20 and placed structured interviews at the top of the ranking, a useful reminder that test validity claims need the same scrutiny as test scores. Validity and fairness are the twin forces here; the PACE was ended over adverse impact, and modern programs like USA Hire are built with both in mind.

A civil service exam is still a job screen, though, scoped to one title's demands. In the Cattell-Horn-Carroll model that modern intelligence testing is built on, those clerical and reasoning tasks sample a few branches of a much broader cognitive profile. A full battery like the RIOT IQ test (the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test) measures six indices, from verbal and fluid reasoning to working memory and processing speed; the RIOT IQ assessments page shows how that profile is put together. Knowing your broader profile can even tell you which exam sections will come easily and which need drilling.

Preparation pays on these exams. A meta-analysis of 107 samples and 134,436 participants found that practice and retesting raise cognitive test scores by about a quarter of a standard deviation on average, with larger gains when practice came with coaching.

• Read the announcement first: Every New York announcement lists the "subject of examination," and county announcements do the same, so you know exactly which sections to drill before you spend an hour on anything else.

• Practice the named formats under time: If the announcement lists alphabetizing, comparing, and checking, drill those tasks against a clock rather than studying general trivia.

• Treat USA Hire like a proctored test: Federal assessments can be completed anywhere by the due date, so pick a quiet, distraction-free block of time and finish well before the deadline.

If you want to know where your abilities stand before exam day, the RIOT IQ test at riotiq.com is normed on adults 18 and older and publishes a margin of error for every version, which makes it a reasonable way to map your strengths before a high-stakes sitting.

No. The last general federal entrance exam, the PACE, ended with the 1981 Luevano consent decree. Exams today are specific to a jurisdiction and job title, though New York's PCO exam covers 150+ state titles with one test.

Written tests produce numerical ratings, and passing candidates are ranked on an eligible list that agencies hire from in score order. Veterans' preference points can raise a passing candidate's position on the list.

No. Qualifying veterans get 5 or 10 extra points added to a passing exam score, and some disabled veterans go to the top of the register, but everyone must still pass the exam itself.

It depends on the jurisdiction's eligible list rules. Westchester County keeps names on its continuous recruitment clerical list for one year, and New York's PCO eligibility ends within 30 days after the next lists are established.

1. Hausknecht, J. P., Halpert, J. A., Di Paolo, N. T., & Moriarty Gerrard, M. O. (2007). Retesting in selection: A meta-analysis of coaching and practice effects for tests of cognitive ability. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(2), 373-385. doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.2.373

2. National Archives. (n.d.). Pendleton Act (1883). Milestone Documents. archives.gov

3. New York State Department of Civil Service. (n.d.). Examinations open to the public. cs.ny.gov

4. New York State Department of Civil Service. (n.d.). Professional Career Opportunities (PCO). cs.ny.gov

5. Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(11), 2040-2068. doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994

6. Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 262-274. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262

7. U.S. Office of Personnel Management. (n.d.). What is the Administrative Careers with America (ACWA)? opm.gov

8. U.S. Office of Personnel Management. (n.d.). USA Hire. opm.gov

9. U.S. Office of Personnel Management. (n.d.). Vet Guide for HR Professionals. opm.gov

10. Westchester County Department of Human Resources. (n.d.). Office Assistant (Automated Systems) examination announcement. westchestergov.com