Elevate and Strengthen the Presidential Management Fellows Program
Founded in 1977, the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program is intended to be “the Federal Government’s premier leadership development program for advanced degree holders across all academic disciplines” with a mission “to recruit and develop a cadre of future government leaders from all segments of society.” The challenges facing our country require a robust pipeline of talented and representative rising leaders across federal agencies. The PMF program has historically been a leading source of such talent.
The next Administration should leverage this storied program to reinvigorate recruitment for a small, highly-skilled management corps of upwardly-mobile public servants and ensure that the PMF program retains its role as the government’s premier pipeline for early-career talent. It should do so by committing to placing all PMF Finalists in federal jobs (rather than only half, as has been common in recent years), creating new incentives for agencies to engage, and enhancing user experience for all PMF stakeholders.
Challenge and Opportunity
Bearing the Presidential Seal, the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) Program is the Federal Government’s premier leadership development program for advanced degree holders across all academic disciplines. Appropriately for a program created in the President’s name, the application process for the PMF program is rigorous and competitive. Following a resume and transcript review, two assessments, and a structured interview, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) selects and announces PMF Finalists.
Selection as a Finalist is only the first step in a PMF applicant’s journey to a federal position. After they are announced, PMF Finalists have 12 months to find an agency posting by completing a second round of applications to specific positions that agencies have designated as eligible for PMFs. OPM reports that “over the past ten years, on average, 50% of Finalists obtain appointments as Fellows.” Most Finalists who are placed are not appointed until late in the eligibility period: halfway through the 2024 eligibility window, only 85 of 825 finalists (10%) had been appointed to positions in agencies.
For applicants and universities, this reality can be dispiriting and damage the reputation of the program, especially for those not placed. The yearlong waiting period ending without a job offer for about half of Finalists belies the magnitude of the accomplishment of rising to the top of such a competitive pool of candidates eager to serve their country. Additionally, Finalists who are not placed in a timely manner will be likelier to pursue job opportunities outside of federal service. At a moment when the federal government is facing an extraordinary talent crisis with an aging workforce and large-scale retirements, the PMF program must better serve its purpose as a trusted source of high-level, early-career talent.
zThe current program design also affects the experience of agency leaders—such as hiring managers and Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs)—as they consider hiring PMFs. When agencies hire a PMF for a 2-year placement, they cover the candidate’s salary plus an $8,000 fee to OPM’s PMF program office to support its operations. Agencies consider hiring PMF Finalists with the knowledge that the PMF has the option to complete a 6-month rotational assignment outside of their hiring unit. These factors may create the impression that hiring a PMF is “costlier” than other staffing options.
Despite these challenges, the reasons for agencies to invest in the PMF program remain numerous:
- It remains intensely competitive and desirable for applicants; in 2024, the program had an 11.5% acceptance rate.
- PMFs are high quality hires: 87% of PMFs took a permanent or term position in government following the completion of their two-year fellowship.
- The PMF alumni network includes celebrated career and political leaders across government.
- The PMF program is a leading source of general management talent, with strong brand equity to reach this population.
The PMF is still correctly understood as the government’s premier onramp program for early career managerial talent. With some thoughtful realignment, it can sustain and strengthen this role and improve experience for all its core stakeholders.
Plan of Action
The next Administration should take a direct hand in supporting the PMF Program. As the President’s appointee overseeing the program, the OPM Director should begin by publicly setting an ambitious placement percentage goal and then driving the below reforms to advance that goal.
Recommendation 1. Increase the Finalist placement rate by reducing the Finalist pool.
The status quo reveals misalignment between the pool of PMF Finalists and demand for PMFs across government. This may be in part due to the scale of demand, but is also a consequence of PMF candidates and finalists with ever-broader skill sets, which makes placement more challenging and complex. Along with the 50% placement rates, the existing imbalance between finalists and placements is reflected in the decision to contract the finalist pool from 1100 in 2022 to 850 in 2023 and 825 in 2024. The next Administration should adjust the size of the Finalist pool further to ensure a near-100% placement rate and double down on its focus on general managerial talent to simplify disciplinary matching. Initially, this might mean shrinking the pool from the 825 advanced in 2024 to 500 or even fewer.
The core principle is simple: PMF Finalists should be a valuable resource for which agencies compete. There should be (modestly) fewer Finalists than realistic agency demand, not more. Critically, this change would not aim to reduce the number of PMFs serving in government. Rather, it seeks to sustain the current numbers while dramatically reducing the number of Finalists not placed and creating a healthier set of incentives for all parties.
When the program can reliably boast high placement rates, then the Federal government can strategize on ways to meaningfully increase the pool of Fellows and use the program to zero in on priority hard-to-hire disciplines outside of general managerial talent.
Recommendation 2. Attach a financial incentive to hiring and retaining a PMF while improving accountability.
To underscore the singular value of PMFs and their role in the hiring ecosystem, the next Administration should attach a financial incentive to hiring a PMF.
Because of the $8,000 placement fee, PMFs are seen as a costlier route than other sources of talent. A financial incentive to hire PMFs would reverse this dynamic. The next Administration might implement a large incentive of $50,000 per Fellow, half of which would be granted when a Fellow is placed and the other half to be granted when the Fellow accepts a permanent full-time job offer in the Federal government. This split payment would signal an investment in Fellows as the future leaders of the federal government.
Assuming an initial cohort of 400 placed Fellows at $50,000 each, OPM would require $20 million plus operating costs for the PMF program office. To secure funds, the Administration could seek appropriations, repurpose funds through normal budget channels, or pursue an agency pass-the-hat model like the financing of the Federal Executive Board and Hiring Experience program offices.
To parallel this incentive, the Administration should also implement accountability measures to ensure agencies more accurately project their PMF needs by assigning a cost to failing to place some minimum proportion–perhaps 70%–of the Finalists projected in a given cycle. This would avoid too many unplaced Finalists. Agencies that fail to meet the threshold should have reduced or delayed access to the PMF pool in subsequent years.
Recommendation 3. Build a Stronger Support Ecosystem
In support of these implementation changes, the next Administration should pursue a series of actions to elevate the program and strengthen the PMF ecosystem.
Even if the Administration pursues the above recommendations, some Finalists would remain unpaired. The PMF program office should embrace the role of a talent concierge for a smaller, more manageably-sized cohort of yet-unpaired Finalists, leveraging relationships across the government, including with PMF Alumni and the Presidential Management Alumni Association (PMAA) and OPM’s position as the government’s strategic talent lead to encourage agencies to consider specific PMF Finalists in a bespoke way. The Federal government should also consider ways to privilege applications from unplaced Finalists who meet criteria for a specific posting.
To strengthen key PMF partnerships in agencies, the Administration should elevate the role of PMF Coordinators beyond “other duties as assigned” to a GS-14 “PMF Director.” With new incentives to encourage placement and consistent strategic orientation from agency partners, agencies will be in a better position to project their placement needs by volume and role and hire PMF Finalists who meet them. PMF Coordinators would have explicit performance measures that reflect ownership over the success of the program.
The Administration must commit and sustain senior-level engagement—in the White House and at the senior levels of OMB, OPM, and in senior agency roles including Deputy Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries for Management, and Chief Human Capital Officers—to drive forward these changes. It must seize key leverage points throughout the budget and strategic management cycle, including OPM’s Human Capital Operating Plan process, OMB’s Strategic Reviews process, and the Cross-Agency Priority Goal setting rhythms. And it must sustain focus, recognizing that these new design elements may not succeed in their first cycle, and should provide support for experimentation and innovation.
Conclusion
For decades, the PMF program has consistently delivered top-tier talent to the federal government. However, the past few years have revealed a need for reform to improve the experience of PMF hopefuls and the agencies that will undoubtedly benefit from their skills. With a smaller Finalist pool, healthier incentives, and a more supportive ecosystem, agencies would compete for a subsidized pool of high-quality talent available to them at lower cost than alternative route, and Fellows who clear the significant barrier of the rigorous selection process would have far stronger assurance of a placement. If these reforms are successfully implemented, esteem for the government’s premier onramp for rising managerial talent will rise, contributing to the impression that the Federal government is a leading and prestigious employer of our nation’s rising leaders.
This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.
The PMF program is a 2-year placement with an optional 6-month rotation in another office within the appointing agency or another agency. The rotation is an important and longstanding design element of a program aiming to build a rising cohort of managerial talent with a broad purview. While the current program requires agencies pay OPM the full salary, benefits, and a placement fee for placing a PMF, the one quarter rotation may act as a barrier to embracing PMF talent. This can be addressed by adding a significant subsidy to balance this concern.
In the current program, OPM uses a rule of thumb to set the number of Finalists at approximately 80% of anticipated demand to minimize the number of unplaced Finalists. This is a prudent approach, reflected in shifting Finalist numbers in recent years: from 1100 in 2022 to 850 in 2023 and 825 in 2024. Despite adjusting the Finalist pool, unfortunately placement rates have remained near 50%. Agencies are failing to follow-through on their projected demand for PMFs, which has unfortunate consequences for Finalists and presents management challenges for the PMF program office.
This reform proposal would take a large step by reducing the Finalist pool to well below the stated demand–500 or less–and focus on general managerial talent to make the pairing process simpler. This would be, fundamentally, a temporary reset to raise placement rates and improve user experience for candidates, agencies, and the program management team. As placement rhythms strengthen along the lines described above, there is every reason for the program to grow.
The subsidy proposed for placing a PMF candidate would not require a net increase in federal expenditures. In the status quo, all costs of the PMF program are borne by the government: agencies pay salaries and benefits, and pay a fee to OPM at the point of appointment. This proposal would surface and centralize these costs and create an agency incentive through the subsidy to hire PMFs, either by “recouping” funds collected from agencies through a pass-the-hat revolving fund or “capitalizing” on a central investment from another source. In either case, it would ensure that PMF Finalists are a scarce asset to be competed for, as the program was envisioned, and that the PMF program office manages thoughtful access to this asset for the whole government, rather than needing to be “selling” to recover operational costs.
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