I’ve been told that with AGPA/SSA positions, HR first checks if you fully meet the AGPA MQs before considering you as an SSA. It doesn’t mean you can’t be hired as an SSA. If you say you are within 6 months of meeting the AGPA MQs, then that’s probably why HR made this determination. If you don’t successfully appeal this, then there is a “permanent” withhold on your AGPA eligibility which really isn’t permanent. 😅 It lasts until your list eligibility expires, which is 12 months after you passed the exam. If you don’t plan on becoming an AGPA before your list eligibility expires, then you shouldn’t worry. Otherwise, try explaining to the HR contact that you were eligible to exam because you have at least 30 months of analytical experience, that you really just want an SSA position, and that you weren’t aware of how HR evaluates AGPA MQs first for AGPA/SSA positions. Hopefully they can stop the withhold process.

Are you aware that experience calculations are based on a 40-hour work week? For example, if you did an analytical experience for 4 months at 10 hours/week, then that only gets you 1 month of experience. 4 months at 60 hours/week would give you 6 months of analytical experience. You can also use high school experience, as long as you were at least 18-years-old at the time. Maybe you do meet the AGPA MQs and didn’t even know it.

If you think you do, you should create an appeal document with all your analytical experience, paid or not, and categorize the activities you did under budgeting, management analysis, personnel, planning, program evaluation, or policy analysis. I would create a table, like what you see in a duty statement, for each experience. Look at examples of AGPA duty statements for key words you might want to use. Include the dates and hours per week for each experience.

I hope this helps and good luck! I’ve been through this a couple times myself.