The 4 Federal Merit Hiring Essay Questions (2026): What to Know Before You Answer

If you have applied for a federal job at GS-05 or above since late 2025, you have run into four new essay questions. They come from OPM's Merit Hiring Plan, implemented under Executive Order 14170 (January 2025), and they now appear on nearly every competitive-service posting open to the public at GS-05 and up. Teacher, Wage Grade, and seasonal positions are exempt.

Before you write a single word, there is one thing you need to understand, because it is the part that can actually hurt you.

The AI-certification trap (read this first)

When you submit these essays, you certify under 18 U.S.C. 1001 that you did not use AI tools or outside consultants to generate your responses.

18 U.S.C. 1001 is the federal false-statements statute. Knowingly making a false certification on a federal job application is a federal crime, punishable by fines and up to five years in prison.

That means:

• Do not paste these questions into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any AI writing tool and submit what it gives you.
• Do not have a resume service, coach, or consultant write them for you.
• If you use one of those and then certify that you did not, you have made a false statement to the federal government.

This is exactly why the Military Transition Toolkit does not offer a tool to generate these answers, and why you should be suspicious of any service that does. A tool that writes your essays is not helping you — it is walking you into a certification you cannot honestly sign.

Write them yourself, in your own words, or leave them blank. Those are your two safe options.

The four questions

The exact wording varies slightly by posting, but every version covers these four topics:

1. Commitment to the Constitution. How your work supports and upholds the U.S. Constitution.
2. Government efficiency. How you have contributed, or would contribute, to making government more effective and less wasteful.
3. An Executive Order in your work. How a specified Executive Order applies to the role you are applying for.
4. Your work ethic. A description of your personal work ethic and how it shows up on the job.

Each answer is capped at 200 words.

They are optional, and they are not scored

This is the part most applicants do not realize:

• Agencies must ask the four questions. That part is mandatory for the government.
• Your answers are optional. You are encouraged, not required, to respond.
• The responses are not rated or scored. They do not factor into your qualification rating or your placement on a certificate.

So a blank set of essays does not disqualify you, and a brilliant set does not move you up a list. They are, by OPM's own description, unscored.

One honest caveat: as of early 2026, there is active litigation claiming that in practice applicants cannot actually skip these questions on some systems, despite OPM calling them optional. If a posting will not let you submit without an answer, that is a known and contested issue — answer briefly, in your own words, rather than abandon the application. Confirm the current state on the posting itself.

How to approach them (safely)

Since they are unscored, do not agonize. A few minutes of honest, first-person writing is the entire task:

• Use your own real experience. For work ethic and efficiency, a concrete example from your military service is stronger and more honest than anything generic.
• Keep it short. 200 words is a ceiling, not a target. Two or three plain sentences per question is fine.
• Write in your own voice. These do not need to be polished. They need to be yours, because you are certifying they are.
• Do not overthink the Constitution and Executive Order prompts. State plainly how you understand your role supporting lawful, constitutional government. You are not writing a legal brief.

Where this fits in a federal application

The essays are a small, unscored add-on. The parts of your application that actually determine whether you get referred are the federal résumé and the occupational questionnaire, and those are where military applicants gain or lose the most ground.

• Federal Résumé: The 2-Page Rule and What Changed — the OPM Merit Hiring Plan also capped Title 5 résumés at two pages.
• KSA / CCAR Narrative Builder — build accomplishment narratives the federal way (this is a structure helper for your own writing, not an AI generator).
• Military to Federal Career Translator — turn your MOS into civilian and federal terms.

Sources: OPM Merit Hiring Plan FAQ, OPM guidance on the four essay questions. This is general information, not legal advice. The rules and the litigation around them are changing; confirm the current requirements on the posting and at OPM.gov before you apply.