> I appreciate the apology but the really disappointing thing is talking to your recruiters who say it's hard to get good technologists into government and then looking at your process that seems to exacerbate the problem.

Not even the worst of the descriptions of experience with USDS hiring I've seen could possibly be reasonable viewed as exacerbating the problem (mitigating it less than an ideal process would, sure; but to be exacerbating, it would have to be worse than the average non-USDS public sector hiring process.)

I agree with you. I misspoke above. They are not exacerbating the problem but their hiring process could be an impediment to reaching their goals.

Every public-facing process a business has is part of the marketing process. If people are left with a story of how dealing with the business was a bad experience, that will affect the business's reputation. When stories like yours are common the pool of potential talent is reduced as people are put off applying in the first place. The recruiting process at the USDS is exacerbating the problem because it means that fewer candidates will apply for jobs there.