What's the deal with the Federal hiring process?

You are so wrong, it's ridiculous. The KSA questons are PRINTED IN THE ANNOUNCEMENT. Let me guess. Too long, didn't read it. Let me hazard another guess and say that you're not a veteran AND that you have no particular skills that are in great demand, like say, a master's degree in vocational rehabilitation that included a supervised internship. Trust me, no one's wife, mother, or girlfriend gets hired for voc rehab counselor, or nurse, or rating VSR, or environmental biologist, or blood laboratory tech, or any of a myriad of jobs that require a specific degree or experience in order to qualify. I'm sure that there are some hiring officials who have no ethics and minimal management skills, but they are in the minority, and if people like you, who notice things that are wrong, would tell someone who cares (like the Merit Systems Protection Board) instead of yelling into the wind on Yahoo, then something would be done about it. Namely, that location would be thoroughly audited and investigated, and if the hiring process showed anomalies, that HR could lose their hiring authority to OPM, because there are loads of ethical, honest HR professionals who can't stand and won't tolerate that sort of behavior from anyone. It reflects badly on all of us.