Search the full text of FAR subpart 9.5 for the word “hire.” It is not there. Neither is “employee,” “employ,” “hiring,” “recruit” nor “staff,” anywhere in its roughly 3,000 words, checked against acquisition.gov on July 21, 2026. All nine worked examples describe companies supplying turbines, components and studies. None is about a hire.

So correct the premise, then correct the correction. Subpart 9.5 disqualifies no candidate; it constrains a company’s roles and the Government information in its hands. Footnote 4 of Pueo Business Solutions, LLC, B-422105 (January 3, 2024) holds that challenges based on hiring former government employees “who have access to non-public, competitively useful information are more accurately categorized as unfair competitive advantages under FAR subpart 3.1 rather than OCIs under FAR subpart 9.5.” Most write-ups stop there. GAO’s next sentence calls the 3.1 standard “virtually indistinguishable” from the 9.5 unequal-access test. The citation moves. The analysis does not.

Does FAR 9.5 say anything at all about hiring?

Short answer. No. It governs a company’s roles and the Government information it sits on, reaching your candidate only through the company.

FAR 9.500 casts the subpart as rules and “examples to assist contracting officers in applying these rules and procedures to individual contracting situations.” Contracting situations. Not staffing decisions. Its two principles at 9.505 concern the company: conflicting roles that might bias its judgment, and unfair competitive advantage from Government information. The famous three types, biased ground rules and unequal access and impaired objectivity, are GAO’s labels from Aetna Government Health Plans, B-254397.15 (1995), for categories drawn out of FAR 9.505-1 through 9.505-4. None reaches a person except through the company.

If not FAR 9.5, which rule can actually unwind the offer?

Short answer. Two rules, doing different jobs. FAR 3.101-1, on the appearance of impropriety, is what costs you the award. The ban at 41 U.S.C. 2104 never touches the award; it bars the person from taking the pay and fines the company that knowingly provides it.

Start with the one nobody names. FAR 3.101-1 requires Government business to “avoid strictly any conflict of interest or even the appearance of a conflict of interest in Government-contractor relationships.” GAO applies it to hires. Where a firm may have gained an advantage by hiring a former official, said Interactive Information Solutions, it “can be disqualified from a competition based on the appearance of impropriety which is created by this situation, that is, even if no actual impropriety can be shown.” No threshold, no clock, no named roles. That is the exposure a Procurement Integrity Act checklist misses. On the official-versus-contractor line, start with government contract jobs versus federal jobs.

Section 2104 names roles: procuring contracting officer, source selection authority, evaluation board member or evaluation-team chief on a procurement your company won; program manager, deputy or administrative contracting officer on your contract; or whoever decided to award it, set rates, approve payments or settle claims.

The $10,000,000 is not one test. It sits on three measurement bases: the contract your company was selected for, the contract the person program-managed, and the single award, rate action, payment or claim decision they made. Check only the first and you miss two. FAR 3.104-3(d)(2) starts the year at contract award for the first group, or at selection only where the official had left the position by award; at their last day in role for the second; at the decision date for the third.

Now the counterweight, because the ban alone overstates the constraint. Section 2104(b) exempts pay “from a division or affiliate of a contractor that does not produce the same or similar products or services as the entity of the contractor that is responsible for the contract.” At a prime with distinct business units that can resolve it, though “same or similar” is fact-specific and nobody publishes how often it does.

The employer is in this too: 2104(d)(2) reaches a contractor that pays “knowing that the official accepts the compensation in violation of this section.” Section 2104(c) requires a route for retiring that knowledge, and FAR 3.104-6 is it. The former official asks the designated agency ethics official in writing, who “should issue an opinion” within 30 days. Accept compensation in good faith reliance on a written opinion saying you may, and “neither the requester nor the contractor will be found to have knowingly violated 41 U.S.C. 2104.” Reliance fails if either has reason to doubt the facts behind it.

Exposure runs both ways, and the statute’s printed numbers are stale. Under 41 U.S.C. 2105 the Attorney General sues in district court, and inflation adjustment at 28 CFR 85.5, effective July 3, 2025, raises the maximum per violation from $50,000 to $131,308 for an individual and from $500,000 to $1,313,069 for an organization, each plus twice the compensation. Two corrections, because both circulate. The five-year prison term in 2105(a) attaches to violations of 41 U.S.C. 2102, on bid, proposal and source selection information, not to the compensation ban. So does rescission and clawback: 2105(c)(1)(B) needs a conviction or an agency head’s preponderance finding on that same 2102 offense. A compensation-ban violation opens a list the agency “shall consider”: cancel the procurement, start debarment, or take adverse personnel action, a person-level remedy.

What if the candidate still works for the Government today?

Short answer. Then the recruiting conversation itself is regulated, and the bidder can be liable too.

41 U.S.C. 2103 covers an official participating personally and substantially in a procurement above the simplified acquisition threshold who talks to a bidder about non-Federal employment. That official must report it in writing to a supervisor and the agency ethics official, then reject the job or step off the procurement. Subsection (c)(2) extends liability to a bidder “that engages in employment discussions with an official … knowing that the official has not complied with paragraph (1) or (2) of subsection (a).” Those two acts are the test, so a recruiter has two questions: have you reported this contact in writing, and have you declined or recused?

Which rule reaches which person?

Short answer. Seven authorities get filed under the label “OCI.” The one that costs you an award over a hire is FAR 3.101-1. Those reaching the individual sit in title 41 and title 18. None is subpart 9.5.

The rule governing your own people is FAR subpart 3.11, not 9.5, and it has gates the summaries drop. FAR 3.1103(a)(1) attaches the disclosure duty when a covered employee is assigned to the task, but only through clause 52.203-16, which FAR 3.1106(a) inserts only above the simplified acquisition threshold and only where the work involves acquisition functions closely associated with inherently governmental functions. Most cleared analysts and engineers are not covered employees. Check whether the clause is in your contract before building a program around it.

Can you hire a program manager away from a competitor?

Short answer. Usually yes as a protest matter, but only because GAO’s forum stops where Government involvement stops. Jurisdiction, not legal safety.

In Choctaw Defense Munitions, LLC, B-420003 (October 27, 2021), GAO declined the ground: “absent government involvement, the movement of an employee between private firms involves only a private dispute, even when the protester alleges the former employee disseminated non-public information to a competitor.” The opening condition does the work. Trade secret law, the agreements your candidate signed, and any OCI clause in your own contract still apply, and GAO decides none of them. See also re-badging incumbents after a recompete win.

Read that standard in order, because the version that circulates starts one sentence too late. Interactive Information Solutions gives the rule first, quoted above: appearance alone can disqualify. Then comes the qualifier everyone quotes: “a person’s familiarity with the type of work required resulting from the person’s prior position in the government is not, by itself, evidence of an unfair competitive advantage,” and there must be “hard facts” establishing access to non-public information. The qualifier bounds the rule; it does not replace it. And FAR 9.504(e), directing award to the apparent successful offeror unless a conflict “cannot be avoided or mitigated,” sits inside the subpart that does not govern hiring. Not a safety net here.

Who inside your company should own this screen?

Short answer. Contracts and legal, from your own contract file. Not the FSO, and not the job board, which sees none of the documents.

The instinct is to route anything compliance-shaped to the facility security officer. Wrong desk. The FSO’s remit is 32 CFR part 117 and the clearance itself. An OCI question is answered from contract documents: which contracts carry an OCI clause, what it restricts, when it expires. FAR 9.507-2(b) requires any restraint to end “by a specific date or upon the occurrence of an identifiable event,” so somebody should be able to recite them. Nobody can quote you odds: GAO publishes no OCI-specific sustain rate, and the FAR Council states that “DoD, GSA, and NASA do not have data on the number of acquisitions that may be affected by organizational conflicts of interest.”

One thing a cleared job board should say about itself. We are not going to catch this, and neither is any competing board. A candidate carrying a live Procurement Integrity Act problem looks identical in a search result to one who does not: the exposure lives in your contract portfolio and that person’s prior government role, not in anything a profile records. Boards are strong on reach and clearance filtering, and blind to conflict exposure. Executive search and referral networks working one program community often surface a prior source selection role earlier, because the recruiter knows the program. If the req sits close to a source selection you competed in, that premium is worth paying; the arithmetic sits in what a cleared hire really costs.

What would change if the rewrite finalizes?

Short answer. Subpart 9.5 would be removed and reserved, OCI would move to subpart 3.12, and FAR text would carry a hiring example. Not law yet.

The rewrite is FAR Case 2023-006, implementing Pub. L. 117-324 (December 27, 2022). Proposed January 15, 2025 at 90 FR 4376, its latest entry on the open FAR cases list published July 17, 2026 is still dated March 19, 2025: “FAR and DAR staff processing.” Proposed FAR 3.1204(b)(1)(v) would give as an example a contractor that “employs a former Government employee who was involved in developing the requirement.” Note the framing: the conflict attaches to the contractor, not the candidate. The proposal would also codify that a natural advantage from previous work “does not necessarily mean that the advantage is unfair.”

FAR part 9 is separately queued under the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, case 2026-011, from Executive Order 14275 of April 15, 2025; that same list shows no proposed rule. It is in use without one, though: agencies including the SEC adopted the FAR Council’s Part 9 model class deviation effective November 3, 2025, keeping subpart 9.5 with plain-language edits while reorganizing the part. Confirm which Part 9 text your agency applies before you go section-hunting.

One procedural change before your next cleared offer letter: ask the candidate which procurements they touched and in what role, get it in writing, and route it to contracts and legal rather than the FSO. Where the answer sits near the line, the 30-day ethics opinion under FAR 3.104-6 is the cheapest instrument available.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does FAR 9.5 prohibit hiring anyone?

No. The subpart contains no personnel rule, and all nine examples at FAR 9.508 concern companies supplying systems, components or studies. GAO said in Pueo Business Solutions, B-422105 (2024), that a challenge over hiring an official who held non-public, competitively useful information belongs under FAR subpart 3.1, while adding that the two standards are virtually indistinguishable. What 9.5 restricts is the work your company may compete for.

Can we hire a contracting officer who worked on our contract?

Check 41 U.S.C. 2104 first. If the person held one of the named procurement or program-management roles and the $10,000,000 threshold is met on any of the statute’s three bases, compensation is barred for a year. Section 2104(b) may still allow the hire into a division producing different products or services, and FAR 3.104-6 puts that answer in writing.

Is 18 U.S.C. 207 a ban on hiring former officials?

No, and the usual summary is incomplete. Two of its bars are matter-specific: permanent, on particular matters the person handled personally and substantially, and two years on matters pending under their official responsibility in their final year. Section 207(c) is a different shape. For senior personnel, meaning Senior Executive Service pay rates or basic pay at least 86.5 percent of Executive Schedule level II, it bars any communication to or appearance before their former agency, on any matter on which they seek official action, for one year; 207(d) runs two years for very senior personnel. A recently departed SES cannot front a business development call to their old agency inside that year, whether or not they touched the matter.

What is the difference between an organizational and a personal conflict of interest?

An organizational conflict, defined at FAR 2.101, concerns a company’s conflicting roles, impaired objectivity or unfair competitive advantage. A personal conflict, at FAR 3.1101, concerns a covered employee’s financial interest, activity or relationship that could impair impartial performance. The second generates a disclosure duty, but only where clause FAR 52.203-16 is in the contract.