VA probationary & trial periods

Check appointment probation, excepted-service trials, Full/Hybrid Title 38 and separate competitive-service supervisory/managerial probation. Earlier-service eligibility works without dates. The optional calculator measures eligible credit; it does not determine satisfactory performance, continued-employment certification, tenure, removal or appeal rights.

Loading the reviewed source edition…

The principal VA source is Handbook 5005, master through Change 178. Current federal rules are identified separately where the handbook incorporates them or its older wording differs. Specific Hybrid authority/application and other unresolved cases remain explicit; an unknown answer never becomes an exemption. Current-rule paths do not reconstruct every historical policy.

Calendar calculations use actual dates and inclusive service, with the calendar-year requirement anchored to the original qualifying start. February 29 anniversaries, mixed calendar/intermittent service and ambiguous aggregate-break boundaries require verification. Nonpay extensions require the actual schedule; no universal eight-hour day is assumed. Intermittent results report paid-day and calendar thresholds without inventing a completion date.

Only reviewed public policy passages are reproduced. Original links open VA, OPM or eCFR. There is no embedded document reader. Rules were reviewed on October 24, 2026; this is a reviewed edition, not a claim of continuous policy monitoring. Check the linked current source before relying on a changed rule.

No employee names, identifiers, uploads, saved cases, date bookmarks or service-history storage. Answers stay in this page; copy/print is your choice. For a separate supervisory/managerial requirement, run that check separately from initial-appointment probation. Personnel action coding remains a separate tool.