Republicans have long complained that the federal government is filled with ideologically opposed bureaucrats who stand in the way of their policies and are too hard to fire. Presidents from both parties have kicked off their time in office with a hiring freeze, looking to put their own stamp on personnel strategies.

But President Donald Trump is the first to ask federal job applicants to describe their allegiance to administration policy in an essay or to mandate training for senior government officials on White House executive orders, experts said. Senior agency officials, who are often political appointees, are to be directly involved in the hiring process, which has not previously been the case.

The guidelines, released last month, arrived at a time when the Trump administration was beginning the process of filling vacancies left by the vast and indiscriminate job cuts of the last four months.

The plan has long been to replace career civil service employees, whom Trump refers to as the “deep state,” with workers who are more in line with his agenda and have an allegiance to him. Another piece of that effort is already underway, converting some senior positions to “at will” employment so they are easier to get rid of. Taken together with the new guidelines for traditionally nonpartisan hires, critics see a blueprint for politicizing the bureaucracy.

The provisions are just two of many that appear in the 53 total pages of guidance released by the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources division, and the White House. But their startling implications, experts said, dwarf the good ideas in the guidance, such as focusing on skill-based hiring.

“It’s the screening for ideological agreement and the training for ideological message that’s unique about the Trump hiring plan,” said Donald F. Kettl, an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland who studies the civil service. “The bureaucracy is certainly accountable to the president and his executive orders, but the bureaucracy is also accountable to the law and to the existing body of regulations, as well as to the professional standards for which they were hired.”

The Office of Personnel Management and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have left the government since Trump returned to the Oval Office. Some were fired, and others decided to leave on their own after months of uncertainty, character insults, fear and discomfort with administration policies, paving the way for new hires. Trump replaced Senate-confirmed heads of independent bodies with loyalists to make it harder for federal workers to prevail in challenges to adverse employment actions. And his administration reinterpreted a law so that federal employees could wear “Make America Great Again” hats and other Trump paraphernalia while at work.

The Trump administration cleaned out the cupboard, and now it is planning how to restock the shelves “with people who are first and foremost loyalists,” said Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that works to promote best practices in the federal government.

According to the guidance, the administration seeks the smartest and best candidates to work for the federal government. Specifically, “patriotic Americans” to “faithfully serve the executive branch.” (One of the memos mentions “patriotic Americans” seven times.)

The ideal candidates for any federal job will be those who can explain in 200 words — and without the help of artificial intelligence — which of the president’s executive orders or policies are most relevant to them and why. They can choose more than one.

“There’s just no other reason to be asking that question other than to be forcing applicants to take a stand on what this president has said, rather than the jobs that they are applying for and the broader laws that they are to follow,” Stier said.

A person familiar with the guidelines, who was not authorized to discuss them publicly and did so only on the condition of anonymity, said that essay and the other three were not an assessment or a test, but rather a getting-to-know-you exercise. It is a way for candidates to introduce themselves, the person said. The new essay questions, the person said, could soon find their way into some updated federal job applications.

Trump operatives have previously put similar questions to candidates for political appointments during Trump’s first term and to people who wanted to work in the second administration.

Political appointments inherently take into consideration loyalty to the president or the party. But expanding that to the career civil service is a significant departure.

“These memos are of a piece with the Trump administration’s broader approach, which is to treat government as if it’s an extension of Trump’s personality and as if civil servants are nothing but a tool of the president,” said Noah A. Rosenblum, an associate professor at the New York University School of Law. He said the civil service was intended to have people dedicated to carrying out the law without partisan political considerations.

In proposing a new policy that would make senior government officials easier to fire, the administration said, “Career employees do not have to personally support President Trump or his policies.”

But in the same document, published in the Federal Register, the administration also defined undermining the democratic process as “intentionally subverting presidential directives.”

Stier said it was but one example of the Trump administration saying one thing and doing another.