The government job search can be confusing and frustrating even if you do everything right. But the benefits of working in a government organization can be life changing.
Still Serving Veterans’ Career & Transition Counselors recently met with The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) who operates the USA Jobs Website. Here is some of our best advice on how to be sure your application is actually reviewed and give you the best chance of landing one of these highly coveted positions.
- Understand that USA Jobs is exclusively for Executive Branch jobs, so you won’t see openings for positions in the Legislative or Judicial branches.
- USA Jobs is only for competitive civil service jobs, so you won’t see Secret Service, FBI or CIA agent positions there, even though they’re technically under the Executive Branch. To see jobs that aren’t competitive civil service, go directly to the organization’s website and look at their career pages.
- It’s very important to read the full job description for each job you are interested in including any links that take you to another site for additional clarification. While USA jobs is displaying the open position, each job is actually owned by the employing agency and they will always have amplifying information and instructions.
- You can (and should!) create a personal search tailored to the specific types of jobs you’re looking for. You can filter down to specific requirements and have an updated list of offerings sent to you on a regular basis.
- Each job listing includes an eligibility section using OPM’s “Pathways” function. Be sure to include all the pathways you are eligible for in your profile or risk being filtered out for not meeting requirements.?Some pathways include: Veterans, Military Spouses, Individuals with Disabilities, Native Americans, and Current Federal Employees. If a position is open only to a specific Pathway, you will be filtered out if you don’t have it on your profile and meet the Pathway eligibility criteria. You will eventually be required to show proof of your eligibility for each pathway you select.
- On a standard resume you can show your employment dates as 2021 to 2022. On USA Jobs you need to actually show months as well. The reason being if you started December 2021 and left in January 2022 and the job requires 2 years of experience, you don’t meet the requirements.
- You’re not finished until you’ve completed the Agency requirements and receive a message saying Application Complete and Received.?Agency level requirements in the application may include a quiz to demonstrate baseline knowledge required for the position.
- You can save up to 5 resumes under your profile so if you are interested in 5 different titles, you can tailor each resume for typical requirements for that title. A single person may be interested in Program Management, Logistics Manager, Logistics Analyst, FMS Analyst, and Engineer. All can have shared requirements but a different focus. Limit your resume length to 5 pages. Use supporting documents to show all your service schools and their curriculum details, transcripts, certifications, etc.
- You can build a resume inside the site from scratch rather than uploading it. We recommend you do this one first to see all the information OPM is looking for on a resume, and then tailor each of your uploaded resumes to have all the same fields as applicable.
- Each job description describes the ideal candidate (or unicorn) but the agency knows the perfect candidate may not exist, isn't available, or isn’t looking on USA jobs. If you’re close and can articulate your ability to do the job citing relevent education and experience, apply anyway and make sure your resume and cover letter tell the whole story about why you’re a great candidate. If you're 80% in alignment with the job description, OPM's advice is to go ahead and apply.
Bonus Tip! Never include a link to your LinkedIn profile. Federal applications cannot ever include a picture, so including your LinkedIn URL will get you automatically rejected, every time, without any further review. Also, you must show how many hours per week you worked each position. You can’t say you have two years of experience if you only worked 20 hours per week in the role. These are extremely common mistakes for applicants and result in rejection every time. Now you know.
★ For help with your USA Jobs application process, or any help with your Veteran Job Search, reach out to the Veteran Career & Transition team at Still Serving Veterans.
★ Follow us to be updated on all SSV is doing for our Veteran community.
Join our 6th of June Global B2B Conference | Up to 50 Exhibitors | 10 plus sponsor | 200+ Attendees
2 年David, thanks for sharing!