Posted in Federal Job Search, Federal Resume Writing
by Kathryn Troutman on August 17th, 2009 | 1 Comment - Make a comment »
At The Resume Place, Inc. we are dedicated to helping you land a federal job. There are quite a few major challenges to this mission. Our current average jobseeker client is:
- Out of work or with an impending layoff looming;
- 40 to 55 years old;
- A professional with a strong work history, often with a decade or more of employment with the same organization;
- Experienced in private industry, government contracting or military with NO familiarity with federal civilian employment.
First-time federal jobseekers face the following challenges:
Their resumes are too short and lack the detail necessary to qualify for federal positions. They have a private industry resume that is about twice pages long, but the average federal resume is three to five pages, so they need twice the amount of content added into the new resume.
They don’t know what job titles and grade levels they qualify for. These clients don’t know anything about federal job titles, how jobs in the federal government are organized, or what experience is necessary to qualify for specific grade levels. If they made $60K in their last position, they don’t know whether they are qualified for that same salary in a government position.
Follow the Directions. The application for government is at least 10 times more complex than private industry, with applications involving federal resume; Knowledge, Skills and Abilities narratives; essays and self-assessment questionnaires; and a myriad of fax instructions
Complex job announcements. Our clients don’t know how to interpret the job announcements found on www.usajobs.gov, which can be up to 16 pages long. The position descriptions are often written in language that is difficult to translate into everyday job duties.
The government is hiring!
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Posted in Writing Your NSPS Self-Assessment
by Kathryn Troutman on August 10th, 2009 | 2 Comments - Make a comment »
It is time again for National Security Personnel System (NSPS) and Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System (DCIPS) self-assessments. In what may be the last round for NSPS – at least in its current form – employees in the system should think about the biggest projects, changes, supervisory challenges, and mission accomplishments that have occurred over the past year. Writing these accomplishments down on paper takes concentration and time.
To see how this is done, let’s look at a sample self-assessment, filed by Jeremy Jenkins. Jeremy will write up his last year’s accomplishments with the aim of winning his property accountability and supply management Job Objective.
The entire 2,000 characters he will use will focus on writing about the property book and how he improved the inventory control system despite having no budgeted financial resources for the task. Jeremy overcame obstacles, took initiative and designed an automated system. The new system resulted in a 40 percent reduction in property losses.
Jeremy’s hard work offers a great example of improvement in quality logistics support for the Army Soldier School – an accomplishment that not only makes him look good, but which over time will greatly improve supply readiness and customer services for soldiers.
Strategy – Your strategy for writing accomplishments for each Job Objective is to tell a story. Give one or two examples of the best work you have performed in 2009. Make it easy for your supervisor and pay pool to read by using the “Context-Challenge-Action-Result” (CCAR) model for your accomplishments. Review your Job Objective against the benchmarks for the Contributing Factor – in the case below, Technical Proficiency.
The NSPS Writing Plan – Ask yourself: What have I done this year that helped me meet my mission? Overall, if you write up three to six accomplishments for your entire year, you will be finished with your self-assessment.
The following sample NSPS self-assessment for Performance Appraisal Application V. 3.0 illustrates an example of one Job Objective and one accomplishment that was a major achievement for the year in this objective. It is followed by a CCAR self-assessment.
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