You don’t have to wait for the Congressional Jobs Bill to find a federal job. The Office of Personnel Management has updated their Federal jobs website to help you search for federal jobs anytime you get in the mood to look for a great paying job in your city and state – or any city and state that you can consider relocating to.
On average 40,000 jobs are listed everyday. Very soon, after the White House Budget is passed, there will be more jobs posted to support many of the new programs being implemented to create more jobs throughout the United States.
Here are some comments and helpful hints for using the new website. Let’s start with the home page.
Top left links:
Search Jobs – My favorite search tab is International / Advanced Search. This page gives you the most search criteria for the best search.
My Account – Used to be MY USAJOBS. Click this link for returning to your USAJOBS account.
Info Center – Very useful area. I wish that the GS Salary Schedule was a top link! The GS Salary page is STILL impossible to find, but you can locate it on Info Center – Main Page > Federal Employment > General > General Pay Schedule. Or click our button link to the right to see this page.
Center of USAJOBS homepage:
I like the new logo / brand – it’s very nice!
(What?) Keyword and (Where?) City, State, Zip
These are great starter search fields. You can use this field to quickly search for an announcement number, USAJOBS control number, college major, keyword, agency, direct hire, Recovery Act, TARP or other unique federal job searches.
Sample quick searches you can perform right off of the homepage:
1) “Administrative” and “Boise, ID”: 15 jobs found. Beware! These announcements do have the word “administrative” in them, but they are are NOT all administrative jobs. But it’s a fun, fast search page.
2) “TARP”: 4 jobs found in the entire U.S.
3) “Direct Hire” and “Washington, DC”: 110 jobs found. These jobs are available quickly due to Mission Critical Needs.
Browse Jobs -a Quick Overview Page
Still in the center of the home page and to the right of the input boxes, this link brings you to a nice overview page. You can see on one page the number of jobs open in all of the agencies, all of the states, and all of the jobs. It can be both exciting and discouraging at the same time. Agriculture has 1127 jobs posted today; Commerce has 213.
International / Advanced Jobs – Start with this link for a detailed search!
Just under the Browse Jobs link is a link to my FAVORITE SEARCH PAGE! My favorite search is this:
Occupational Series – Scroll down and choose your series – or SELECT ALL for all of the jobs.
Location Search – Scroll down and select your city/state – or SELECT ALL for all jobs in the world.
Agency Search – Scroll down for your favorite agency – or SELECT ALL for all of the agencies.
Compensation Search – Type in your highest and lowest acceptable salary – or type in the upper and lower grade levels you will accept.
Applicant Eligibility – If you have a special hiring authority, you can check off YES, but a lot of first-time federal applicants who have not been in the military will click off NO.
Then, SEARCH for Jobs – see what comes up!
From your search listing, you can click the back button and your search criteria will STILL be there!