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Posts Tagged ‘NSPS’

10 Big Mistakes Vets Make
Applying to Federal Jobs

Posted in Federal Job Search, Federal Resume Writing, KSA Writing, Vet Federal Resumes
by Kathryn Troutman on August 26th, 2011 | No Comments - Make a comment »

Military to Civilian Resumes       Military Transition       Veteran Federal Resumes

Leaving a military career after 5, 10, or 20 years is traumatic. The career transition out of military is difficult no matter what your rank. The good news is that the federal government is basically just “the other side of the desk.” You’re going to take the “hands-on” skills and technical training from your military experience and convert it over to the policy, program, support, and administration side of the work you have been doing – maybe. The first federal resume after military is your most important resume and the most complex because you will translate your skills for a new career, mission, and customer.

Veterans are perfect for federal civil service positions because of their dedication to public service, the nation’s security, specialized expertise, knowledge of certain missions, technical skills and training, leadership, dedication, work ethic, attitude and willingness to learn and start-over. What’s more, these skills allow you to add 5 or 10 preference points to your application score.

However, sometimes transitioning veterans rush through the federal application and make several mistakes when applying for public-sector jobs

TOP 10 MISTAKES

1.) I only apply for jobs on USAJOBS (or CPOL or DONHR or WHS).

If you limit your search to just one agency or website, you are truly restricting yourself.

There are at least five major sites where you can create a profile, set up a resume builder, answer questions, and apply for a federal job:

- www.usajobs.gov – The official government jobs website, includes Air Force civilian positions
- www.cpol.army.mil – The website where all Army jobs are posted and where you would apply for an Army position
- military.com/careers – A commercial site that manages resumes and job postings for federal agencies.
- www.donhr.navy.mil – The website for Navy and USMC civilian positions
- www.whs.mil – Department of Defense civilian jobs are posted here as is the resume builder and application.

2.) I only apply for jobs without KSA narratives.

If you limit your search to applications that do not require KSAs, you will cut out many job opportunities with the Departments of HHS, VA, Interior, Commerce, Justice, Labor, Transportation and others. You will need to learn how to write KSA narratives and questionnaire essays for a successful federal job search. KSAs are just examples that demonstrate you have a certain Knowledge, Skill or Ability. You can use the KSA Builder developed by The Resume Place to write your “stories” that will demonstrate that you do have a certain knowledge, skill, or ability.

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CCAR and OER NSPS Self-Assessment – Budget Officer, YA-560-2

Posted in Writing Your NSPS Self-Assessment
by Kathryn Troutman on September 9th, 2009 | 3 Comments - Make a comment »

TIPS FOR WRITING YOUR SELF-ASSESSMENTS WITH CCAR or OER

We have been asked to create a self-assessment sample in both the CCAR and OER formats. Many Army Civilian agencies are using the OER format for self-assessments. Both CCAR and OER are great because the structure recommends additional information in the self-assessment examples. Nancy Segal has written this JO and self-assessment sample for you to use as a template. The NSPS book has about 80 more sample JOs and at least 24 Self-Assessment Accomplishments for you to study while you are writing in our Job Objective and Self-Assessment Library.

ASSESSMENTS WITH MORE DETAILS: Some people write just one or two sentences for each accomplishment and that may not be enough for the raters to understand the scope of the accomplishment (context), what you did to achieve it (efforts or actions), what obstacles you overcame (challenge), and what happened (results). If you don’t give background information or detail, they may not understand the example. The more background on the value of your performance to your mission, the better you will be rated.

RECOMMENDED: WRITE YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS WITH ONE OF THE FORMATS: CCAR or OER

IT’S OKAY TO WRITE ONE EXAMPLE, IF IT IS A MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT!

This Sample Job Objective in this newsletter will have only ONE Accomplishment, because it is a MAJOR Accomplishment for the year and clearly demonstrate how she exceeded her job objective this year. This works for MAJOR accomplishments. Otherwise, you can write two accomplishments that will average 1,000 characters.

The CCAR format is the original format recommended: Context, Challenge, Action, Results. Most of the samples in the NSPS book are in the CCAR format. They can be changed to OER easily. If you would like to use our Free CCAR Self-Assessment Builder, it could help you focus on your writing – add more details and background on the accomplishment. Then, you can edit back to 1,000 or 1,500 characters.

Supervisors/ Raters, Pay Pool Staff might appreciate the acronyms for easier reading: CCAR or OER in the paragraphs. They will have a lot of assessments to read and understand about your performance this year.

Count your characters: You can write one, two, or three accomplishments in the 2,000 character space in the PAA 3.0.Make sure you check your self-assessments against the Expected and Enhanced Benchmarks. You can see the benchmarks and keywords from the descriptions at our very popular and free NSPS Keyword Tree. 30,000 DOD employees have accessed the Keyword Tree for writing self-assessments.

Good luck with your writing. If you want to see more JOs and self-assessments, the new book, Writing Your NSPS Self-Assessment, 2nd edition has many more examples.

You can see the Job Objective Library Table of Contents here. You can also practice your self-assessment writing by using the PAA 3.0 Fillable form. Then copy and paste the entire document into My Biz when it is all completed. The PAA fillable form is available here.

You can order the 2nd Edition of the book here – both print book (shipping end of this week), or eBook, available immediately!

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Example Provides Valuable Pointers for Self-Assessment

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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Welcome!

Posted in Federal Resume Writing
by Kathryn Troutman on February 27th, 2009 | 2 Comments - Make a comment »

Welcome, Federal Resume, KSA, ECQ and NSPS self-asssessment writers,

I’m teaching the American Public to write Federal Resumes and KSAs now! I’m thrilled to have my first blog where I can write to you and you can write to me — and everyone — about what’s new with federal job search!

Because of the dire job situation, and the HIRING in government, I have started teaching “open enrollment” Ten Steps to a Federal Job courses – Federal Resume & KSA Writing in a computer room. Jobseekers bring their resume on a thumbdrive and dive into the resume with NEW FEDERAL JOB KEYWORDS! The classes are open to the public – and many people who are attending are out of work, or almost out of work. We are spending a day talking about what job they would qualify for in government … then we dive into the announcements, keywords and resume matching. The first class filled up registrations in a day!

It is a challenging class because every person has a differnet career direction, but I go around the room and ask people what job they are seeking and if they know their potential federal job title. If not, we figure it out, and go straight to USAJOBS.gov and begin to research jobs. In the last class EVERYONE in the room had a target job title and grade. And EVERYONE FOUND AN ANNOUNCEMENT THAT WAS GOOD FOR THEIR SEARCH!!!

Please share your federal job search, federal resume writing and KSA writing challenges and success stores in this blog.

Thanks, Kathryn Troutman, Federal Career Coach, Author and Speaker

SMART Supervisory Job Objectives

Posted in Self-Assessment
by Kathryn Troutman on February 27th, 2009 | No Comments - Make a comment »

Yesterday I was at US Army Sustainment Command in Davenport, Iowa. I was contracted to teach Executive Core Qualifications writing. But then we started talking about writing NSPS Self-Assessments and Job Objectives (JOs), and this topic was one of great interest.

I told the class of supervisors and executives that I had just written two newsletter articles on a technique for writing the job objectives in the SMART format by using a vacancy announcement. They were intrigued, so I showed them my two articles and my analysis of the SMART JOs.

I asked the class, “How many of you have your JOs written in the SMART format?” Nobody raised their hand. They said, “We can’t figure out how to do it”.

I admitted that the SMART JOs were hard even for me to write.

We started talking about the mandatory Supervisory JO, which is not in the SMART format. I recommended that we take the Supervisory JO and make it SMART, just for writing and thinking about your accomplishments. Here is our SMART version of the mandatory Supervisory JO (this is a shortened version that I typed):

STANDARD JOB OBJECTIVE:

SUPERVISOR: Execute the full range of HR (including performance management) and fiscal responsibilities within established timelines and regulations. Adhere to merit principles. Develop a vision for the work unit. Align performance expectations within organizational goals. Maintain a safe work environment. Ensure EEO principles adhered to throughout organization. Ensure continuing application of laws regulations governing prohibited personnel practices. Promptly address allegations of harassment retaliation.

SMART

SPECIFIC : SUPERVISOR ADD MORE DETAILS HERE ABOUT SPECIFIC

MEASURES: Performance management, fiscal within timelines and regulations; vision; performance expectations, safe, EEO, addressing allegations or problems. COVER AT LEAST TWO OF THESE – WHICHEVER MEASURES ARE RELEVANT TO YOUR JOB

ALIGNED: To meet the mission with the staff

REALISTIC: If you have the staff and resources, how you achieve the measures

TIMED: Good customer service within required timelines

THEN …CHOOSE YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS THAT SUPPORT THE ABOVE ELEMENTS:

Performance – staff training and retraining story Fiscal – decreased, increased, new hires, retired people, interns Safety – employee who may have felt threatened, resolved analysis, advocacy EEO – recruitment practice Employee recruitment – internships, other recruitment strategies

What are you doing with your SMART Objectives?