CAREERS NOW 01-02-11

Top Resume Tips To Get Federal Job

DEAR JOYCE: Having read that the federal government is hiring people - but not me - what am I doing wrong? - S.A.M.
Kathryn Troutman is the go-to federal resume expert (www.resume-place.com. She is the author of "Ten Steps to a Federal Job, 2nd Edition" - and, coming in March from Jist Publishing, "Federal Resume Guidebook, 5th Edition." ) Here are Troutman's best four resume tips to help you call Uncle Sam your new boss in 2011. Keywords. Find 10 keywords in the qualifications and duties sections of appropriate vacancy announcements on USAjobs.com. Add those 10 keywords to your federal resume for each announcement you select. Federal recruiting technology will be impressed.

Qualifications. Make sure your resume proves you have the goods for the job. Add accomplishments and past performance duties that clearly demonstrate your experience and ability to create value for your employer. Otherwise, you'll be standing on the wrong corner and miss the hiring bus.

Front loading. Shine from the start! Add your best accomplishment within the last five years on page one of your federal resume. Translate the accomplishment into results. Remember that each federal human resources specialist currently receives 100 to 400 or more resumes for each position announcement.

Super resume format. Make it easy for reviewers to give your resume the once-over, become intrigued, and then read it comprehensively. How? Use an outline format. Fill it with short paragraphs of no more than eight lines, each of which represent the top five qualifications for the target job. Put all your headings in capital letters - like this: SUPERVISION, PROJECT MANAGEMENT, ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT, ACCOUNTS PAYABLE, CUSTOMER SERVICE.

DEAR JOYCE: I feel called to public service after graduation from college next year. I had thought I'd get into government as an intern, but then I read that the Federal Career Internship Program is being shut down soon. Why is that? - S.D.T.

As the saying goes, "When one door closes, another opens." The Federal Career Intern Program began in 2001 as a portal to bring into the federal workforce America's best and brightest young college graduates.

But apparently the program was written with too much wiggle room for a change of focus. Because it allows for fast-track hiring - FCIP hiring can be done in two months or less, compared to the standard civil service hiring process that currently takes five months or more - the internship program was soon co-opted by federal agencies seeking to streamline the cumbersome but required process for bringing new employees onboard. The Homeland Security Department, for example, made use of the FCIP's abridged hiring procedure to quickly double the size of the Border Patrol.

Now there's trouble. After some 100,000 hires in the last decade, critics have exposed the unintended consequences of bureaucratic end runs on the old FCIP: Young graduates are being left out of the very program created for them, veterans aren't always getting their legal preference rights for federal employment, and the job-seeking public isn't being told of certain civil service vacancies.

According to the Washington Post, which cited a draft copy of the executive order to ax the controversial program in March, the FCIP will be replaced with a new program "clearly designed to provide short-term federal work opportunities for recent graduates of schools of all kinds."

DEAR JOYCE: If it's true that corporate profits and stock prices are up, why isn't anyone hiring? - J.I.S. The jobs are going overseas, according to figures from think tank Economic Policy Institute. American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The institute's senior international economist says the additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent.

Read the entire story - essentially a review of globalization and how it's dramatically changing the American workplace - by browsing for "Job Market Booming Overseas For Many American Companies" by Pallavi Gogoi.

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