Top Ten Tips (plus one bonus!) on Applying through USA Jobs
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) which 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 primarily 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 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 to amplify 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 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 others. 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.
On a standard resume you can show your employment dates as 2005 to 2006. On USA Jobs you need to actually show months as well. The reason being if you started December 2005 and left in January 2006 and the job requires 2 years of experience, you don’t meet the requirements.
You also need to show how many hours per week you worked in each position. You can’t say you have two years of experience if you only worked 20 hours per week in the role.
You’re not finished until you’ve completed the Agency requirements and receive a message saying Application Complete and Received.
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.
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.
Bonus! Remember that each job description describes the ideal candidate (we sometimes call them unicorns) but the agency knows that in reality, the perfect candidate may not exist or isn’t looking on USA jobs. If you lack a couple of qualifications or requirements such as years of experience, education, or security clearance, but you’re close and can clearly articulate your ability to do the job, apply anyway and make sure your resume and cover letter tell the whole story about why you’re a great candidate.
It’s always free to apply and pass on a job you’re almost perfectly suited for could be denying yourself a great career in the continued service of your country.
★ For help with your USA Jobs application process or any help you need in any area of your job search, reach out to the Veteran Career & Transition team at Still Serving Veterans, https://ssv.org/careerservices
★ Join the conversation on our LinkedIn Group to receive info we post nowhere else: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12623085/
★ Follow us at https://www.linkedin.com/company/ssveterans/ to be updated on all SSV is doing for our Veteran community.
Advice offered by Dave Lakin, U.S. Navy (retired), Veteran Career & Transition Program Manager, 256.883.7035. dlaking@ssv.org
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