Federal Resume Writing Blog

(Mostly) Useless Federal Resume Writing Tip #1

Include personal information such as your full name, mailing address with ZIP code, any phone numbers, Social Security Number, reinstatement eligibility and civilian grade, including the job series and dates that you held the previous position.

Well, that information is most certainly needed in order to successfully apply to a federal career position. But here’s the deal…the government doesn’t leave you guessing as to whether or not you should include that information!

With few exceptions, most of your job searching will take place on USAJOBS.gov. If you are using USAJOBS.gov to job search, chances are you have already created an account (if you haven’t, do so immediately). In this account you can create resumes. As you create your resume, you will be required to include all the information mentioned in this (Mostly) Useless Federal Resume Writing Tip.

In most cases, if you find a job worth applying to, you will be able to apply online and submit your resume on the spot. Voila! All the information is sent automatically.

Let’s just say, though, that the application process requires you to fill out another form – for instance an Optional Form (OF) 612. Guess what? The form will ask you for all that information!

Here is an actual useful tip:

If, for whatever reason, you are not using an online option to apply to a federal position, go ahead and build your resume in a USAJOBS.gov account anyway. There are a couple of reasons why…

1. At some point in time you may find a position on USAJOBS.gov that you do want to apply to. Why repeat the resume building process again later?
2. After you build your resume in your USAJOBS.gov account (which will ask you for all the mandatory information), you can print your hard copy resume for submission right from there. You don’t have to do anything but plug in the information.

Hopefully you didn’t waste too much time searching the internet for this “(Mostly) Useless Federal Resume Writing Tip.”

If you’d like to stop wasting anymore time, I invite you to consider FederalResumeTips.com’s Federal Resume Toolbox™. Developed under the guidance of a Federal Human Resources Professional with nearly two decades of government experience, the Federal Resume Toolbox™ gives you the clear-cut, concise information you need to CRACK THE CODE to writing an effective Federal resume that leads to government employment

As you most likely already know, 2010 is a census year which means that the US Census Bureau has been hiring hundreds of thousands of employees.  Most of these are temporary part-time positions to go door-to-door to conduct interviews to collect data, however there will be other positions available as well to help crunch the numbers.

Just because it’s 2010 already doesn’t mean it’s too late to take advantage of the opportunities.  In fact, most to the hirings for census takers won’t take place until the spring of 2010 – after the census forms have been sent to US households.  For more information on how to apply for these numerous Federal part-time employment positions, contact you Local Census Office or call 1-866-861-2010.

In addition to the temporary part-time positions, there are plenty of full-time permanent positions available as well.  These permanent Federal jobs include things like statisticians, administrative assistants, human resources specialists, and information technology workers, and many others.  Just follow this link to find US Census Bureau jobs close to you - USAJOBS.gov

A lot of times when someone starts the process of searching for a career with the Federal government on USAJOBS, they create a “Job Search Agent.”  The Job Search Agent periodically runs a job search based upon specified criteria and then notifies the person of matching jobs.

I’d offer the advice that rather than depend on the Job Search Agent, you go out to USAJOBS every other day or so and manually run a job search yourself.  I think this is important for a several reasons:

1. Most people set-and-forget the Agent.  In other words, they forget to go back and review it to see if there are changes that can be made that might give more hits, with the end result being that they miss out on opportunities to apply for more positions.
2. Depending on how often you set the agent to run, a position may open and close before you ever get notification – again missing opportunities to submit your Federal resume.
3. When doing manual searches, you tend to think of ways to tweak your searches in ways that might give you more or varied results.  That doesn’t happen with the Agent.
4. When you get in the system and do your searches regularly, you become more familiar with the Federal jobs that are being posted and how many.  For instance, if there were 90 Federal jobs fitting your search on one day, and 98 two days later, you’d more likely notice this if you were searching manually than if you were letting an automated system do it.
5. The more you work with the system, the more you learn about finding potential jobs that  you might have the credentials for.  For instance, if you have an engineering background you may initially only be searching for Federal positions in the 0801 series (Engineer); however, after becoming familiar with the system, you would learn that a 0340 (Program Manager) position often requires and engineering background.  Now you know how to expand your government job search.

In the end, visiting USAJOBS on a regular basis to search for your Federal career will most certainly pay off with more opportunities.

To get more helpful tips like this download, the Federal Resume Toolbox.