Federal Resume Writing Blog

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.