How the Man hires (and yet more on GS levels)

Folks in the know regarding federal jobs, gave the wrk4us listserv this awesome behind-the-scenes for federal hiring (from emails on February 22 and 23, 2010).

If you are applying for a job that is hiring at GS-9, GS-11, or GS-12, HR people will sort the applications (sometimes an expert panel will do the sorting; don't count on it).

The HR people will give the hiring organization the top 3 candidates for each GS-level. This means if you want a fighting chance at the job, you need to be in the top 3 for the level you're applying for (this is where the advice to shoot low makes sense). I would also assume this is when we should follow the advice that we need to make our research and qualifications understandable to the general public.

If you play it safe and apply for a GS-9, qualify as a GS-9, and receive an offer, you will be a GS-9 employee. No backtracking, i.e. "actually since I'm clearly awesome enough for a GS-9 position, how about you hire me at GS-11, where I would obviously still be awesome." Doesn't work, so don't ask. Something to consider when applying for a job that has multiple classifications. See earlier post about GS-9 vs GS-11 positions.

Also, wrk4us listserv folks have been asking about cover letters for federal job applications.

Yippee for us, there are no cover letters. So no agonizing over pitching ourselves in 1 page or less.

Bad for us is that our skill sets are easily checked off off a list of predetermined choices.

One wrk4us respondent (from February 23, 2010) said that her job application had a questionnaire section. I assume this poster got her job several years ago, but I would guess that the application set-up is still mostly unchanged.

In her application, she had to select from multiple choice answers, but that each MC question had an essay section in which to elaborate. This poster said that some questions she was both A and B, or A and C, or whatever. She chose the best MC question and then used the essay section for that question to discuss experience, expertise, training, whatever. In her email to the listserv she said that there would be questions like "Choose the statement that best describes your experience in XYZ," with answer choices like "I perform XYZ independently" and "I require supervision from a superior while doing XYZ."

The poster said that a lot of the questions about her experience were hard to answer because she was applying on her TA/RA and dissertation research experience. So technically she didn't work completely independently (since she had a faculty member to report to for her RA work) but her dissertation research wasn't exactly done under supervision. I think she recommended going with "worked under supervision" as the MC answer, and then emphasizing in the essay the independent nature of dissertation research and RA work. I suppose your answers on these kinds of questions will also depend on the classification for which you are applying. This poster also reminded us that our resumes should accurately reflect what ever our answer is on the MC and in the essay portions.

In my very very very limited experience with this kind of hiring stuff, I think I had to upload my resume before answering these questions. I didn't apply for a federal job--it was a research/policy gig--but the institute was tied very closely to the federal government. I guess you can always upload your resume, do the job questions, bail on the application if you realize your resume does not support your essay explanations (like if your resume pitches you more as an independent researcher instead of a team player) and then do the application all over once you revise your resume. I don't recommend that, simply on the principle that doing the same application twice wastes time, but sometimes you don't know what you're going to get into.