more on GS levels

Back at it after a week of dissertation/publication nonsense and a weekend off. I've finally had a chance to work through my wrk4us digests and am overwhelmed by all the good info I've had sitting in my inbox.

I have several posts in the works; this one piggybacks on an earlier post and gives more info than a wikipedia link. [I can't believe I gave you a wiki link. I would fail me for incompetence and laziness except I know all you On the Hunt readers regularly use wikipedia].

Here's some more details on GS levels.

GS-9 jobs in the past have tended to be "team member" jobs. GS-12 tend to be the "team leaders." To take this out of corporatespeak and put it into academicese: GS-12=faculty. GS-9=RA/TA. GS-7=undergrad intern/work study kid. [Apparently there are no GS-10 jobs]

Here's how positions for geographers are classified.

"GS-9 geographers are engaged either in taxonomic and descriptive work of fairly substantial scope and complexity, or in analytic and interpretive work of relative limited score and complexity.

Research work at this level is typically performed under close supervision and involved responsibility for segments of the research process which are integrated into the overall project. This is distinguished from work involving the full scope of the research process as described at the GS-11 level.

Geographers doing taxonomic and descriptive work have independent responsibility for small projects or significant segments of larger projects. Their assignments have value as independent units of work, although they are often part of larger projects. This should be distinguished from assignments at the GS-7 level which do not typically represent complete projects or work units."

Job requirements for every federal job classification is managed and documented by the Office of Presidential Management. I found the geography info under the "0100 Social Science, Psychology, and Welfare Group". You can use this info here to help determine which level to apply for and to also see what kinds of skills each position requires. Nice.