PMF application, round 1

So despite all the misgivings, conditions, and overall fatigue I've been experiencing whenever I think about the PMF, I decided to go ahead and apply. Here's the blow-by-blow for the first cut:

It took me most of Saturday to do the usajobs.gov resume. Luckily that's the hardest part of this round. I had to convert all the info in my CV into the resume boxes. This shouldn't be a big deal, but it was because my anthro CV is all weird with its layout (timeline on the far left/megatab right/entry). I put all the dates at the end of the resume entry. A stylistic concern that was a major timesuck.

The resume also took forever because I had been tipped off by my favorite people ever (i.e. Career Services Counselor) that the CV should be skills-focused. So I totally beefed up a lot of my entries. Then I made my fatal error. I went ahead and started messing around on the actual website that does the PMF application (see below for the disaster that is applicationmanager.gov [appmgr]).

Oh yes, the resume that I had more or less (key word "less") in order suddenly became the resume that is now permanently attached to my PMF application. Grrrr. [update 10/16/10: the new and improved resume did bump the old one! yippee! I kept the two resumes named the same, so that is probably why I was able to switch out the two. so psyched!]

This isn't a big deal because the resume is basically done. But after I got into the PMF application, I found that they ask you to mark what "skills" you have... like "powerpoint" and "analytical skills" and "policy analysis." If I had read the entire PMF job notice I would have discovered this excellent document which tells you exactly what you will find behind the doors of appmgr. Sigh.

Knowing from previous folks that the government has computers screen for keywords, I thought, "I should update my resume to include all this key words!" So like "paper presentation at national conference" became "powerpoint and paper presentation at national conference." You catch my drift.

So I went back and cleaned up my resume (which is housed at the usajobs.gov site), added these juicy terms and then went back to appmgr site (ahh, the bureaucracy... like we really need 2 govt job sites?). Appmgr now informs me that my "less" resume is processed and, as far as I can tell, won't get bumped by my "more" resume.

Sigh. The "less" resume is decent, but I really want the key word resume! I have one last option that I'm going to explore and then I'm going to have to just resign myself to having the less resume go into my PMF file.

Last option: use a PC at the library and do the appmgr again with the hopes that I can bump the less resume with a newly linked "more resume".

You see because appmgr doesn't like Macs. I'm a Mac user.

**This is where appmgr=disaster story begins**

Currently appmgr doesn't support Safari (the Mac web platform). And although I fired up my dusty version of Firefox to do all my appmgr stuff, it clearly doesn't like Firefox either.

The appmgr connection was crazy slow for me Saturday afternoon and frequently just timed out (lovely). I mentioned this to my Career Service peep in an email Sunday morning and she responded in the afternoon {heart Career Services} that she had heard of Mac-users who simply could not get their computers to work with appmgr and thus were unable to turn in applications. Yikes. And the government doesn't make exceptions for server incompatibility. Double Yikes.

I will go to the library on Tuesday (my non-work day) and try to switch resumes. So lame. PMF 1: Leadfoot 0

Thus begins the PMF saga. I hear from Career Services that the funnest part is yet to come--after my resume makes this cut (which it likely will, assuming my department head actually files out the nomination form) there are computer-based essay questions. For more deets on the assessments, check out the "Next Steps" section at the end of this page.

Stay tuned. If my less resume makes it and I get invited to do the assessment questions, that all goes down mid November (I think...)