What You Need to Know: Searching for a Job

When looking at a vacancy announcement, pay special attention to what the agency wants to know about you; it may require information you don't have on your standard resume, such as your military service and a complete accounting of your jobs from the last 10 years. Make sure that goes in with your application. Otherwise, you probably won't make even the first cut.

Know How to Apply -- Applying for a federal job is a different experience than applying with other employers. Elsewhere, it might just be a matter of reading the announcement, deciding if you're qualified enough and sending a cover letter and resume. With government jobs, it's crucial to match your resume to the announcement.

"Using a boilerplate resume probably will not get you referred to a supervisor. You need to study the duties section to see what is involved in the job and look at the qualifications that describes the experience you have to have. That experience needs to be in your resume, very clearly stated," says Kathryn Troutman, president of The Resume Place, Inc., www.resume-place.com, which offers resume writing and other federal job search services.

In many cases, the first screen of job applicants is done not by a real person but by a computer program searching for key words. Those key words, found in the qualifications section and the duties section, generally have to be in the resume. "The resume is the key to success. You have to tweak your resume for each announcement" Troutman says.

For example, if the position requires serving as a "liaison" for the director, your resume should describe your experience serving as a "liaison" for your current manager, even if that isn't the term you normally use for those duties.

In addition, many vacancy announcements require a narrative statement of what the government calls KSAs (knowledge, skills and abilities) crucial to the job, along with various other paperwork. Again, make sure you know what they're looking for and give it to them.

Be Fast, Patient and Persistent -- Federal job vacancies sometimes are held open only for a week or two. You have to monitor for openings continuously and act fast when something comes up. USAJobs can notify you by email when positions matching your criteria are posted.

Don't expect promptness on the other end, though. The government's central personnel agency, the Office of Personnel Management, has set a goal of getting agencies to generally fill positions within 45 days from the application deadline to a job offer for a position, but the government is not there yet. Use the features on USAJobs and similar agency-run sites that allow you to track the progress of your application.

Keep applying for vacancies that fit you. That may mean revising your resume numerous times to make it best reflect the required qualifications for each position and rewriting a statement of your knowledge, skills and abilities over and over. The odds probably are against you -- possibly steeply -- in applying for any one federal job. But the government has lots of vacant jobs, and it won't go out of business. If at first you don't succeed . . .