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Don't we have a peace corps thread somewhere?
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Sep 4, 2017 05:16
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Who knows, but I thought the Peace Corps didn't send people to warzones. Is the fighting over in the Ukraine yet?
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Sep 4, 2017 08:06
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No, there is active fighting in the east though depending on where you go in the country it's like peacetime. I was just in Kyiv in July and absolutely loved it. Congrats!
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Sep 4, 2017 14:10
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If you do gradschool after Peace Corps you'll hopefully have entered a different presidency and more forgiving environment for federal hiring  i have PC's NCE to thank for my sweet rear end federal job, so take advantage! "permanent reinstatement eligibility" just requires three years of continual federal service, not necessarily in the same agency's, right? i just hit three years in the gov and assume my SF50 will be updayed soon, but just checking
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Sep 4, 2017 14:18
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Same. NCE was excellent at getting me my nice little posting. Would recommend.
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Sep 4, 2017 14:29
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sullat posted:Who knows, but I thought the Peace Corps didn't send people to warzones. Is the fighting over in the Ukraine yet? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3197106&pagenumber=1&perpage=40 Here you go. Though based on how slow this thread is I'd imagine that one to be even slower.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:08
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Welp tomorrow is my first official day of work in my new position, and first federal position if you don't count the military. DC/NoVa area is quite a different lifestyle change so far but the metro is amazing.
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Sep 4, 2017 19:32
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Ptolemaeus posted:the metro is amazing Words never spoken before by anyone who lives in the area. The system is convenient when running but can be pretty unreliable/flammable. I agree not having the system would be madness but I am jaded and have seen it get worse year after year.
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Sep 4, 2017 20:54
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Blindeye posted:Words never spoken before by anyone who lives in the area. The system is convenient when running but can be pretty unreliable/flammable. I'm sure it will fail me when I most need it and jade me, but I spent the weekend riding around seeing everything I wanted to see for less than a tank of gas. I got really lucky on my condo choice and just happened to choose one that is a block away from a metro station so my commute is fairly simple, did a test run this morning. I have also spent the last four hours practicing how to tie a tie, which I had no idea would be so annoying.
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Sep 4, 2017 21:12
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Having just moved to Seattle from Dallas I agree so much about the public transit. I drive probably one day a week if even. Everything else is via the link light rail. I typically walk to work but because my walk back is on a 400ft incline more often than not I take the light rail. Not that you can drive in Seattle. There's no parking and no one else on the road knows what they're doing.
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Sep 6, 2017 06:05
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Anyone an Immigration Officer for FDNS? Looking at a possible job offer for Headquarters in DC.
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Sep 7, 2017 03:30
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I am sure getting from 12 to 13 is hard... But my question is, how do I get past 9 El Mero Mero posted:I haven't blundered as of yet and I'm starting to feel rather underpaid for the responsibility I'm filling. Is there anyway to move up the gs system faster without lateral moves to other agencies/offices? Ptolemaeus posted:I have also spent the last four hours practicing how to tie a tie, which I had no idea would be so annoying. jiffypop45 posted:Having just moved to Seattle from Dallas I agree so much about the public transit. I drive probably one day a week if even. Everything else is via the link light rail. I typically walk to work but because my walk back is on a 400ft incline more often than not I take the light rail.
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Sep 7, 2017 13:24
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I'm so glad that I can dress casually most of the time at my office. I wear a tie approximately every quarter.
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Sep 7, 2017 22:48
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I haven't worn a tie since my first day. Wearing it then was a mistake.
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Sep 7, 2017 23:04
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I generally wear a tshirt and jeans. Put on headphones for a few hours. It's beautiful.
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Sep 7, 2017 23:22
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Jeans and a blouse. Sometimes I'll wear a skirt and a blouse but I've never worn a dress. Even my interview was jeans flats blouse and a cardigan. However I am a contractor for what it's worth and my previous employer was much more strict on dress code. I wore a suit to that Interview and wore slacks and a nice top most days. Jeans were allowed just rarely worn.
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Sep 7, 2017 23:57
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When I was working in tax compliance I had to meet with people, and I'd typically wear a polo and khakis. Even on days when I wasn't meeting with people, I'd wear a polo and jeans because people would always drop in to give me documents, and I felt like representing the government in a t-shirt was going a little far. I wore a polo and khakis on my first day in my IT position. My manager was taking me around to meet the team, and one of them was wearing stained sweat pants. It took a while to adjust to wearing shorts to work. Felt weird at first.
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Sep 8, 2017 01:42
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Dr. Quarex posted:I am sure getting from 12 to 13 is hard... As to the original moving up question, if in a developmental program you will likely have to finish it first no mater what they have you doing. If a 12 already then the other comments apply, there are many ways to make 13 (Keep an eye out for your organization's leadership programs, take specialized training where you can, Cybersecurity is very big and can apply even if you don't work directly in IT... If you are are in contracts, get your warrant and go from a specialist to an officer, many orgs that is an automatic 13.) Be aware that the wearing of multiple hats is a pretty standard thing now, though, and doing the duties of what used to be multiple jobs (or may still be on paper) tends to be expected. As is devolving the level of responsibility to do things.
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Sep 8, 2017 14:05
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Dr. Quarex posted:I am sure getting from 12 to 13 is hard... I managed to get ladder positions first as a 5/7/9/11 and now in a 9/11/12 track after getting my foot in the door with an GS-5 assistant position. In order to get the developmental jobs, I had to transfer between multiple agencies. I've been at 3 agencies since 2012, with almost 2 years in my current position and agency. I'm currently the lone trainee in my unit, who are all in 13/14 tracks. If any one of them leaves after I get my time in grade as a 12, I'll most likely be promoted into their position, as that is what happened to the person in my job previously. Non-supervisory 14s are hard to find in my job series and agency, so I would take it despite the serious increase in the amount of work. I'm just glad to be at a point where I don't need to keep looking for a way up.
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Sep 8, 2017 14:43
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NintyFresh posted:I managed to get ladder positions first as a 5/7/9/11 and now in a 9/11/12 track after getting my foot in the door with an GS-5 assistant position. In order to get the developmental jobs, I had to transfer between multiple agencies. I've been at 3 agencies since 2012, with almost 2 years in my current position and agency. My friend changed orgs to get into a 7 to 12 track. Kicker is he dropped from an 11 to 7 do so! Without pay retention. But he is a 13 now and he is out of a competency he hated so the moral is sometimes you have to take a step or two back to go forward. Or to the side at least, try not to go so far backwards.
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Sep 8, 2017 20:55
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Looks like I will have to get very good at tying ties as everyone wears them 24/7, even on casual Friday its just more colorful design ties. Also doing the same position but for a federal agency instead of the army owns, I get paid a ton more for a sane work load this time.
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Sep 12, 2017 02:01
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e_wraith posted:Move over to an agency with a developmental track. They are out there, and probably the best way to get to 11 or 12 without major annoyance. These are big with the DoD, I know the GSA has them as well, I would imagine others must. Many are targeted at new grads, but not all. NintyFresh posted:I managed to get ladder positions first as a 5/7/9/11 and now in a 9/11/12 track after getting my foot in the door with an GS-5 assistant position. In order to get the developmental jobs, I had to transfer between multiple agencies. I've been at 3 agencies since 2012, with almost 2 years in my current position and agency. Also I would 1000% switch agencies like a crazy person if I felt like both I and The Government would be better served with me in the different position. So that is certainly something I am open to. Also-also my "recent graduates" eligibility runs out next summer, I better get on this now since my wife will possibly kill me if I say anything like "hey, so, technically, having a Ph.D. does not mean I cannot keep getting master's degrees to maintain recent graduate eligibility..." e_wraith posted:As to the original moving up question, if in a developmental program you will likely have to finish it first no mater what they have you doing. If a 12 already then the other comments apply, there are many ways to make 13 (Keep an eye out for your organization's leadership programs, take specialized training where you can, Cybersecurity is very big and can apply even if you don't work directly in IT... If you are are in contracts, get your warrant and go from a specialist to an officer, many orgs that is an automatic 13.) Be aware that the wearing of multiple hats is a pretty standard thing now, though, and doing the duties of what used to be multiple jobs (or may still be on paper) tends to be expected. As is devolving the level of responsibility to do things. I tried to apply to the uh what was it, some Naval Postgraduate Academy program that seemed like it was literally tailor-made for someone like me who was not very high up in the GS yet but who had aspirations (and qualifications to boot), but my supervisor (whose approval the program required, unsurprisingly) was like "nah, you have too much going on already." Cool NintyFresh posted:I'm currently the lone trainee in my unit, who are all in 13/14 tracks. If any one of them leaves after I get my time in grade as a 12, I'll most likely be promoted into their position, as that is what happened to the person in my job previously. Non-supervisory 14s are hard to find in my job series and agency, so I would take it despite the serious increase in the amount of work. I'm just glad to be at a point where I don't need to keep looking for a way up. Yeah I am not sure where I would be comfortable landing (the answer is "probably never because I would always think I can do more/better") but yeah I would be hard-pressed to argue that getting to a 14 would be a bad thing.
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Sep 12, 2017 03:38
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Dr. Quarex posted:...would the first job be listed as 5/7/9/11 if you had to start as a 5, or just as a 5? Is this why I am not seeing jobs like this more often? Or am I misunderstanding the concept of the developmental track? Or it is a function of only currently searching bordering states in New England for jobs? If you have to start as a 5, it should only be listed as a 5 at the top and in searches. There'd be a separate "promotion potential" item later on in the description that would just list 11 in this example; unfortunately, I can't work out how to search by that.
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Sep 12, 2017 04:01
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Yeah, look at the "full promotion potential" number. I think the "ladder" up to that point is implied. It's tricky because I swesr I've seen jobs just list one GS number but then have a description that says something like "potential for growth up to GS-13." It's not uncommon to see positions that have small ladders, like 5/6 for an Office Automation Assistant. If you want to look at a common example, search for Claims Representative with Social Security Administration. Those are 5/7/9/11. This is definitely what you've called a "production job," but at least it has a big ladder. I started out with that at SSA but I'm currently with another agency in a 7/9/11/12 position. I'm very happy at my agency so I'd be pumped if I could stay here at a 13 some day. 14 and 15 have always sounded very hard to get into. Thesaurus fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Sep 12, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 04:21
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For example, the Claims Representative position, formally known as Social Insurance Specialist / Claims Specialist: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/478717800 Buried in the description: "This is a career-ladder position leading to the GS-11 grade level." GS is listed as 5/7, but I know that this means they just hire you at either point and them you're on the same ladder. A handful of people in my hiring cohort started at 7 for random reasons (usually bullshit sounding degrees) but they'd just cap out at 11 a year earlier. I knew people who took the very similar sounding "Service Representative" position because it also starts at GS-5. However, that one only goes 5/7/9 and I don't think they realized that until it was too late. Since agencies don't list all jobs uniformly, it's hard to know these things. Thesaurus fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 12, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 04:30
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Just curious - which agency did you end up at from SSA? What other agencies did you look into? I know one person who went to EPA from our processing center, but the SSA 'production' type jobs don't seem to have a lot of transferability to other agencies from what I can tell... (former Benefit Authorizer, current Claims Authorizer w/ SSA)
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Sep 12, 2017 04:52
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Thesaurus posted:Since agencies don't list all jobs uniformly, it's hard to know these things. The Air Force used to list their computer scientist positions as GS 5/15, with no mention that the journeyman level was GS-12, and getting a 13 basically required an advanced degree. Don't even think about a 14 or 15. I have no clue how it works under the new system they have. I'll have to ask my cousin. I've mentioned before that I took a demotion from GS-09 to GS-05 (with pay retention) when I moved from tax compliance to IT. I got my 12 last month. Getting my 13 is expected to be pretty easy, although our budget situation is so bad that it might take longer than I want. The easiest way to get a GS-14 equivalent position is to move into management... although with the number of people we have reaching retirement age, getting a technical position 14 might be easier when it comes time.
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Sep 12, 2017 07:10
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I'm pretty happy with my 12 at USCIS, but it is not transferable at all. I'd be at a 9 if I moved to another office, which is like 2/3 of my current pay.
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Sep 12, 2017 14:25
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Max Peck posted:If you have to start as a 5, it should only be listed as a 5 at the top and in searches. There'd be a separate "promotion potential" item later on in the description that would just list 11 in this example; unfortunately, I can't work out how to search by that. Thesaurus posted:Yeah, look at the "full promotion potential" number. I think the "ladder" up to that point is implied. It's tricky because I swesr I've seen jobs just list one GS number but then have a description that says something like "potential for growth up to GS-13." It's not uncommon to see positions that have small ladders, like 5/6 for an Office Automation Assistant. Thesaurus posted:For example, the Claims Representative position, formally known as Social Insurance Specialist / Claims Specialist: I will just include literally all jobs again just in case I see a 1/2/3/4/5/7/9/11/12/13. Incidentally, to answer my own questions from a few months back, I spent some time with the reforged USAJobs and actually went through every single job series when creating a custom search, and I have to say that, for me at least, only about a dozen of them overall seemed vague enough that I was not sure if it included a job I would want. So I recommend it for anyone with like 30 minutes to spare. Beerdeer posted:I'm pretty happy with my 12 at USCIS, but it is not transferable at all. I'd be at a 9 if I moved to another office, which is like 2/3 of my current pay.
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Sep 12, 2017 17:58
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I finally got my promotion to 14 that I was whining about being put on hold since the election. To recap: I'm a researcher in a GS-800 series engineering position which is rated according to OPM's Research Grade Evaluation Guide. I was originally hired with a MS and ABD in my PhD program as a GS-11 for a position with a GS-13 promotion potential. Was bumped up to GS-12 immediately after I finished my PhD and capped out at 13 after a few years. The RGEG, fortunately, describes the qualifications for research positions at different grades. So, I was able to put together a promotion package for a "man in job" type promotion to upgrade my PD to reflect the "GS-14" level work I have been doing. They're infrequent enough that it took a little while for my agency to figure out how to do it again, and by the time they did, Trump-mania was in place and HR was busy trying to process hires before the cutoff. My agency interpreted the hiring freeze as blocking this type of promotion. Once it was finally lifted, a few other folks were in my position, and OPM pushed back saying "you don't normally promote so many people! " and it took a bit for them to be convinced that there was a backlog because they hadn't done it in such a long time. Anyway, all that to say that there's still apparently a technical track upwards in some agencies. Sorry for those of you who are not in "research" positions and can't grow your own position upwards. Frankly, a non-technical non-research position in the Government wouldn't appeal to me at all, with all of the other bureaucratic BS, constant castigation by the press, and limited upward mobility you have to deal with; but different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
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Sep 12, 2017 18:54
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Tetraptous posted:Anyway, all that to say that there's still apparently a technical track upwards in some agencies. Sorry for those of you who are not in "research" positions and can't grow your own position upwards. Frankly, a non-technical non-research position in the Government wouldn't appeal to me at all, with all of the other bureaucratic BS, constant castigation by the press, and limited upward mobility you have to deal with; but different strokes for different folks, I suppose. That is still pretty interesting to know you really can just prove you deserve to be at a higher level and have it work, though. Good to know if I am ever not in a Cog In The Machine federal job. Edit: Perhaps it is your penis-related divinity degree that got you this job
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Sep 12, 2017 19:10
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So my agency is, despite there not being an actual hiring freeze in place anymore, basically acting like there still is. Is anyone else's agency doing this? We've lost a few people to retirement and transfers in the last year, and while it's not a ton, we're a really small agency so %-wise it's a bit, about 10%. And since the retirements are concentrating in some sections more than others, it's really affecting things in those sections and is going to get worse as we have more retirements coming, but we've only hired one position. We actually listed 5 jobs (3 we needed badly, 2 we didn't need at all) right before the freeze. When the freeze ended, they eventually hired the one position, but let the other 4 die without even interviewing anyone. One section, which I'm eyeing as my best shot for a promotion here, will have gone from 3 administrators and 9 GS-14s last year to 2 administrators and 5 GS-14s by the end of this year, if the rumors are correct. They have not listed any job openings and the rumor is that they do not plan to. I don't see how you can lose 50% of your staff, including some of your best and more experienced people, and continue to function. Is there some unofficial poo poo going on that is scaring people into not asking for permission to hire even if they are going to seriously impede their functioning?
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Sep 12, 2017 19:42
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Dr. Quarex posted:Thanks for all this; this is amazingly helpful, and I now feel kind of dumb for how many jobs I have likely overlooked over the past couple of years. I guess I can remind myself that I kept thinking I would be moving in a year or so, and would probably not have been willing to take a demotion for a new opportunity anyway. Don't get me wrong, we do 12 work. It's just that the skills of an ISO2 or ISO3 are really narrow. If you look at GS-11 in any department it's all about the specialized experience. You can only qualify up to a 9 with education. Maybe someone better at BSing than me could finesse things, but my adjudication of complex immigration issues doesn't seem to fly for other specialized work.
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Sep 12, 2017 21:13
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Kase Im Licht posted:Is there some unofficial poo poo going on that is scaring people into not asking for permission to hire even if they are going to seriously impede their functioning? Beerdeer posted:Don't get me wrong, we do 12 work. It's just that the skills of an ISO2 or ISO3 are really narrow. If you look at GS-11 in any department it's all about the specialized experience. You can only qualify up to a 9 with education. If nothing else adjudication seems related to Department of State and... Oh, oops, no jobs, right.
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Sep 12, 2017 22:56
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Kase Im Licht posted:So my agency is, despite there not being an actual hiring freeze in place anymore, basically acting like there still is. Is anyone else's agency doing this? Same here. Our office rolled 5 high level positions out this year and we've gotten no replacements and have been told that opening a slot won't happen until at least 2-3 more go. We're also turbo hosed because in our office we have a bunch of support staff who once were useful when we had a large office, but now are not and they're not the folks leaving. This means the ratio of support-to-staff is out of control. Each person in our office has a support person, but we're short of folks with the technical skills to do the job. I've given myself until December to reevaluate how happy I am with my prospects here and whether or not I want to move on to a more supportive environment. Mostly what's keeping me is that I know if I left the office most of the work that truly benefits the population we serve would stop. Oh, also with respect to the gs-5s doing 12 work, if you complain to the union you can demand a reclassification for those positions. It's a risk though because if you force that process it's possible that EVERYONE will get classified down rather than up.
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Sep 13, 2017 02:08
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Here our ISO-1s (5-9) do things like I-130s, I-90s and the like. I think they're also handling refugee 485s now. ISO 2s do things like 140s, EB-485s, and 918s so yeah, we have a pretty delineated division of work
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Sep 13, 2017 02:21
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Beerdeer posted:Here our ISO-1s (5-9) do things like I-130s, I-90s and the like. I think they're also handling refugee 485s now. ISO 2s do things like 140s, EB-485s, and 918s so yeah, we have a pretty delineated division of work There are certainly rumblings of the union going after the blatant duplication of roles between ISO-1 and ISO-2 (yeah here you might as well flip a coin as to what file types are worked by how senior an officer; just amongst my friends there is someone who started working our agreed-upon hardest files two months into her 7, while another friend started as a 9 doing the probably-easiest files and is now a 12 still doing it), though I imagine they only want to fight one major battle at a time, and they have been trying to win a war over Telework requirements differing arbitrarily between units for like three years now from what I hear. So who knows.
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Sep 13, 2017 03:01
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Man_of_Teflon posted:Just curious - which agency did you end up at from SSA? What other agencies did you look into? EEOC I wasn't with SSA very long. I got this job by virtue of still being in my window of Non-Competitive Eligibility after the Peace Corps. The position was advertised for NCE and I sprang on it right before it expired. It was a shot in the dark that really worked out well. I'm not sure that my SSA experience made much of a difference, but i did try to play it up as much as possible. A few other Peace Corps friends made leaps to other agencies from SSA, but I think they were relying on NCE. Some people came in from the VA, but I'm not sure how advisable going the other way would be... they were all really happy to have left. I got the feeling that a lot of SSA folks were lifers. SSA work is definitely one of those things that you can get highly specialized in but I also feel like it lacks much transferability outside of that microcosm. I remember looking into the mysterious Railroad Retirement Board of all things because they do very similar work. Claims Examiner with DOL Office of Workers Compensation Program is also an option. Some other agencies have Claims Examiner type jobs, too. (One guy got a job like that with the VA.) Thesaurus fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 04:23
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Dr. Quarex posted:Please note I feel no ill will toward you at all and am just posting this as a counterpoint, but like, since starting my search in 2013 before (obviously) being hired, I have only found two total research positions that would have made my Ph.D. actually useful to getting a better GS. And I did not actually qualify for either as they both specifically required history Ph.D.s. So I really had no choice but to go a direction not specifically related to what I should probably be doing with my life (as if there are any jobs in academia either). I wish I had useful advice for you, but mostly I'm just lucky to have had good opportunities! My research area is military-industrial-complex adjacent, which helps. Sometime during the Carter administration, they realized that GS-level research/engineering positions were not salary competitive with industry; but instead of moving to a different pay scale like the financial sector, OPM basically added two grades to the PDs for these positions when compared to comparable education or work experience at other white collar government jobs. Even still, my agency has been hiring well below replacement for the entire time I've been here (about a decade), and things don't look any better coming out of the hiring freeze. I was fortunate that my early grad school research was funded by my org, so they knew me already. When they got a hiring slot, they contacted me informally at first to see if I had any interest in a job with that org before they went to the trouble of opening a position in my specific research area. When I said yes, they posted the position, and I was hired. If I'd said no, they probably would have picked a different area altogether where there was at least one known candidate willing and able to do the work. From about when I started until recently, my org hadn't done any "man in job" type promotions because they'd had such a big gap between when they'd last hired new researchers and the new "wave" I came in at the start of. So, once I and some others were at that point, they had to come up with a new process to do the promotions. All that said, my pay is still way way way below a comparable industry job. I'm here because I wouldn't have the freedom to do this kind of work in the private sector and I'd spend more time chasing research money for about the same salary in academia. I work a lot of (unpaid) overtime, because I love my job. The weeks when I'm mired in paperwork are the worst parts and when I daydream about quitting; if I were dealing with forms, money, and contracts for 40 hours a week over a sustained period of time, I'd leave the Government, because I can do research in my spare time at another better paying job. Tetraptous fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 18:42
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| # ? May 27, 2024 17:39 |
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A lot of opportunities opened up at the SBA this month (I've heard 4,000+ positions): https://www.sba.gov/disaster-assistance/hurricane-response-jobs-sba Great opportunity for a detail.
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Sep 14, 2017 06:38
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