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New thread title should be: The U.S. Federal Government Jobs Megathread: Give me my goddam grade increase already! Depressing news: I'm watching a lot of my coworkers get hit with RIF notices in the future because of system automation. 
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Sep 28, 2017 15:57
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OT reauthorized 
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Sep 28, 2017 16:27
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Delorence Fickle posted:New thread title should be: The U.S. Federal Government Jobs Megathread: Give me my goddam grade increase already! On a similar note, are federal employees feeling malaise with the new admin uniformly, or are there any places still filled with optimism/hope about their future?
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Sep 28, 2017 19:09
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Blindeye posted:On a similar note, are federal employees feeling malaise with the new admin uniformly, or are there any places still filled with optimism/hope about their future? Morale holding steady here in the Department of the Army 
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Sep 28, 2017 19:43
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...m=.56aa4a882135 This is what our boss thinks of us at DOI. So yeah, people aren't feeling great.
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Sep 28, 2017 20:02
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...b3f3_story.html We still don't have a photo up in my office! Until this article came out I thought it was some gsa dude somewhere dragging their feet on purpose.
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Sep 28, 2017 20:15
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My sister's been doing a bunch of OT as part of the FBI over in NYC. She also said that, even before the new administration, they had Fox News up on their office TVs which sorta makes sense 
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Sep 28, 2017 21:07
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The U.S. Federal Government Jobs Megathread: Always say you are considered an expert
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Sep 28, 2017 21:40
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Xelkelvos posted:My sister's been doing a bunch of OT as part of the FBI over in NYC. She also said that, even before the new administration, they had Fox News up on their office TVs which sorta makes sense
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Sep 28, 2017 21:49
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Dr. Quarex posted:I have heard more than one anecdote about ICE offices being unofficially/officially required to have FOX News on any televisions they have. For that department, that makes total sense. FBI, slightly less so, but given that it's another LEO org, it also sort makes sense.
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Sep 28, 2017 22:12
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El Mero Mero posted:https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...b3f3_story.html lol I thought it was just my agency i snagged the biden on inauguration day for my office. i wasn't looking forward to seeing Trump's face every day so I've been pretty content with the hooks as a daily reminder of the Administration's disfunction.
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Sep 28, 2017 23:19
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Are there any resume guidelines I should be following, besides the job specific ones put out by the agency?
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Sep 29, 2017 00:35
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My building got the portraits quickly. I started using the back entrance to avoid seeing them. Then we moved buildings, and I have no idea where the photos went. I'm not gonna look for them, either.
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Sep 29, 2017 00:47
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Thesaurus posted:lol I thought it was just my agency  Biden portrait buddy. I have my copy of that portrait in my office sort of behind the door, so I have a direct line of sight from my desk, and can look to Diamond Joe every morning to lift my spirits for the day.We have the downloaded Presidential portrait up in our agency offices, and I swear the out of focus White House background is an option from the school photo packages from my kids' elementary school. it looks seriously low rent.
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Sep 29, 2017 00:56
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Biden' portrait was magical. The guy looked so happy. It honestly helped my mood every day I saw it.
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Sep 29, 2017 01:37
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my colleague gave me Cheney as a joke, so now he and biden kind of balance out like yin and yang. someone took the Obama portrait on the day before inauguration and it was a minor scandal.some weird guy from the public was in our lobby and noticed it was missing and raised hell about it. he wouldn't leave until he could meet with a manager about it and said he was going to report us to the DOJ (whatever that means). and the employee who had called dibs on it was dissapointed because she missed out. we never figured out who took it but ultimately suspected the weird guy himself since he was so bizarre about it
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Sep 29, 2017 03:34
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So...what are new applicants for the federal government *supposed* to do for the assessments? Just lie and hope whatever justification they can come up with holds up if it comes up in the interview? I sure as hell don't have years dealing with customer service in a military setting or teaching popular training courses at the workplace or what have you.
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Sep 29, 2017 03:52
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Artificer posted:So...what are new applicants for the federal government *supposed* to do for the assessments? Just lie and hope whatever justification they can come up with holds up if it comes up in the interview? I sure as hell don't have years dealing with customer service in a military setting or teaching popular training courses at the workplace or what have you. Real life example: I applied for a couple job openings at my agency late last year. For one of these jobs, it was very specialized. Our work is kind of particular so there's not many people who could answer expert, or even the next best, to everything. I answered expert to a lot, but not everything. I put nothing lower than the second best answer. Everything I put could be backed up. Even working here I don't get a chance to do everything they were asking about but I was close to honest because I figured there are very few people who could answer better. That was dumb. My resume didn't make it. Who did make it? Well a lot of the ones that did were people who had my old job at my previous agency. I did that job. I know, that while they deal with a certain aspect of the posted job, they are not even remotely qualified for it and would have no idea what many of the questions on the application even meant. But they made it past HR, and I did not. But then they just canceled the entire listing during the hiring freeze so no one got the job. But they will eventually have to hire again, and I will be putting expert for every single answer.
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Sep 29, 2017 04:27
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Artificer posted:So...what are new applicants for the federal government *supposed* to do for the assessments? Just lie and hope whatever justification they can come up with holds up if it comes up in the interview? I sure as hell don't have years dealing with customer service in a military setting or teaching popular training courses at the workplace or what have you. If you genuinely can't come up with a bullshit answer for why you're an expert then you actually probably wouldn't have done any better at a private industry interview. The whole point of any interview process from the interviewee's perspective is to put your best face forward. You are not trying to inform the interviewer, you are trying to sell yourself. A lot of people try to answer these questions like an SAT question but it's not; it's a digital interview. You shouldn't lie but you should explain why you are the best person for the job. A good example for showing expertise would be a story about how you trained someone else in how to do someone else to work in the area of the question. No one can say you lied about being an expert if someone came to you for help in the area and you successfully improved their skills. They can argue that someone is more of an expert, but not that you are not an expert yourself. Training others is a positive thing in and of itself and one of the easiest things to throw out there to show both expertise and motivation in an interview setting. There is also the defense of, "I assumed that HR put that in by mistake." If you can remove the words "department of defense" and everything subject matter wise would make you an expert then you have a good argument to make in an interview. I recall a single question that the Air Force was using for a while on all aerospace engineer postings requiring experience in something like, "fighter, bomber, vertical lift, and drone avionics, propulsion, structures, flight controls, hydraulics, electronics, and environmental control systems." Beyond the fact that no person on the planet is an expert in all of those areas, I don't think that drone environmental control systems even exist. You just have to assume they meant "or" instead of "and" or the question borders on nonsense. No interviewer is going to argue in good faith that government HR creates well written screening questions and if they did, no one would take them seriously. You just need a persuasive argument for what you imagined they meant.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:23
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I'm continually amazed by the fact that I have a job in the federal government.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:30
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I assume that requirements for first aid certifications and such must be fulfilled by the time you apply for the position?
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Oct 4, 2017 04:17
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From what I have seen most positions require those to be completed by the job closing date.
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Oct 4, 2017 06:06
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Can anyone point me to an article about what is involved in a Q Clearance? All I can find is that it is roughly equivalent to a TS, and then others with info on what you go through to get a TS. I worry because I have smoked some pot in the past year, so I don't want that to disqualify me.
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Oct 4, 2017 19:41
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Be honest about it and (truthfully!) say you've quit smoking
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Oct 4, 2017 21:18
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Slaan posted:Be honest about it and (truthfully!) say you've quit smoking Well, yeah. I just don't know if they will believe me since the last time was while I was weathering Hurricane Irma(hadn't smoked in months, but I thought I was gonna die  )
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Oct 4, 2017 21:21
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That's relatively extenuating. Even if you said that in a poly they're probably not going to care as long as you don't now.
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Oct 4, 2017 21:32
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Had a qualification assessment question item this evening that was a couple inches long. I didn't recognize some of the words used in it. But I'm an expert in the field that others regularly consult, of course.
Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Oct 7, 2017 |
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Oct 7, 2017 07:33
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Wasn't Socrates the wisest man of all because he he knew that he knew nothing? It sounds like the same thing applies to you answering expert by recognizing that you don't know what the questions mean.
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Oct 7, 2017 14:29
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Do you know the subject more then the majority of the planet? Actually probably by sheer number of people in the world not working in your field. There, you are an expert
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Oct 7, 2017 14:53
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Does anyone have any experience with the medical end of things? I've been reading through the thread and trawling through USAjobs for a while, but it looks like the only Pharmacist jobs that ever get posted are Indian Health Service or Buckley AFB in Colorado. Maybe that's just where you put in your time before other assignments? I'll be honest and say that much of what appeals to me is the idea of seeing and working in other parts of the world, but it looks like I could very easily just be in Somewhere Arizona forever too.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:32
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Good News: I got in contact with a supervisor flying an interesting position this winter. Bad News: I think I made her hate me by asking too many questions via email. 
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Oct 13, 2017 04:14
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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? I just started the BA training program after some tips from this thread (thanks thread!). How different/easier/the same is the CA position? It's one of the possible ways for me to go up like you, but I'd honestly rather fiddle around with complicated computer programs than deal with the public.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:17
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I'm still in the (SEVEN MONTH LONG) training class, but the beneficiary contact seems like it will be mostly calling to develop for evidence needed, which hasn't been too bad. Which PC hired you? Apparently we are still the worst PC in terms of performance here in Chicago, which I definitely believe based on the amount of mistakes I have to fix from everyone else here. If you like fiddling with complicated computer stuff you will like the BA job (especially now that they don't have to answer the 1-800 number anywhere near as often as they did in the past). It's like programming that is totally useless anywhere else, I guess? Pay attention to the DED/ADD section, that's the key to mastering reading the MBR! Once you combine that with a good understanding of PHUS it will take you seconds to see when there's a potential problem.
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Oct 20, 2017 00:02
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RFC2324 posted:Well, yeah. I just don't know if they will believe me since the last time was while I was weathering Hurricane Irma(hadn't smoked in months, but I thought I was gonna die Did you apply for the DoE Federal Agent job by chance?
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Oct 20, 2017 05:19
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gently caress My rear end posted:Did you apply for the DoE Federal Agent job by chance? no, it's a contractor position in new Mexico.
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Oct 20, 2017 06:04
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Man_of_Teflon posted:I'm still in the (SEVEN MONTH LONG) training class, but the beneficiary contact seems like it will be mostly calling to develop for evidence needed, which hasn't been too bad. They've been intentionally cutting out the DED/ADD sections of our MBRs to force us to read them the hard way. I'm in KC MO, PC 6. Our class is the last of the most recent hiring wave. Rumor is they're not going to hire in quantity for any position for a couple of years. I'm really lucky was able to get in, waiting on the app for another couple of weeks and I would have been SOL.
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Oct 24, 2017 01:13
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I love USAJobs. Finally got a response back from a USAID position I applied for; they didn't want to hire me. I applied in 2014
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Oct 24, 2017 01:46
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Slaan posted:I love USAJobs. Finally got a response back from a USAID position I applied for; they didn't want to hire me. junk like that is what keeps headfucking me within my agency since I can't tell to what degree weird incompetence is baked in vs originating from new administration incompetence and fuckery.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:03
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AmishSpecialForces posted:They've been intentionally cutting out the DED/ADD sections of our MBRs to force us to read them the hard way. I'm in KC MO, PC 6. Our class is the last of the most recent hiring wave. Rumor is they're not going to hire in quantity for any position for a couple of years. I'm really lucky was able to get in, waiting on the app for another couple of weeks and I would have been SOL. Seems weird that they would separate them to me, most of what helped it make sense for me was lining it up with the payment history and with PHUS. I suppose that could be overwhelming if you are learning, but when all three start to click it is a beautiful feeling. They hired 5 classes of BAs here recently... so many that they cut the training down to 7 months instead of 9 because they don't have enough instructors  Our training is the worst and our management isn't much better... none of them seem willing to take any action against the employees who are useless, so there is no accountability which demoralizes the people who are actually decent at the job. This may be changing more recently though, apparently they managed to boot a couple technicians not too long ago, and the outside CA class training concurrently with my inside one has already had one person fired (obviously this is much easier to do during training).
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Oct 24, 2017 05:06
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Man_of_Teflon posted:Seems weird that they would separate them to me, most of what helped it make sense for me was lining it up with the payment history and with PHUS. I suppose that could be overwhelming if you are learning, but when all three start to click it is a beautiful feeling. We're on 7 months from 9 too. The training has been pretty good so far, and management has helpfully stayed the gently caress in the background. As for useless employees, I've learned from talking to fully-fledged BAs at lunch that useless employees are purged pretty regularly. Trainees get a lot of leeway, but even they get shitcanned after a while if they fail enough reviews. A very nice lady came down one lunch to say goodbye to her classmates, most of which were out of review, because she was getting fired for failing too many reviews 
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Oct 24, 2017 14:02
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