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27 months is insane. I’m relatively familiar with Federal recruitment and staffing practices within a specific subset of agencies, and absent any complications (e.g., salary/service credit for leave accrual negotiation, clearance issues, declination triggering an offer to another referred applicant) a sub-three month target is routinely achieved. Still a long time in the context of the private sector, but there are a lot of moving parts that can’t be skipped. That said, at a previous agency in another department I occasionally had to make offers to applicants who had submitted applications more than a year ago. Often they had forgotten they ever applied.
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May 13, 2019 20:56
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Yeah I got an email from an agency a while back that I had applied to almost 2 years prior, to schedule an interview. I was pretty confused at first and thought they had emailed the wrong person.
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May 13, 2019 21:18
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Mush Mushi posted:I accepted a tentative offer from this posting. They gave us 3 days to sign, but before accepting I also requested a review of the starting step based on my qualifications, which is apparently in process now. Got a surprisingly fast response from HR on that request. Not getting my hopes too high with no prior fed experience but we’ll see! I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t think I qualified. Congrats! I hope you get some extra steps, but the good thing is you will get your 7/9/11/12 grades yearly now. SB/SE is great training for the rest of the organization, although I also see the appeal of LB&I and CI. LB&I is much, much, much slower paced and primarily concerned with (generally very dry) technical issues, but they also usually hire at grade 13 so if you have the choice I'd take that one. SB/SE is much more self-driven and concerned with inventory management and moving cases, but you also get to work a variety of issues, some simple and some not. The best agents and Appeals Officers, IMO, started in SB/SE. CI is a completely different animal but is a great job. Their hiring takes forever though, just to get to the testing part is probably a good 5-6 months after the announcement closes. I've applied there twice now and somehow failed the proctored computer test both times, despite being a CPA with 10 years of experience. Training was a good experience, hope you like staying in hotels. The only bad thing is, since I've gotten hired they have shifted a lot of the travel to online courses which sucks all the fun out of it. You should still get a few solid weeks of classroom training in before going back to your post of duty to finish up though.
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May 13, 2019 23:03
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Anyone know what I'm in for at the SSA as a Legal Administrative Specialist?
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May 13, 2019 23:47
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Artificer posted:Anyone know what I'm in for at the SSA as a Legal Administrative Specialist? Pure hell. SSA is a horrible place to work these days. I assume this is in an ODAR office?
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May 14, 2019 03:59
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Nutella posted:Pure hell. SSA is a horrible place to work these days. I assume this is in an ODAR office? Ooooof. How so? No, its in one of the ones that deals with retirement, the blind, and survivor benefits.
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May 14, 2019 04:03
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I did not realize that was the new name for the Benefit Authorizer job. I'm a technical expert in a large field office. We need 50 employees to run efficiently and are down to 30 with 4 people taking the early out. The quality of the work is shoddy based on really bad training and management feeling that employees can do everything so we don't have any customer service reps only claims specialists, many who were never customer service reps. The quality of our work that you end up getting to back end process is huge in volume and errors. I spend all my time fixing things, answering phones (I'm a GS 12) and not producing work that matters. I know there are a few more recent payment center hires that might be less jaded then myself.
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May 14, 2019 05:11
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I’m finishing up CS training at a PC (starting WC today after finishing our second casework break). The atmosphere is a lot more relaxed here than a FO, but the management and training department is lovely. We didn’t have solid instructors for four months. Random people from the mods came down and went over a lesson with us.
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May 14, 2019 12:56
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Nutella posted:I did not realize that was the new name for the Benefit Authorizer job. I'm a technical expert in a large field office. We need 50 employees to run efficiently and are down to 30 with 4 people taking the early out. The quality of the work is shoddy based on really bad training and management feeling that employees can do everything so we don't have any customer service reps only claims specialists, many who were never customer service reps. The quality of our work that you end up getting to back end process is huge in volume and errors. I spend all my time fixing things, answering phones (I'm a GS 12) and not producing work that matters. I know there are a few more recent payment center hires that might be less jaded then myself. Oof. poo poo. Yikes.
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May 14, 2019 13:04
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Nutella posted:Pure hell. SSA is a horrible place to work these days. I assume this is in an ODAR office? I dodged a bullet with OPM's version of this position in their Retirement Services Branch. I got told that those poor bastards get dogged the gently caress out with calls, letters and backlogs they have to process. I assume this will get far worse as the boomers start retiring off en masse.
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May 14, 2019 16:32
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Artificer posted:Anyone know what I'm in for at the SSA as a Legal Administrative Specialist? I started as a BA (the acronym for that position) in a processing center in 2010. If you like solving puzzles it can be interesting enough. Definitely dense stuff to learn, all acronyms and lovely ancient programs (this is starting to get better). Management varies in quality (I am blessed with good managers at the moment, but this can always change), training is pretty much universally bad, and other people doing terrible work that you have to clean up after will drive you crazy. On the other hand, the pay and benefits and vacation are all sweet. I made the mistake of getting promoted to CA a few years ago... the pay is better but the job is noticably more boring, lots of copying stuff from one place to another manually due to different formats. No experience working in a local office, but I like the idea of being able to transfer to one if I need to move somewhere. I hear they are busier but that time goes by quick, never boring. tek_munk posted:We didn’t have solid instructors for four months. Random people from the mods came down and went over a lesson with us. My BA class went through like 12 instructors in 9 months. They don't have actual trainers - they just grab people from the module (sometimes not even really voluntarily). My CA class, we graduated from the classroom and started doing cases, and after two months they realized that the mentors they assigned to review our cases were not actually catching any mistakes, so we basically had to start over. welcome to the federal government! Man_of_Teflon fucked around with this message at 16:50 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 16:46
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poo poo lol. Well thanks for the heads up. Wish me luck!
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May 14, 2019 19:50
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Applied for a promotion back in April, got referred for 3 of the 6 PODs and not referred to another, and no idea about the last 2. It's been over a week since the emails went out. I emailed HR to see what the deal is as I've already got an interview scheduled but there is probably an 80% chance I'll never hear anything back.
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May 22, 2019 00:20
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Hooray, our employee engagement budget just got used to force us all to take a long Clifton Strengths finder survey. I feel so engaged.
Blindeye fucked around with this message at 00:40 on May 23, 2019 |
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May 23, 2019 00:35
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Blindeye posted:Hooray, our employee engagement budget just got used to force us all to take a long Clifton Strengths finder survey. I feel so engaged. They also made my immediate team do the StrengthsFinder 2.0 as "team building" and the results were not at all surprising; we were all various combinations of analytical strengths. $50 a piece well spent!
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May 23, 2019 02:44
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Thank you for reminding me of the pilot form-coaching program from my service center job; I think I intentionally forgot the specifics because it was just one more piece of evidence that I made the wrong choice, but I remember it was like a 2x3 taxonomy to evaluate your coaching style or something and we graded ourselves in various dimensions and when the speaker got to explaining whichever one I was she was like "you don't really see this one amongst government employees" *rest of class laughs* I think that one had a name something like "The Literal Clown Idiot" or whatever made it clear this person had absolutely no interest in taking a project seriously but enjoyed helping others anyway
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May 23, 2019 03:06
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incels interlinked posted:Congrats! I hope you get some extra steps, but the good thing is you will get your 7/9/11/12 grades yearly now. SB/SE is great training for the rest of the organization, although I also see the appeal of LB&I and CI. LB&I is much, much, much slower paced and primarily concerned with (generally very dry) technical issues, but they also usually hire at grade 13 so if you have the choice I'd take that one. SB/SE is much more self-driven and concerned with inventory management and moving cases, but you also get to work a variety of issues, some simple and some not. The best agents and Appeals Officers, IMO, started in SB/SE. Thanks! So, I’m still waiting on a final offer and in the meantime my status went back to referred rather than selected with no explanation. I still have access to the on-boarding page which shows the TO and the documents which I’ve completed. Pretty sure it’s all background noise at this point...hopefully. To my knowledge no one has received a FO yet, but we’re running out of time so it must be soon!
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May 28, 2019 18:43
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Mush Mushi posted:Thanks! So, I’m still waiting on a final offer and in the meantime my status went back to referred rather than selected with no explanation. I still have access to the on-boarding page which shows the TO and the documents which I’ve completed. Pretty sure it’s all background noise at this point...hopefully. To my knowledge no one has received a FO yet, but we’re running out of time so it must be soon! Sometimes the status goes back a step for no apparent reason, it happened with me recently too.
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May 29, 2019 00:38
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Applied to work at a city dmv, was surprised when I got a call back today. I've been applying to different jobs for a while now, mostly because I know it takes so long for anyone to reply. So city level DMV....better or worse than retail? edit: apologizes if there is is only federal, still hunting for the state work thread!
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May 30, 2019 03:42
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*furloughed federal workers at the saloon all turn and stare at you silently in unison as you walk in and order a City Drink*
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May 31, 2019 03:13
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Artificer posted:Oof. poo poo. Yikes. Sorry, I know I'm three weeks late here, but I just discovered this thread for the first time. Like Man_of_Teflon, I started as a BA in 2010. I moved up to management a few years later, and now I'm in HR. The BA job isn't that bad, though your experience will depend heavily on management, which tends to be pretty crappy (in the PC at least) and a textbook picture of the Peter principle in action. Basically all of the first line management was promoted because they were good technicians, and not necessarily because they have any aptitude for management. I think the hardest thing is that it's a huge agency, but you only get exposed to a small segment of it when you're a technician. I hated every day of my life in management, but it at least exposed me to all sorts of other components in the regional office that had jobs that actually interested me. I actually really like my job now for the most part and look forward to coming into work, which isn't something I could say for most of my career so far.
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Jun 10, 2019 00:40
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Schlitzkrieg Bop posted:Sorry, I know I'm three weeks late here, but I just discovered this thread for the first time. Like Man_of_Teflon, I started as a BA in 2010. I moved up to management a few years later, and now I'm in HR. What parts of being a manager made you gate it so much? Were they specific to your role or agency?
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Jun 10, 2019 03:49
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Thesaurus posted:What parts of being a manager made you gate it so much? Were they specific to your role or agency? Part of it was probably specific to the role/agency--it was probably an absolute low point in terms of staffing because we were just coming out of the 4 year hiring freeze, so the workloads were all incredibly behind. First-line supervisors also tend to have a pretty thankless job--they catch all sorts of crap from upper management if deadlines aren't met (no matter how feasible those deadlines were to begin with), and you have to deal with all the problems that employees present on their own. You spend almost all of your time looking at lists and workload reports instead of doing the actual things managers should do, like talk to your employees. Training for management is also pretty bad. I didn't get the "introduction to management" training until I had been in the position for almost two years. A month later, I took a lateral move out of management. There were other issues probably specific to me: I'm really non-confrontational, and suck at having anything resembling a difficult conversation. I was relatively young compared to the employees I supervised so I was always really concerned about how the employees felt about that. There were some good things that came out of it--mostly getting to move up two pay grades and introducing me to my current position, which I didn't even know was a thing before I was in management.
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Jun 10, 2019 04:31
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Great, just perfect. They emailed me with a date/time for the TCO Interview that’s immediately after I get back from this conference. I don’t know what to even study for it yet!
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Jun 10, 2019 13:02
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Discendo Vox posted:Great, just perfect. They emailed me with a date/time for the TCO Interview that’s immediately after I get back from this conference. I don’t know what to even study for it yet! With the usual "I got hired 9 years ago so things may have changed" qualifier, the interview was substantially easier than the accounting test. The hardest question involved estimating business vs. personal cell phone usage, and the most important question involved prioritizing work (hint: if there's a statute of limitations, do that one first).
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Jun 10, 2019 14:22
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Schlitzkrieg Bop posted:First-line supervisors also tend to have a pretty thankless job--they catch all sorts of crap from upper management if deadlines aren't met (no matter how feasible those deadlines were to begin with), and you have to deal with all the problems that employees present on their own. You spend almost all of your time looking at lists and workload reports instead of doing the actual things managers should do, like talk to your employees. qft 
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Jun 10, 2019 23:22
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TheMadMilkman posted:With the usual "I got hired 9 years ago so things may have changed" qualifier, the interview was substantially easier than the accounting test. The hardest question involved estimating business vs. personal cell phone usage, and the most important question involved prioritizing work (hint: if there's a statute of limitations, do that one first). I don’t know how to handle either of those. I passed the tests through cramming and applying the policies provided. Fantastic.
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Jun 10, 2019 23:51
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Discendo Vox posted:I don’t know how to handle either of those. I passed the tests through cramming and applying the policies provided. Fantastic. Guy has a cell phone. Pays $100 a month. Says he uses it for 25% business, 75% personal. How much is deductible? Like the question was literally that easy. And I already gave you the answer for the other one. You went to law school. You know that blowing a statute of limitations is a big deal. So if any questions involve one, your answer is “make sure I don’t blow the SoL.”
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Jun 11, 2019 01:53
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oh hey, i forgot about this thread. i started at uscis.
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Jun 11, 2019 02:04
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killer crane posted:oh hey, i forgot about this thread. i started at uscis. Wait, did you start today? Are you... Ken Cuccinelli?
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Jun 11, 2019 02:33
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We’ve had too many bosses at USCIS.
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Jun 11, 2019 03:09
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At least we know this one will only last about two weeks before self-immolating.
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Jun 11, 2019 03:33
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TheMadMilkman posted:Guy has a cell phone. Pays $100 a month. Says he uses it for 25% business, 75% personal. How much is deductible? Ah so it's not assuming I would know more accounting or tax law? Good god, here's hoping. I couldn't integrate several hundred pages of individual filing rules in one day. We'll see how it goes, I guess.
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Jun 13, 2019 01:40
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Beerdeer posted:We’ve had too many bosses at USCIS. What is it about USCIS that causes so much churn and burn with your leaders?
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Jun 13, 2019 19:21
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Delorence Fickle posted:What is it about USCIS that causes so much churn and burn with your leaders? Imagine being in charge of granting asylum, work permits, permanent residency, and naturalized citizen status to people entering our country. In 2019. E:. Unless 
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Jun 13, 2019 19:43
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Pretty much. We'd be a political pawn if people up top could get their heads together. The best one we've had under this admin got pulled upstairs, enjoyed the narrative of the adult in the room, and crashed out.
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Jun 13, 2019 20:36
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Yeah they had a literal toadie doing everything he could think of to dismantle the system, and doing a decent job at it, but since he was -lawful- evil he was not nearly brutal enough for our lovely overlord's standards. Or more specifically for Stephen Miller's Hitler cosplay fantasies
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Jun 15, 2019 00:07
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Going on month 5 of waiting for my official start date. My stuff got sent to OPM a few months ago and since then I and my supervisors have heard literally nothing. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal normally except I was a seasonal employee and I don’t have a stable job I can just work at in the meantime. This has left me in kind of a lovely situation where my only feasible employment options are retail or other really low-paying temp jobs. I have no idea how much longer I’m going to have to wait but I also don’t want to go to the trouble of getting a “real” job and then quit two weeks later or whatever if I end up getting a start date right after. I also don’t have health insurance any more and I’m not eligible for my state’s medicaid.  This would be a whole lot easier and less stressful for me if HR/OPM actually communicated with you in any way. But that’s a pipe dream I guess.
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Jun 22, 2019 16:01
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Yesterday was my last official day of work - I've officially resigned from federal employment. Looking forward to the next phase of life as I take some time off for myself. Everything is pointing toward getting my masters in business analytics as the right step forward, but sometimes I wonder if government will ever get to that point. Since the beginning of the FY I've worked to get a training contract in place, and I wouldn't hear anything from our contract office for weeks to months at a time. I was told to stop contacting my contracting officer because they'd let me know when they would get to it. I haven't heard anything since February, and my last day they came back with a half dozen corrections to my statement of work that they could have given me in November. I will not miss that part of my job one bit.
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Jun 28, 2019 19:35
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I'm an underpaid IT guy working at a small financial institution; I'm looking at the IRS technology jobs where there seem to be a lot of openings. How are things, there? I'd be happy to just keep my head down, work my forty a week, get my regular raises, and retire with a pension; I don't need to love my job or anything. And if I come in at the level I think I would, I should be getting about a 15% raise compared to what I'm making now, and the steps are about double what I generally get as far as annual raises go.
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Jun 29, 2019 05:58
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