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For health insurance, I went with NALC (National Association of Letter Carriers) Health Benefit Plan. You pay like $50 or 100 per year for a membership since you're not a letter carrier, but that's not a huge deal. I take a few high-dollar prescriptions, and they were MASSIVELY lower co-pays than any of the big-name insurers in our area. My working theory is that the risk pool is disproportionately letter carriers (duh) so you get a much higher percentage of reasonably fit people since so many letter carriers have to actually walk their routes. Fit people means lower health costs, so they pass the savings on to the rest of the pool to meet their loss ratios.
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Mar 20, 2022 19:30
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laxbro posted:edit: From you previous posts it looks like you're looking for a higher level Federal job. You should check out the Foreign Service Officer thread in ask/tell if you're willing to live abroad. It's a selective selection process but they take people with a wide variety of past careers. [TELL] me about being a spook
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Mar 21, 2022 18:28
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SirPablo posted:A colleague applied for an internal promotion and had their resume rejected because it did not explicitly state full time as 40 hours per week. Here, the screen is 99% of the time done by HR. They are handed a list of things from the posting to check to ask, "Does this person qualify?" Occasionally the screening is done more locally to the position by a Subject Matter Expert, but it's rare, and requires a bunch of work to set up (in addition to all the work doing the screening). However, the HR screening is often not performed carefully or thoughtfully. I worked with someone applying for an internal position where they were an amazing match to the skills required. And they knew the rules of making sure to say explicitly what the position is asking for, so the resume was 100% on point. But the screener STILL kicked their resume back as not qualified, because the screener failed to identify a sentence that matched the posting word-for-word. Fortunately, my co-worker knew someone in HR who could peek behind the curtain to see what the issue was, see that a certain requirement was noted as missing, which was definitely in the resume. They suggested they ask for an appeal so someone would lay eyes on it carefully - and got through to the interview and hired to the new position. Most people don't have that visibility, and just roll with a rejection. It's a pretty bad indictment of how a lot of hiring is done. Sometimes you just get a bad dice roll, and never get past HR.
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Apr 7, 2022 03:24
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Loucks posted:Just got a 30 day advance notice of "re-entry." Reading the published re-entry plan is revealing in that it's dependent upon the same combination of falsehoods that have been peddled throughout this whole pandemic, e.g., We pretty much had this, and were getting ready to get hammered with an "it's important that you're back in the workplace for morale" despite no one articulating why we couldn't be remote. But the classifications just came in, and basically everyone seems to be coming up as being eligible to work remotely from anywhere in the country, with a handful of people being eligible to work remote, but having to be within commuting distance for as-needed stuff. Not what we expected at all. Headquarters is going to be a ghost town full of political appointees, and no one else.
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Apr 15, 2022 17:23
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Elem7 posted:OPM rules still require you to come into the office a minimum of 2 times a pay period OR be classified as totally remote "live wherever" right? We have three flavors: Telework (in office 2x per pay period) Remote Inside [the commuting area] Remote Outside [the commuting area] If you are either flavor of remote, your duty station gets changed to match your home address, and your locality pay may change as a result. Remote Inside is so that they can bring you in as needed, but you don't have to show up unless asked to. I think "Essential" people may be getting this bucket, so that if there's a furlough they can have them come in to do ~essential employee~ things in person. Remote Outside, they still said you might need to come in a few times a year. It's unclear to me whether you're traveling on the government's dime for those cases. It's not relevant to me since my family has roots near HQ, but if I were moving across the country I would try to find out.
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Apr 15, 2022 18:53
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I'm guessing a "discriminated against someone by scrutinizing bereavement leave" (actually discriminatory, or just allegedly) morphed into a culture of "Let no peon go un-hosed, or the ones that we choose to gently caress over will sue us," because it's a revolving door of entry-level staff that nevertheless have amazingly strong federal civil service protections (which is a good thing, everyone should have them).
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Apr 21, 2022 01:50
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yeah I eat rear end posted:Is it wrong to accept a Project Manager position on a government contract when you feel like you're not qualified for it? My current contract is expiring soon and my company that is a subprime basically said they don't think they are going to be on the recompete contract, and they basically said I could either be recruited by the prime in my current role or take a big promotion and stay with their company on a different project. I just feel myself asking why - I have worked here just over 3 years in a purely technical role...my current PM spent like 10 years working before becoming a PM. It would just feel weird to be at the same level or higher of the people who basically taught me everything I know. Fake it til you make it, baby. We're all frauds who don't know what we're doing. Your bosses didn't know what they were doing at some point, now it's your turn. The Fed you're working for is probably more clueless than you are. And if they're not, it's much easier for them to train you, than to get you kicked off for anything less than gross negligence.
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Apr 30, 2022 03:51
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Star Man posted:I'll ask when I have to go in to get my assigned equipment. I would email your hiring manager to inquire about office spots. Your manager is probably WFH too, there'll just be an IT guy shoving a laptop into your hands. I'm pretty sure my agency is still drop shipping people everything except for badges.
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May 6, 2022 03:00
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SgtScruffy posted:This might be a silly quesion or "it depends entirely on the manager", but is there any general way to tell if a given Agency/Department is going to allow for full time telework for new hires (i.e. I'm not a current federal employee)? I think these days "fully remote" is at the agency and manager's discretion, but if your manager is a fully remote, there's good chances are that you will be too. If you would purely be an office worker, I would expect you to have a good chance to be fully remote (although they might want you in commuting range, which Baltimore probably is). If your manager wants you to be in the office, you'll probably still have *some* telework due to pressure from on high, but I imagine there's a boss or two that's trying to drag his team back into the office (and they're the teams that are going to be hiring, lol).
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May 6, 2022 03:17
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yeah I eat rear end posted:I went to sign the LOI that they assured me wasn't binding, and as soon as I signed it a prompt came up saying that I acknowledge this document is legally binding. I can have a legally binding signature on a document that does nothing beyond demonstrate my intent. Hire a lawyer for an hour if you want to be sure, but I would presume that a popup on a docusign site does not control over the contents of the document that I am signing.
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May 30, 2022 02:12
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Goodpancakes posted:I currently work for a state government, but I have been offered a placement for the Feds. The money may turn out to be very similar after negotiations. I'm currently 4 years into my State gig where I vest in the pension at 5, so I'm a bit worried about dumping that to restart a pension clock. It's a good offer for a good agency and the work seems pretty great. From a high level view, you'd have to look at what the pension benefit would give you after 5 years vs. 20 years, or whatever point you think you'd stick it out for the state. Then compare that with a comparable trajectory under FERS for the feds. One of the nice things about working for the feds is that you may have a much wider variety of job opportunities, depending on what you do. Particularly if you work for a smaller state, there may not be as much opportunity to move around and find new challenges while staying in the pension system. The federal defined benefit (like a pension) portion of your retirement should probably be a smaller portion of your retirement than the defined contribution, TSP (like a 401k, with a little matching funds, plus more you can contribute). At the end of the day, career growth and promotions are probably the thing that will matter most to the amount of money you have available for retirement. All else being equal, I would lean towards the Feds. There's a bigger pool of potential jobs, and it's the only employer that can print its own money if there's a budget crunch.
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May 31, 2022 04:14
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Goodpancakes posted:I've had to fill out a background check for this one as well. It's not a big deal, I don't think, as I won't have any red flags... Except I am a dual citizen with the UK. As far as I am aware, this isn't any type of clearanced position. I can't imagine this will be a big deal? They do background investigations for Public Trust and other positions where you're in a position to get up to shady stuff if you were a bad guy. No one wants a guy to leak a bunch of SSNs and then have it come out he has a record of fraud. Dual citizenship should only matter for clearance-type things where a question of dual loyalty would make you unsuitable. This page has some info about the different levels of background checks they do. https://news.clearancejobs.com/2020/09/01/what-is-a-public-trust-position/
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Jun 1, 2022 02:44
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Dr. Quarex posted:I just completed a written interview for a job It could be that the hiring manager is not able to do a verbal interview for ADA reasons. My agency (and the government to a lesser extent) is pretty amazing at accommodating disabilities compared to private industry.
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Jun 1, 2022 21:09
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lwoodio posted:I already lost my TSP password and the reset email doesn't do anything. I generated a password with Chrome but accidentally overwrote it because every field on the multi factor login process considers itself a password field and tries to get Chrome to update your password to the security question response. Low bidder strikes again
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Jun 2, 2022 19:20
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treat posted:Apparently a big VIP, unnamed for security reasons, is visiting my lab in a couple weeks. Probably secretary Haaland or maybe a senator or something? My boss tells me this is an opportunity that only comes once or twice in a career, and that I should have my research summary practiced and ready and dress nice and look busy the whole time they're here, but also nothing matters and this world is a fart so instead of impressing them I'm soliciting ideas for the most embarrassing poo poo I could possibly do. Please advise. Give Biden noogies until he agrees to $50k of student debt relief
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Jun 3, 2022 15:01
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Dammerung posted:I received a call from a number purportedly from the DHS about a job application I had sent in telling me to respond to an email that I never received. The number they called is no longer in service. Is it bad that I can absolutely believe that, considering the Federal government's track record with me and employment, that this is legitimate? You won't ever go wrong lowering your expectations of government hiring processes. You could try reaching out to the contact info on the posting if it's something you're still interested in. You might get to the right person with a few weeks.
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Jun 7, 2022 20:27
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Dammerung posted:Here's the weird thing... It's for an "asylum" posting in NYC. I applied for some positions with the USCIS, but none of them were for asylum-related positions. I literally have no idea what they were referring to, or why they custom-made a voice message saying that their number was out of service after calling me from it. I think it's either a scam or a sign that, whoever they are, I absolutely should not work with them! Look at this guy afraid of a little systematic dysfunction. It's possible that the message is generated from a phone number that is not currently monitored because the guy that knows how to do the fancy call-forwarding quit last year, and the guy who got tasked with recording a new voicemail said 'out of service' because no one gave him the right words to use. It's possible that other postings can 'pull' from one that you might not have been aware of, particularly if it's something urgent, like asylum processing. So while I agree that I would not necessarily engage with a purportedly out-of-service number calling you out of the blue, starting with a known good inbound contact should prove much less dangerous.
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Jun 7, 2022 20:41
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Dammerung posted:How would I know how a good inbound contact for a position that I didn't apply for would be? You call/email the contact on the posting you applied to Edit: To clarify, if your agency is sharing applications from postings, then the HR grunts all probably have enough visibility to see what is happening on your application. And if the HR grunt who owns the posting has no information for you, then you know you've done what you can, and can safely give up. Unless you really want to be an Asylum person, in which case you start doing old-fashioned phone/email work tracking down the responsible HR person. Devor fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jun 7, 2022 |
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Jun 7, 2022 21:47
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Discendo Vox posted:I'm interested in learning as much as possible about the sources of problems with the hiring process; is there anything you can share? I think the root cause of a lot of the ridiculous stories is that the Federal hiring process is, at its core, a massive set of training wheels and guardrails that prevents people [HR, hiring managers, leadership] from [accidentally or intentionally] doing Bad Things, but also prevents HR from doing Good Things.
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Jun 10, 2022 15:58
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alnilam posted:There are plenty of spaces in the DOE that have neither of these. A ton of national lab research is openly published, at least in the non nuclear realm. Lots of support staff, program managers, etc related to that research, too. Do note that by being fully remote, you lose any chance of being exposed to Gamma radiation, transforming you into the Superhero known as The Hulk, which I understand is one of the major perquisites of working at DOE
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Jun 22, 2022 18:33
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El Mero Mero posted:It was a horrible hot mess when I first got into it, so I disabled paperless document delivery as a precaution. This past week I've been getting dozens of envelopes filled with a single sheet of paper that just says: 1. They add a real new document 2. Generate system message -> Not Paperless! -> Mail system message 2a. Mailing a system message entails creating a new document 2b. Add a new document! Go to 1 2c. Mail the physical letter I hope the stupid loving contractor eats 100% of those postal costs (they won't)
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Jun 29, 2022 04:17
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Contractor: Here's our numbers for the first week of operation. We have 10 million new users, and we've send out about 8 million letters GTL: Well I guess that seems reasonable, lots of initial things are going to nee- Contractor: 6 million of the letters all went to a single person in Nebraska
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Jun 29, 2022 14:33
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laxbro posted:2 years. You’d be a 13 for your third year. Ladder promotions seem to all but automatic at most agencies as long as you meet expectations. That's how my boss described it - I was just hired on a ladder. He said that the promotion process with HR starts automatically on the 1-year schedule, and he would have to affirmatively stop the promotion if he felt I wasn't performing.
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Jul 5, 2022 22:24
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Dr. Quarex posted:Yeah, I hear that. Knowing someone who got the job you applied for is basically the worst, followed by the period I am in now between the interview and realizing you clearly did not get the job, followed by "oh awesome I got referred! Oh, wait, that probably means nothing." If it got to the interview stage, it was pretty much at the hiring manager's discretion (and potentially their boss / deputy, realistically) I think your best bet would be to follow up and ask if you could do a call with any tips for how you could improve your interview, stuff like that. I feel like it's probably a huge long shot and a liability for no benefit to them, though, so don't be offended if they don't respond, or respond in the negative. It would be a terrible idea for them to reply in writing with "here's why we didn't hire you", so you're kind of relying on them to be gracious with their time to talk with you.
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Jul 7, 2022 01:25
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Leon Sumbitches posted:Any ideas why a posted job would be cancelled and reposted well into the hiring process? Well-qualified disabled veteran applied
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Jul 28, 2022 01:38
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Discendo Vox posted:Does the contract say management can only interview a person once per announcement? It would be hilarious if the contract says they have to interview each person at least once (as heated game moment posted) but they've been treating it as "may interview each person at most once"
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Jul 28, 2022 19:08
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Discendo Vox posted:Given that they said management was the party that wanted this, I definitely think it's worth checking into. If it's at most once, this seems like a complete garbage rule. How would a hypothetical employee be disadvantaged by interviewing more than once? More offers only improves your position. If anything you would want the opposite - from both the employee and management side, interview with the person you'll actually be working with/for. Maybe there was a complaint that qualified people were being asked to interview by literally everyone, and it was a burden? Or maybe just one or two squeaky wheels complained about multiple interviews when they didn't get an offer? Or perhaps this somehow advantages current employees over outside hires, so the union endorsed it because it screws over people who aren't currently members?
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Jul 28, 2022 19:19
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Toshimo posted:It doesn't matter. The rules as written are immaterial to the process in place. I assume this comment is tongue in cheek? Because pointing out that someone made a lovely, incorrect interpretation of a labor agreement, and the interpretation is hamstringing the hiring process for no good reason, does not seem like tilting at windmills.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:31
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Dammerung posted:Oh thank goodness! Thank you. My bigger concern would be the status of the background check. You're right that it might not finish before you start, and if it's one of the tougher ones you really don't want to move and then get it yanked.
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Aug 4, 2022 20:02
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Endless Mike posted:How is moving policy people to the middle of nowhere a good thing? It's not. It was a blatant effort to clean house and remove the institutional knowledge and capabilities from the agency, to staff up with cronies and powerless feds that could be manipulated more easily by the politicals
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Sep 26, 2022 16:43
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SirPablo posted:Yes everyone that works for a federal agency in the DC area is a "policy" person. This was pre-pandemic Trump era when it was "Everyone in the agency currently living in the DC metro area, and commuting to DC, shall instead be required to move to Bumfuck, Midwest. If you don't, you are no longer employed." It was not "Remote work universally approved" which is an obvious good.
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Sep 26, 2022 21:15
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Dr. Quarex posted:How about a different kind of horrible topic instead of the usual: https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/pslf-limited-waiver quote:Use the PSLF Help Tool by Oct. 31, 2022, to generate a PSLF form that is eventually approved. ED will maintain a record if you complete all the steps of the PSLF Help Tool on or before Oct. 31, 2022, but you must still print, sign, have your employer(s) sign, and submit the PSLF form to MOHELA, the PSLF servicer. This pretty explicitly reads to me like if you're using their tool, and generate the form before 10/31, you can run around and get the signatures afterwards.
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Oct 15, 2022 03:20
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Star Man posted:There is a frightening amount of people who call the IRS that don't know what the word income means when I ask them if they had one last year when I have to run them through high risk authentication. To be fair, income isn't a word that they use in their daily life. And the clarification includes another word that they probably don't use in their daily life, "wages" as the magic word that's meant to clue them in. The guidance should probably have words in the vein of "Did you get paid regularly, for example with a paycheck or direct deposit" if many people answer this question incorrectly. But I'm sure the official script uses the regulatory language and that fight has already been lost several dozen times. Better to ask them the right question and get the wrong answer. This way it's all on your shoulders as the grunt answering phones.
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Oct 17, 2022 17:01
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El Mero Mero posted:that reminds me though that for folks who are looking this year, I always use this tool built by checkbook.org. It's $15 but worth it imo. (some agencies offer it for free to their employees too) A good time of year to make my annual pitch for NALC health insurance. It's the insurance that the National Association of Letter Carriers created, but it's open to anyone through FEHB. I think you have to pay like $70 a year for associate membership if you're not a letter carrier in the union, but it's really great value, if the network works for you. In my state they just piggyback off Cigna's network, I've never had a doctor be out-of-network. Diagnostic testing is all 100% through Labcorp & Quest, and the drug copays were a *lot* lower on some common big-ticket items like insulin. My theory is that letter carriers are a much healthier risk pool than average (because many of them have to walk huge distances, or at least be semi-active enough to drive a route) so the out of pocket costs stay low to meet the loss ratio requirements. Plus it's union-owned and -operated. https://www.nalchbp.org/
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Nov 3, 2022 03:59
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Dammerung posted:Tried to change my FEHB plan for open season only to find that I never got officially added to my current one. Life is an adventure. Hear that? The sound of your next insurer salivating over a member who went a year without using any benefits
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Nov 14, 2022 17:51
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TheMadMilkman posted:Now that we’re guaranteed back pay and I have enough saved up to cover a few months, I don’t mind the shutdowns at all. Yeah, if you're well-off enough to not worry about paying bills for the duration, furloughs are great. Dr. Quarex posted:My father already sent me a message concerned about how my job might fall through and I was like "USCIS cannot like fall victim to a government shutdown, the building would have to burn down or something at this point" Don't panic, but don't be surprised if a hiring schedule gets disrupted. Even if HR is essential, the HR work being done during a furlough is decidedly not business-as-usual. I'd also be curious about hiring authority to bring on new staff, even if current staff are deemed essential.
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Dec 5, 2022 06:52
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GD_American posted:SSA was essential so we had to be there in person to tell people that no, we can't print you benefit letters or take claims. Or order social security cards. No, I don't know why I'm here either. Yes, extremely pointless Probably Antideficiency Act-related, like everything else during a shutdown. Accepting a claim implies the government might pay for it. Printing a benefit letter implies the government will pay for things in the future. And the Antideficiency Act means that feds aren't allowed to incur obligations from the Federal government without authorization. If it went to court it might not actually get the Agency or individuals in trouble, but the Agency lawyers who write the policy are flying by the seats of their pants as much as we are, and better to be safe than sorry. 10 years ago in a planning meeting, someone probably (rightly) pointed out that it was an essential task to get money that was owed to people out the door, so the essential designation was (rightly) widely used at SSA. Then years later a shutdown looms, and they ask the new guy what all these essential employees are able to do, and they come up with the worst of all worlds.
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Dec 5, 2022 14:04
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Lucca Blight posted:When are we probably going into shutdown again? December 16th for an uncertain level of 'probably'
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Dec 6, 2022 15:40
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Dr. Quarex posted:The most fun part about living in the Midwest (and not in Chicago specifically) is that you get instructions to get your fingerprints taken digitally and there is only one approved location within 100 miles and the earliest appointment is in January and you have a 5 business day deadline When this happened to me, HR had me call up the credential office and say that it was for an executive appointment or some jazz and they gave me an appointment that wasn't published on their website. It's not the first rodeo for anyone involved. Government work is about politely pitting the immovable objects against each other without being caught in the middle.
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Dec 20, 2022 19:01
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Dial M for MURDER posted:I'm just going to put this out there, but if any fed goon is hiring in Europe (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands) to just save a bunch yourself a lot headache and hire me. It's like someone mashed up all the "Don't Do This" examples from an ethics Computer Based Training into a single sentence
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Dec 31, 2022 21:50
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