Uncle Sam Still Wants You
By Denise Gibbon
NYSBA Committee on Lawyers in Transition
During World Wars I and
II, the federal government published a poster where a frowning and
intent Uncle Sam pointed at the viewer and declared, “I want you
for the US Army.”
More than 60 years later,
Uncle Sam still wants us—over 46,601 of us to fill the world-wide
job openings in his bureaucracy.
Falling into more than 400 occupational specialties, the
federal government offers more career choices than any other employer in
the nation.
The official job site for
federal government employment is USAJOBS at www.usajobs.opm.gov. The home page is lively, jobseeker-friendly
and free. Even before
signing on for a user name and password, you can take a test drive by
identifying your preferred location, clicking on “Search
Jobs,” and browsing openings by agency, category, salary ranges or
job types.
Once you subscribe to the
Web site, you can deliver your resume by fax or
electronically. If you don’t have a resume, you can fill out a form that
serves as a job application. For the technophobic among us, USAJOBS even offers an automated
telephone system at (703)724-1850 as an alternative to the Web
site. The phone line
lists the same openings as the Web site and is available 24 hours a
day. Customer service
representatives are also available on weekdays. The TDD line for the
hearing impaired is (978)461-8404.
Federal jobs for
attorneys are plentiful because of the lawyer’s skill
set. For example, the
Web site home page leads you to a list — the “Top
Occupations in Demand” —of the fifty types of government
positions that are in the greatest demand. Although “attorneys”
or “lawyers” were not listed, there are numerous positions
that would utilize an attorney’s skills, e.g., “contract
specialists.”
Every job has a grade
identification — the General Schedule (“GS”) —
for categories of pay. The GS assigns one of fifteen grade levels to government
occupations and within each of those grade levels is ten
“steps.” Those of us with a law degree — a J.D.
or LL.B. — qualify for GS-9. A Ph.D. or advanced law degree
raises your level to GS-11. If you’ve never worked for the federal government, you
aren’t expected to have a GS level based on your prior
employment. When you
apply, though, expect to be asked to pick the highest grade you want or
qualify for. There are
more details about this on the USAJOBS Web site.
If you know what agency
you’re interested in, you might also pull up its agency Web
site. For example,
although there is a page for “Department of Justice Agency Search,
Career Opportunities” on USAJOBS, you can also go directly to the
DOJ Web site for job listings. There is a note on the DOJ site to the effect that the DOJ
posts all vacancies on USAJOBS. Nevertheless, anomalies do exist. The DOJ site had a link described
as “Attorneys for Iraq and
Afghanistan.” But when I performed a search on
USAJOBS for the same category, there were no matching
criteria.
Aside from job listings, it
might be worthwhile to research any given agency’s Web site for
more information about the agency itself.
The downside of applying
to Uncle Sam is that your resume and/or application must survive
detailed scrutiny. Rules are meant to be obeyed, especially where public
employment is concerned. There are several articles on the USAJOB Web site addressing
the how-to’s relevant to the application process in
general. However,
every job description also includes additional minutia about how to
apply to the particular agency and even information about how your
application will be evaluated.
In my research, I also
found a link to an article by Olivia Crosby entitled How to Get a Job in the Federal
Government (PDF). Published by the Occupational Outlook
Quarterly in the summer of 2004, I saw nothing
on either the USAJOB site or in the Occupational Outlook Quarterly Index to indicate that it was out-of-date.
Ms. Crosby offers 25
pages of facts about federal employment and numerous suggestions about
preparing the required documentation in a manner that will meet
government standards. Additionally, Ms. Crosby analyzes the individual
elements that constitute the “vacancy announcement”
describing the job opening. In these announcements, she writes, are clues about what the
agency expects from the applicant. Although the job listings on USAJOBS
probably overlap with much of Ms. Crosby’s advice, the astute
applicant might still glean some job-hunting gems from the Quarterly
article.
Some federal job openings
do find their way to private sector Web site in spite of the
thoroughness of USAJOBS. But if you suspect Uncle Sam really wants you, then you
want USAJOBS.
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