GovCentral

For Jeffrey Zients, the chief performance officer at the Office of Management and Budget and long-time D.C. entrepreneur and businessman, his first job in the Federal Government offers an opportunity to cast this judgement on the process by which almost all civilian employees of the government are hired: "In my experience, the best talent doesn't loiter for five months," he told ...

Submitting a job application is an emotional investment. You spend hours reviewing your resume and KSA essay to make sure everything is worded correctly and accurately describes just how awesome you are. After you send it, you just know that the hiring manager is going to think your application is a masterpiece of accomplishment. Surely this application must be included into ...

KSAs are often a critical part of the Federal job application process, but most Federal job applicants are often confused about exactly what a KSA is. The information provided below provides a brief overview of KSAs and their part in the Federal hiring process. What does KSA mean? "KSA" is an abbreviation for knowledge, skills, and abilities. KSAs are attributes required ...

Whether you are a first-time job-seeker or you’re a veteran employee, it is important that you are cautious and thoughtful as you try to land your ideal job. There’s more to a successful job search than ironing your best suit and printing out extra resumes. Today's government agencies are looking for the best of the best; one typo on your resume ...

There is a lot of discussion about how government-sector jobs are more stable than others in our faltering economy and about how government hiring trends are predicted to be more resistant to the economic downturn than other sectors. Unfortunately, this doesn't do you a whole lot of good, if you've got no idea of where to start in order to get ...

Appointment of Postal Employees The United States Postal Service® is an independent establishment of the Executive Branch of the United States Government. It operates in a businesslike way. In the more than two centuries since USPS® began, it has grown and changed with America. Discovering the history of the Postal Service is a journey into the history of transportation, economics, industrialization, ...

Time flies when you're wasting it These days, no one can afford to waste time at work. Thanks to widespread downsizing, workloads are piling up. Unfortunately, extra hours in the day are not. Maximizing your time at work can mean the difference between leaving at a reasonable hour (i.e. holding onto your sanity) and staying late unnecessarily. You’ve got a ...

You're interested in working for the US government, but you're not exactly sure what to do first. Maybe you're having difficulty figuring out what type of government job would best match the skills that you have. What are the major branches of the Government? How many jobs are available? What agencies will be hiring rapidly over the next few years? Find ...

Are you considering transitioning from business to government? According to government human resource professionals, you'll need to watch where you step. A recent survey of senior public-sector HR executives conducted by us - Peter Daly and Michael Watkins, coauthors of The First 90 Days in Government: Critical Success Strategies for New Public Leaders at all Levels - found that in contrast ...

Did you know that by 2016, one-third (33.5 percent) of the total US workforce will be age 50 or older? In the government sector, this statistic is actually even higher; in fact, 44 percent of the current Government workforce will be eligible for retirement within the next five years. The AARP's 'Best Employers for Workers Over 50' is an annual program ...

The Cato Institute, a libertarian leaning think tank, suggests that the average federal worker is paid more than the average private-sector employee, especially when fringe benefits like health insurance and pensions are factored in. Nancy Folbre, Economics Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in a recent New York Times article, wanted to explore if there was any merit to these ...

The Importance of KSA’s (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities) in the Federal Application Process KSAs...Knowledge, Skills and Abilities...a list of special qualifications and personal attributes that you need to have for a particular job. These are the unique requirements that the hiring agency wants to find in the person selected to fill a particular job. A primary purpose of KSAs is to ...

The Veterans Recruitment Appointment (VRA) - The VRA is a special authority by which agencies can appoint an eligible veteran without competition. The VRA is an excepted appointment to a position that is otherwise in the competitive service. After 2 years of satisfactory service, the veteran is converted to a career-conditional appointment in the competitive service. (Note, however, that a veteran ...

A federal resume is a tool for gaining or advancing one’s career in the government arena. At its core, it is similar to the standard private sector resume. However key differences exist in the type and amount of information provided. Therefore, in order to be successful with federal employment, it is necessary to be mindful of these differences. Application Differences Unlike ...

If you are a first-time federal jobseeker, feeling desperate for a good, stable job, read this list of mistakes and avoid them. You will waste valuable job search time, energy and enthusiasm if you are doing it all wrong. In the current job market, it is better if you slow down, read the announcements for the qualifications, carefully review the questionnaires, ...

600,000 over three years. 273,000 deemed mission-critical. That's how many people the Partnership for Public Service projects the federal government will need to hire by 2012 to fill growing needs as well as replacing a baby-boomer workforce set to retire. These numbers and other hiring projections are listed just in time for some Labor Day reading in the third edition of ...

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One of the best part of serving in the Military is playing with cool toys. Newsweek has compiled some of the best and strangest ones in a photo gallery they call, ahem, Weapons Porn. Gadget blog, Gizmodo, has picked a favorite. It's the Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot aka the Care B.E.A.R. I think this would be appropriate to extract over-served interns during ...

Question: Washington, D.C.: Why does the government actively advertise jobs on their job site that are reserved for people within the agency? I am very tired of applying for jobs only to be told, months later, they have decided not to fill the position. I am told this is because the person they wanted to promote from within somehow didn't get ...

Earlier this year the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced it was moving with much vigor to scrap the part of the government hiring process that most individuals dread; the knowledge, skills and abilities, or KSAs, questionnaire. The KSAs are a series of questions that are answered in essay form by the applicant and then graded by reviewers. Obviously, the higher ...