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To get my first postcollege job, at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), I talked my way into a management-training program by convincing the interviewer to take on a liberal arts major as an experiment. Every trainee who had ever been hired prior to that had some fancy degree in chemical engineering, material sciences or something technical like that. There was no way ...

The government is a great place to work right out of college - great benefits (especially nice when you aren't on your parents' tab anymore), awesome hours, and lots of holidays. And here's what your parents are going to love hearing: job security. But launching a career in government work can be a difficult thing, for many reasons. Many applicants are ...

NSPS is the Department of Defense’s (DoD) flexible and responsive civilian management system that: • Values performance and contribution • Encourages communication • Supports broader skill development • Promotes excellence in the workplace NSPS is a modernization of a 50-year-old civil service system, designed to allow DoD increased ability in attracting, recruiting, retaining, compensating, and rewarding employees. "The system focuses on ...

Friendship grows from the quality of time two people spend together, not the quantity. There is a common misconception that to build a bond, two people need to meet often and for long stretches. This is not the case. Outside your family and work, you probably can count the people you see frequently in the course of a month on two ...

The Senior Executive Service (SES) is comprised of the men and women charged with leading the continuing transformation of government. These leaders possess well-honed executive skills and share a broad perspective of government and a public service commitment which is grounded in the Constitution. The keystone of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, the SES was designed to be a ...

Just as people lose weight more effectively with a workout partner or earn higher grades if they study in groups, your efforts to build great relationships for your career and life will be much more successful if you team up. Get yourself a buddy or two - or more - and try these four ways you can enhance your success together. ...

A conference is a huge opportunity to build relationships with extraordinary people -- people who might have a significant impact on your professional or personal success. To make sure you maximize the return on your (or your organization's) investment of time and money to attend, you can't afford to be a conference commoner. You have to be a conference commando. Here ...

This is one of those tricks of the networking trade that may not seem big, but boy, can it come in handy. If you have any writing skills -- and yes, the good news is we all have some level of skill -- you can get close to almost anyone by doing a piece on them or with them, even if ...

Networking to find a job is not only recommended - it is critical. It is well noted by experts that most people find their job through referrals and personal contacts. Vanderbilt University's Career Center cited that 80% of seniors find jobs and internships through their network, while 20% find them through recruiters or job search engines. Sometimes the government workplace seems ...

Less than two weeks after his inauguration, President Obama signed a little-noticed executive order that could dramatically change how federal contractors staff their government projects. The Jan. 30 directive requires service providers that win follow-on contracts to offer jobs to nonmanagerial employees at the previous company. No positions can be advertised until former employees have been granted the right of first ...

Agency Information Gateway Doing your research? Here's a one-stop shop for information on government agencies with student employment opportunities. Studentjobs.gov has collected exclusive profile articles, as well as links to agency home pages and student employment information pages. Agency/ Office Profile Article Web Site Employment Information Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts N/A www.uscourts.gov Employment Information U.S. Air Force Article ...

What will the Obama administration do to ensure development of a strong, skills-based federal workforce? Given the country's financial meltdown, ballooning deficits, deepening housing crisis and on-going national security challenges, this is a critical question to answer in coming months. Agencies must take a strategic, multifaceted approach to human capital planning. This means considering requirements across the spectrum, starting with workforce ...

President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan will create a number of relatively high-paying jobs for workers in construction, alternative energy, education and healthcare. While the best-paying jobs in those fields typically require at least a four-year degree, you can move into some well-paying stimulus-related jobs after spending half that time in college or training, according to Laurence Shatkin, author of Great ...

Federal agencies fill job openings like the private industry: most agencies are responsible for their own hiring actions, and often deploy "hiring sprees" in order to fill a large number of essential positions rapidly. Important tip for federal job seekers: keep on track of the agencies that hire the most, and what positions they are hiring for. Since the federal government ...

Another convenient stereotype attached to all things related to the Federal Government is the notion that somehow, all those billions of dollars spent annually still result in technology that is "behind the curve". Several years ago, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, sponsored the DARPA Urban Challenge, to spur college students, inventors, and industry to develop autonomous robotic vehicles for ...

It is a dangerous world out there, where threats -- both manmade and natural -- are predictably unpredictable. We cannot always find answers in an off-the-shelf toolbox. That is the thinking here in the Homeland Security Department's Science and Technology Directorate, where we spend a small portion of our research and development (R&D) budget on high-risk, high-payoff ideas. [photo:115463] Each ...

The U.S. military is looking for a few good geeks. "This building will be attacked 3 million times today," announces the commentator as the Pentagon appears on an ad available on the popular video site YouTube. "Who is going to protect it? Meet Staff Sergeant Lee Jones, Air Force Cyber Command, a member of America's only cyber command protecting us from ...

Welcome to GovCentral, an independently run hub for the civilian government community. h3. Who are we? We're not simply an anonymous job board, not an index of government agencies and contact information, but something new and different: a place where your lifelong career needs come home to roost. Whether you're considering a career in government work for the first time, or ...

Between the possibility of getting a job in the Obama administration as either a political appointee or a civil servant, there is now – FINALLY – great interest and excitement among the general public about federal employment. Just in time. With baby boomers retiring (while some are staying to save up for all that they have lost recently in retirement), the ...

A survey of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission employees suggests that morale is decreasing as the agency's workload is reaching record levels. Respondents to a January survey conducted by the American Federation of Government Employees Council 216, which represents EEOC workers, said they needed more support to deal with a rising pile of employment discrimination claims. The union posted the survey on ...