The Obama administration unveiled a major overhaul of the federal hiring process on Tuesday, the Office of Personnel Management announced. The hiring reform memorandum will ask agencies to do away with hand-graded knowledge, skills and abilities essays by Nov. 1, at least in the early stages of the hiring process, Jeri Buchholz, associate director for human resources operations and policy at ...

WASHINGTON - As President Obama rolls out one of the most ambitious agendas in US history, federal agencies are struggling to administer hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of new projects and to enact sweeping policy changes with a mere handful of senior staff members in place, in part due to an increasingly tough vetting policy initiated by Obama himself. Only ...

Lindsey Vonn: Don’t Stop When it Starts to Hurt Lindsey Vonn is the first American woman to win a gold medal in the Olympic downhill skiing. A contender in Torino in 2006, Vonn suffered a terrible crash that sent her to the hospital. She left with pain arching through her legs and back but still competed in five events. She didn’t ...

Before you apply for a federal job, you have to learn a new language: Government-speak. For a quick lesson, we turned to Monster Federal Career Coach and Gov't/Public Service Careers message board expert Kathryn Troutman. Start with the announcement title, because in government, even fairly straightforward jobs are given confusing titles. For example, I just read an announcement for a "contact ...

In 2002, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that the US economy will have created more than 21 million new government jobs by 2012. Here at GovCentral, we want to determine whether the BLS predicted government sector job growth accurately or not. If the trajectory of government job growth hasn't been hitting the milestones forecast by the labor statistics, which industries ...

Interested in studying abroad? ...Serving your Country? The National Security Education Program (NSEP) was created to strengthen our nation's economic competitiveness and enhance international cooperation in areas affecting the United States. The NSEP produces an exceptional pool of applicants for work in Federal departments and agencies. BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The NSEP awards scholarships and fellowships through an annual competition of college ...

Being president of the United States is the toughest job in the world, and running for president is the second toughest. Current and former candidates like Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama spend years gearing up for this ultimate job competition. As a job hunter, you can learn from both their successes and gaffes. Here are five lessons right from ...

If Government 2.0 is truly right around the corner, what will it look like? Which forms of media will the government use in the future? Which are pipe dreams? This reference guide collects government 2.0 resources. (Wait...what is Government 2.0 again?) The Collaboration Project - an independent forum of leaders committed to leveraging the interactive web and the benefits of collaborative ...

You can tick off a list of federal project failures from the FBI's Virtual Case File to the Homeland Security Department's E-Merge program that dot the history of acquisition. Add to that the famous examples such as the $500 hammer and the $1,000 toilet seat, and you can see how the perception that the government can't buy economically even if the ...

AmeriCorps — A National Corps of Capable, Committed Individuals AmeriCorps is a network of local, state, and national service programs that connects more than 70,000 Americans each year in intensive service to meet our country's critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. AmeriCorps members serve with more than 3,000 nonprofits, public agencies, and faith-based and community organizations. Since ...

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 landscape for job seekers today is more treacherous than at any other time in recent memory. In other words, if you want a job today, the hard work starts when you prepare for the interview. That means not just nailing the questions you are asked, but actually asking the kinds of questions designed to make the interviewer sit up and ...

As a member of the National Guard, you’ve worked in Iraq under tremendous pressure, performed the highest level of teamwork, ensured safety on the ground, and worked in complex international environments. And, with this military experience, you can add at least five points to your federal application scores. This can help you rise above some of the competition. The benefits with ...

Finding a new government job is not going to get any easier until the Administrative Transition has taken place. Even then, we should not expect a new dawn to sweet away America's difficult economic situation on January 1st, 2009. These things take time. Want my advice? Don't wait with your fingers crossed. Stay laser-focused on your job search now, and keep ...

Government resources for small business owners have long existed, but they are often poorly understood and underutilized. Several outreach efforts currently under way, some public and some privately funded, aim to change that. One of the new programs is the community forum quietly opened last week by the U.S. Small Business Administration's Business Gateway Program. Hosted on Business.gov, the http://communities.business.gov/bsng, is ...

All sorts of people use the Department of Labor (DOL) Web site. Here is a list of pages that workers, students, employers, and our other customers are going to most frequently. -Occupational Outlook Handbook -Consumer Price Index (Statistics) -Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment and Unemployment Data -State Minimum Wage Laws [widget:10_steps_to_a_government_job] -Compliance Assistance: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) -Find It ...

Most job seekers already know the importance of networking. Whether from formal professional networking groups or casual friend-of-a-friend connections, 60 percent will find a job through networking. Other savvy professionals use their networks for finding answers, advice or leads. Whatever you're trying to do, there are some simple steps you can take to get the most out of Monster Networking. Be ...

Last week in Washington at the Center for Government Leadership, the Partnership for Public Service trained nearly 190 federal leaders from more than two dozen agencies on business acumen. Two questions this week come from federal managers. Please continue sharing your ideas and questions by emailing me at fedcoach@ourpublicservice.org. How can I engage an unmotivated employee? --Federal manager (GS-14), Small Business ...

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 ...

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 ...