When you’re young and the world is seemingly your oyster, going to a job fair sounds like a no-brainer. A bunch of agencies looking to hire? And all in the same place? As long as you bring enough copies of your resume and pass them out to everyone, you’re certain to get a callback. Right? Not necessarily. Without the right approach, ...

The nation's unemployment rate stayed flat at 9.5 percent -- with private hiring unable to outweigh government layoffs. The number of government workers dipped by 202,000 -- mostly the loss of 143,000 paychecks as temporary employees hired to conduct the decennial census wrapped up their work. Meantime, private payrolls inched up by 71,000 people, according to the Labor Department. Unemployment, which ...

Group interviews are relatively easy if you work well in a team and are able to make your ideas heard in a crowd. However, they can be challenging if you have a quieter personality and prefer to keep to yourself. Regardless of how you feel about group interviews, there’s no reason you should treat them any different, in most respects, than ...

Under ordinary circumstances, it would be socially awkward at best to inquire about how much money someone makes. It's simply not a topic for polite conversation. Unless, of course, you work in an environment in which salary data is a matter of public record--as it is in government. The leaders of Bell, Calif., learned that the hard way this month when ...

Since the BP (NYSE:BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill on April 20, the American government has deployed 17,500 National Guard troops to respond to the environmental crisis. Over 484 miles of shoreline have been impacted, and 81,181 square miles of Gulf of Mexico waters have been closed to fishing. Many are wondering if, with stronger regulations, the incident could have been prevented. ...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced a program Thursday in which its workers can receive college credit from the online American Public University and receive a tuition discount from the school. The company also said it will commit $50 million over three years to help workers pay for books and tuition above the reduced tuition rate. After the reduction, ...

The workplace can be a political minefield. While you may all work as a team, you're all most concerned with your own job,right? How your bosses see you can determine a raise, a promotion — or even if you keep your job. Navigating office politics is not an easy task, but avoiding potentially negative situations should be your first priority. If ...

The alarm goes off at 5:30 am, and you could swear you went to sleep five minutes ago. First a quick shower, followed by the finishing touches on that homework assignment due tonight over coffee and breakfast — if there’s time. Then it’s off to work, a solid eight-plus hours of time where you’re busy with reports, meetings and other assorted ...

Why isn't our government doing more to put people back to work? Mass unemployment is a human and national calamity. It destroys families, crushes hopes. The longer it lasts, the more it cripples economic recovery and undermines democracy. Nearly 27 million Americans are unemployed or can't find more than part-time work. Yet legislators are reacting to this reality somewhat like the ...

WASHINGTON, DC - If you think the word "intern" refers just to the legions of eager young folks who descend on Washington each summer, providing cheap labor by day and guzzling beer at night, think again. When Uncle Sam talks about interns, he might mean the college students who get a few months of valuable on-the-job experience, but he also could ...

Eliminating Saturday mail delivery could save the U.S. Postal Service $5.1 billion annually by 2020, most of which would come from lower personnel costs, agency officials said on Monday. In the face of declining mail volume and a 10-year, $238 billion budget deficit, the Postal Service is proposing to reduce mail delivery days from six to five. The move would eliminate ...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- In a letter posted on the Internet, the software engineer who slammed his plane into an office building housing federal tax employees Thursday expressed his anger at the government, specifically the Internal Revenue Service. A U.S. law official says investigators are looking at an anti-government message on the Web linked to Joseph Stack. By Thursday afternoon, ...

A gunman fatally shot one federal employee and wounded another at a Las Vegas federal courthouse before being killed by U.S. marshals on Monday morning. The victims were a court security officer and a deputy U.S. marshal, who was listed in stable condition. "I can receive no news more grim or sobering than word of a line-of-duty death or injury to ...

This report is the first in a three-part series. WASHINGTON (AP) - Nobody wants to buy them a beer. Even near military bases, female veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't often offered a drink on the house as a welcome home. More than 230,000 American women have fought in those recent wars and at least 120 have died doing ...

Want to help the federal government save some money? Make sure to vote Thursday in a contest designed to help Uncle Sam cut costs. The winner gets a face-to-face meeting with President Obama before Christmas, and the winning idea will be included in his 2011 budget. The Office of Management and Budget launched the SAVE Award in September, an effort to ...

Federal employees saved more money between March and September than the general population, according to a new survey from a financial firm. On average, fed workers contributed $2,289 per month to their savings -- either through short-term, long-term or retirement savings accounts -- during the six-month period studied by First Command Financial Services, a firm that serves military and public sector ...

The Obama administration will propose that the federal government take over safety regulation of the nation's subway and light-rail systems, responding to what it says is haphazard and ineffective oversight by state agencies. Under the proposal, the U.S. Department of Transportation would do for transit what it does for airlines and Amtrak: set and enforce federal regulations to ensure that millions ...

An independent engineers union at the Tennessee Valley Authority voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to affiliate with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. The Engineering Association, which represents scientists, engineers, technicians and other white-collar workers at TVA, voted 856 to 88 in favor of joining IFPTE. The association approached IFPTE after an internal deliberation about whether to join a larger ...

The U.S. Postal Service must look for new ways to generate revenue beyond simply reducing its workforce, said lawmakers and witnesses during a House hearing on Thursday. Employee layoffs are not the only solution to digging the agency out of debt, said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform's federal workforce subcommittee. "It would be a ...

Since he arrived at the Office of Personnel Management in April, Director John Berry has been an active advocate for federal charitable giving. The summer-long Feds Feed Families canned food drive collected more than 1 million pounds of goods for food banks nationwide, and Berry is confident that federal employees of all ages also will deliver for the 2009 Combined Federal ...