Accomplishments demonstrate your skills and experience. It’s one thing to claim you can do something — it’s another to prove you’ve done it.
When collecting accomplishments for a job search, consider the key areas of competency required for success in the position you are seeking. What are the key components of your job? You should be able to identify accomplishments directly related to this expertise.
Qualifications Review Boards (QRBs) are Office of Personnel Management (OPM)-administered independent boards consisting of senior executive service members who assess the executive core qualifications (ECQs) of SES candidates. All SES candidates must have their executive qualifications certified by an independent QRB before being appointed as career members of the SES. The QRB review and certification is the last critical step in the SES selection process. QRBs certify that an SES candidate possesses broad leadership skills and demonstrated experience in Leading Change, Leading People, Results Driven, Business Acumen, and Building Coalitions. The experience must be relatively recent and at the executive level (typically the grade 15 in federal service or equivalent private sector experience).
Before you get too excited, take a careful look at the announcement:
In late February, USAJOBS rolled out the first of many promised enhancements to improve the application process. The initial home page looks the same, but the application process has been reduced to 5 steps and the graphics and instructions are easier to follow. Additionally, you can save your progress on your application and return later without starting all over again.
You will still click the “apply online” button on the vacancy announcement to get started with your application; once you get to the application process you will see the five steps:
Step 1: Select Resume
Step 2: Select Documents
Step 3: Review Package
Step 4: Include Personal Info
Step 5: Review and Continue Application Process
As many of you know, LinkedIn is a social networking site targeted toward professionals. In just over 10 years, LinkedIn has grown to more than 300 million members in 200 countries; LinkedIn is available in 20 languages!
If you are searching for a position in the private sector, you definitely need a strong LinkedIn Profile. Recruiters use LinkedIn to search for potential applicants—thousands of recruiters from thousands of companies use LinkedIn as their ONLY source for candidates so as a job seeker, you are missing potential opportunities if you do not have a good profile. Even if you are targeting organizations who do not use LinkedIn to recruit, many hiring managers are looking at your LinkedIn Profile before deciding whether to interview you.
When most of us look at a federal job announcement, we tend to focus on the grade of job and not much else. However, if we want to be successful applicants, we need to spend a lot more time focusing on job announcements. Anyone considering applying for a federal job should pay special attention to each of these parts of the job announcement:
We’ll look at each of these in turn: