John, the seasonal Wildlife Biologist at the Forest Service at Sacramento Ranger Station forgot that he caught two New Mexico Jumping Mice in order to get them on the Engdangered Species List this season. By managing a team of wildlife technicians in managing the Jumping Mouse project, he proved certain Knowledge, Skills and Abilities for his federal resume. The KSAs for a Wildlife Biologist are: knowledge of biological practices, techniques and procedures; Teamwork; Data analysis and research; and writing. This example of the New Mexico Jumping Mouse capture would prove these KSAs in his resume and could help him get Best qualified and Referred if a permanent Wildlife Biologist would come up.
But John has never written about his specific wildlife biology or habit projects before. Until I came into the classroom and asked him to write about a project that he lead this season. As a federal career trainer, one of the biggest problems I have seen is the fact that the term or temp employees just can’t write a resume that describes their specialized experience, knowledge, skills or abilities or background enough to get Best Qualified when the position is offered as a permanent position. Therefore, they might stay a season or temp or term employee for 10 years or more. This is really sad because they do have the KSAs for a permermanent position, if the resume DID demonstrate the specialized experience and KSAs.
The turning point
I interviewed John about the New Mexico Jumping Mouse story when I was teaching federal resume writing at Sacramento Ranger Station in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. I had a class of Hot Shot Firefighters, Wildlife Technicians, and Trail Worker Technicians in the class. They have been dedicated to the Forest Service mission at Sacramento for up to 10 years – seasonal, temp or term! A temp or term position does not give the employee the year-round benefits or paycheck that could help that quality employee maintain their family or livelihood.
During our class, we started out with writing accomplishments. This is a typical active-learning lesson that I implement to get the class members thinking about special projects, problems and successes that they have achieved in their positions – within the last 5 years. I had them look at their resumes to find any accomplishments that are written in the resume, and almost nobody came up with anything written already.
New Mexico Jumping Mouse Accomplishment – Can help to get referred!
Then, I had the group write an accomplishment at their table and then share the accomplishment with small groups. Here’s a couple of accomplishments that I heard during this accomplishment freewriting lesson:
- Willis wrote about a project that he lead to catch the New Mexico Jumping Mouse. Here’s how it looked like after revisions:
Conducted research to help secure future of Environmental Species Act candidate New Mexico Jumping Mouse while serving as Lead Bilological Technican at the Lincoln National Forest. Developed original protocol to capture the mouse from a wetland, under deadline due to lawsuit over wetland water use. Lead team of four biologists, set out 200 traps, captured and studied two mice from this notoriously trap-shy species within two months. Gathered, analyzed and wrote reports on data, presented findings to community groups. Prepared final report for possibility of endangered species designation, determined suitable habitat for future conservation.
- John wrote about a trail building project that involved teamwork, safety lessons and meeting deadlines. Here’s how it looked like after revisions:
As Recreation Tech, led building of three-quarter mile trail near Sacramento Lake, New Mexico. Determined best location for trail, considering steepness of land, fallen debris and conditions of ground. Managed and ensured safety of five team of unskilled trail workers aged 15-to-18. Assigned tasks based on skills of team members, cleared debris, obtained building materials. Supervised installation of chipper materials and rock for trail laydown. Installed tables, fence and signs. Trail from parking area to picnic area was completed within two weeks and is now open for public use.
Both of the Forest Service workers admitted that they had never written about a project in their resume before. Both of the employees decided that they could write about projects there in the Sacramento District as part of their resumes.
We found keywords for their resume form the USAJOBS announcement and I taught them how to match a job announcement to their resume, including analyzing keywords from the KSAs and Specialized Experience and the duties section of the resume. When they analyzed their resumes against a target announcement they found that they had almost zero matches between the HR recruiter keywords and their resume keywords.
Do not deflate your questionnaire answers!
The class members learned about the Questionnaire Self-Assessment “Test”. They learned that they needed to give themselves all the credit possible for the questionnaire. I taught them how to not deflate their score, but to give credit based on experiences throughout all of their positions. The Questionnaire answers are scored automatically and are the first cut in terms of the qualifications for the position.
Do not upload your resume, copy and paste into the builder
And finally, another big change in their federal resume writing strategies was that they would copy and paste their resume into the USAJBSO builder, instead of uploading their private industry resume into the USAJOBS system. Some of the FS workers did not include months and years for each of their positions. In fact, one of the employees just wrote 2000 to present and described ONE position. They did not break out the positions by season with months and years. The HR specialist who is looking for one year specialized experience would not find the right information in this One Block work experience section.
Create a separate job block for each seasonal position, with months and years and duties/projects
This wildlife biologist will now have 6 Job Blocks, one for each season, describing the duties, projects, teamwork and responsibilities for each season’s work. The HR specialist will add up (literally with a calculator), the one year experience (52 weeks, 40 hours per week) of this work, and determine that he has the specialized experience for a certain grade level. The details of the Work History section for HR are critical to showing qualifications for a certain position and grade level.
The class was a total success and a turnaround for FS seasonal, temp and term workers who would like to apply for permanent positions with a more competitive federal resume.
Forest Service is moving from Avuecentral.com to USAStaffing
Another good news item is that the Forest Service will be moving to USAStaffing instead of the www.avuecentral.com system. The employees feel that the USAJOBS and applicationmanager.gov systems are easier than the former avuecnetral.com automated recruitment system.
