By Kathryn Troutman, Federal Career Coach™
President, Resume Place
October 25, 2018
Time to update your USAJOBS Profile!
When USAJOBS was down for four days last week Oct. 5 to 8, 2018, the programmers and web designers were busy updating the PROFILE section of USAJOBS. Go to your USAJOBS Profile and update your information. Take a look and update the new Resume section in the PROFILE. I believe that the changes were to make your resume and application more searchable for someone with your specialized experience, education, certification, keywords or hiring authorization.
NEW FEATURES OF THE USAJOBS PROFILE SECTION:
SURPRISE – NEW RESUME SECTION IN THE PROFILE – IN ADDITION TO THE RESUME / DOCUMENTS SECTION – This resume will be more searchable. Evidently this profile-version resume will be the searchable resume, instead of the resumes you uploaded from the Resume / Document section. You might have to copy and paste or type some content for your current position into the fields. USAJOBS might autofill some of your Work History. You might have to add education and other information. I don’t know how much the system will auto-fill based on your resume in the documents section.
NEW UNIQUE HIRING AUTHORITIES PAGE – WOW, this is WAY better. I was coaching with an Active Duty Title 32 Guardsman the other day. We went to this page and he had selected VETERAN. And when I was looking at his resume I saw that he was also: NATIONAL GUARD / RESERVES; 30% OR MORE DISABLED; STUDENT (he is a student); US CITIZEN. Four more Hiring Authorities were added to his Profile! That was so easy and so clear on the new Hiring Authority page. So, if they do SEARCH the system, they can find him many more times because of the Hiring Authorities now.
PROFILE PREFERENCE QUESTIONS: The questions are the same, but they look cleaner and simpler. Just review all of these to make sure they are correct.
NOT NEW – BUT WHILE YOU ARE IN USAJOBS …
REVIEW A FEW OTHER THINGS:
SAVED SEARCHES – review your Saved Searches to see if they are still good. You can probably tighten them up to the geographic region you are seeking, or the grade level, or occupational series. The Saved Searches can really help your job search, because the deadlines come and go so quickly. You need the ALERTS to stay on top of your federal job search.
RESUMES – review your documents to make sure they are the right resumes with the right names. Take down any documents that are out of date. It’s good to have both UPLOAD resume and BUILDER RESUME for different applications and agencies.
OTHER DOCUMENTS – review these documents also, to make sure they are really there, and they are correct.
AMAZING APPLICATION EXCEL REPORT – WHILE YOU ARE ON YOUR APPLICATION PAGE. Something on that page you probably have NEVER seen before – an Excel Document that will include ALL of your USAJOBS applications. The excel will include: date of the application; announcement number; title of position; grade level; occupational series; agency; RESULTS. Yes, results in one column. This is a VERY interesting Excel document of all of your USAJOBS applications. You can evaluate your job titles and results. You will probably see a lot of CANCELLED or INELIGIBLE or other depressing results, but still, it is good to look at the total report. This USAJOBS Application Report is awesome. Thank you USAJOBS programmers!
The Excel Report is GREAT for Troubleshooting your applications. Here at Resume Place, we do USAJOBS troubleshooting with this Excel Sheet. We can see in one column the job titles and grades. Jobseekers are supposed to apply to 1 to 3 occupational series in a job search campaign.
One federal resume for each occupational series is the rule! For instance, the following sets of three occupational series SHARE similar education requirements, Knowledge, Skills and Abilites, and maybe even similar accomplishments:
- Budget Analyst, Financial Analyst, and Accounting, 0500 series
- Human Resources Specialist, Organization Managemnet Specialist, Workforce Analyst, 0200 series
- Administrative Assistant, Program Support, Contact Representative; 0300 Series
- Inventory Supply Specialist, Supply Specialist, Logistics Management Specialist, 2000 Series
- Program Analyst, Managemnet Analyst, Budget Analyst, 0500 Series
- Contract Specialist, Procurement Analyst, Purchasing Officer, 1100 Series
- Police Officer, Investigative Analyst, Personnel Investigation Specialist, 0080 Series
BUT… what we see sometimes, is that the client is applying to GS 9 through GS 14, and to about 15 different job titles. And of course, the results are TERRIBLE. Because the resume needs to change for each occupational series. It’s a great report, whether it shows bad results or good results.
THIS IS ALL NEW: If you see anything else that is all-new. Write to me: [email protected] There could be hidden improvements in the online application system.
Good luck with your Profile Update!
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