How to Find and Apply for a Government Job

The best way to apply for a federal job is to go to the website http://www.usajobs.com/ and sign up. One you have registered, you can post a resume and create job agents that will alert you via E-mail when a job matching your description crops up.

Some of the regions that are experiencing the largest growth in federal jobs are Washington DC and Jacksonville, Florida. Washington DC is experiencing job growth because it is the seat of government power and there is a lot of stimulus money being spent there.

Jacksonville is experiencing a lot of growth due to the housing crisis. There are a lot of foreclosures in the state of Florida and the treasury department needs a not of people to take care of the federal governments end of the foreclosure business.

Which department of government is in the most need of employees depends on which field you are going into. For instance, if you search for the word "clerk" in the USA Jobs search engine without specifying a location, you will find that the Department of Defense needs the most clerks and in particular the Army and Air Force could use someone with basic filing and typing skills.

Type in the word "programmer" and you will see that the Department of Veterans Affairs has the most open jobs.

For those who are not used to government nomenclature, the results of typing the world "general" and pushing the search button may come as a bit of a shock.

The word "general" is used very often when discussing government jobs and almost none of the general jobs involves a career soldier of very high rank.

Rather general is used as a term that encompasses several levels and types of job classifications. For instance, take the term "general engineer". Such a person might do anything from managing procurement contracts to writing specifications, or interpreting government regulations.

If for whatever reason you want to see a lot of jobs, search on the word "general."

The military needs many, many generalists. At the time of this search an estimated 10,000 generalists are needed for the Department of Defense, plus the Departments of the Air Force, Army, and Navy.

At the USA Jobs site you can take these thousands of jobs and break them down into categories at the push of a button. The lion's shares of generalists are needed in Engineering, Architecture, Management, Administration, Clerical, Office Services, Medical, Dental, and Public Health.

Pushing another button breaks these jobs down by salary. In the case of these 10000 jobs salaries range from $1 to over $100,000. But it appears that most of the jobs pay over $30,000 per year.

The job type button tells us that over 5,000 of these jobs are full time jobs.

To localize these jobs, use the Refine button to try major cities or known zip codes.

At this point it might be useful to figure out which state has the most jobs. For that, go to the tabs above the search text box and click on the tab that says Advanced search.

Now you can put the word "general" and try different states. Start with a large state, say California. Go down to the location list box, scroll down until you see CA, and then use the mouse to select it. Go down to the bottom of the advance search screen and push the Search button. The results show over 1,000 jobs in California. You can scroll through the jobs and pick the ones that are suitable.

Use the back button on your browser to go back to the search criteria. Change the search location to DC and push the search button. About 1,000 jobs show again. Change to Texas and you get about 1,000 jobs once more. It looks like they tried to spread that stimulus money out across the nation so that everyone could get a slice.

Now let's look at applying for a specific job. Let's say we are interested in applying for a job as a General Engineer/Physical Scientist (SFPD) in Ventura County California. The job pays $127,000 per year at the lowest scale.

You can use the tabs to examine the job qualifications and application procedures. At the bottom of the Overview page on this particular job you will see a button that allows you to apply on-line. Applying for government jobs can take a lot of paper work and lot of faxing or mailing. Applying on line when that option is available is much preferable to all of that paperwork.

When you push the button to apply for the job you will be asked to create an account or to login using your existing account. If you have an existing resume you may select it and use it to apply for the job. In this case you are taken to a Department of Energy website to complete the application.

All major departments of the government have their own website. The Navy for instance allows you to apply once and you may be considered for new jobs that come up that you are qualified for. Most of the other departments require that you apply for each individual job.

Applying for a government job is actually simpler if you have never had a government job of any kind. They will ask you a whole lot of questions about whether or not you are a military veteran or a former government employee. If you have never had either kind of position then pick "Not Applicable" or "No" to all those government only questions.

If you are going to claim that you have special skills or experience, it is best to create a long detailed narrative, and check it for spelling and grammar errors before you even begin applying for a job. You will need specific instances in which you used specific skills. For instance "Used 2005 SSIS Business Intelligence to create a package that automatically extracted data from Microsoft Excel Files and inserted the transformed Excel data into SQL Server Tables."

The higher the position you apply for the more you will be asked if you can cite instances in which you managed people, interpreted regulations, wrote reports and explained what you were doing to government officials.

There are some basic documents you will want to have on hand before you begin applying for a government job. If you have ever been in the military then you will want to have a copy of your honorable discharge papers, known as a DD 214. You will be asked to fax or mail a copy of that to the agency you are applying to.

If you have ever been a in any kind of military or government service then you will want to have records of the dates you were working for the government and the ranks or pay grades you achieved. If you had any kind of special government clearances, buy outs, or a special government job or dispensation of any kind you will want to have records of that handy to refer to when filling out a job application.

Whether or not you worked for the government before it is wise to have copies of college and graduate school transcripts and graduation certificates handy when filling out a job application. Any special certificates or documents that indicate you have had special training could also be helpful when you are filling out job applications. A copy of your best resume can help so that you can easily copy over any relevant information into the government forms. And of course you should have your resume in electronic form in case you are asked to post it or print it out and mail it or fax it.

Start filling out your government job application as soon as possible. The government process of reviewing applications and interviews can take several weeks if not months so don't count on getting a government job quickly.