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Saw a librarian's resume workshop at the public library in Austin
I popped into the downtown Austin library last Thursday. They had a free session on writing a federal resume. The lady running it broke down the KSAs and how to match keywords from job postings. She said 90% of apps get filtered before anyone reads them. Has anyone here actually landed a government job using that format?
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shane75127d ago
lol I gotta push back a little on the "copy and pasting phrases" thing, cause that can actually backfire if you're not careful. The lady at the workshop said the screening software looks for exact matches but it also flags stuff that looks like keyword stuffing. She showed us an example where someone literally copied a whole sentence from the posting and the reviewer marked it as "generic filler" because it didn't match how the person actually wrote their own experience. The trick is to rewrite the phrases in your own words but keep the same key nouns and verbs. Like if the posting says "managed inventory systems" you'd say something like "oversaw inventory tracking for 500+ items daily" instead of just pasting "managed inventory systems" word for word.
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The trick with federal resumes is you gotta be painfully specific. I spent two days rewriting mine to match the exact language from the job posting, like literally copy and pasting phrases from the "duties" section into my experience bullets. Then I had a buddy who works at USAJobs look it over and he told me to kill any fluff and add more numbers like "processed 200 applications per week." Did that and got a referral within a month, first time trying. The KSAs are brutal but once you crack the code it's just a game of matching words.
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