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Career help is within the click of a mouse
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Career help is within the click of a mouse
By LILY WHITEMAN
September 28, 2008
Instead of squandering your next Internet surfing session on aimless cyberwandering, mouse on over to Web sites that provide free, savvy career advice for feds:
• www.federalnewsradio.com. Federal News Radio — at 1500 AM on the dial in Washington — has a new weekly hourlong show on federal careers, Fed Access. It airs Thursdays at noon Eastern time and is archived at federalnewsradio.com/?nid=453. The show is hosted by Derrick Dortch, president of the Diversa Group and a career counselor specializing in federal careers and security clearances.
• www.washingtonpost.com. Dortch also hosts an hourlong online chat about federal careers on the first Wednesday of every month at 11 a.m. Eastern. To access an archive of the chats, click on the site’s Jobs tab; then on “Get Expert Advice.”
• The Web sites of professional organizations for feds. Join these organizations even if your city doesn’t have a chapter. Organizations’ Web sites and newsletters are likely to announce conferences, training opportunities and other events that you may want to attend. They also may invite applications for career-boosting awards that you may be eligible to win; discuss innovations that will help you stay current in your field; mention luminaries in your field that you may want to contact for trouble-shooting advice, informational interviews or job leads; and announce job openings that you would otherwise not learn about.
In addition, many professional organizations sponsor electronic mailing lists that enable you to interact with other professionals in your field and solicit advice from a distance. What’s more, when you are job hunting, you may want to use organizations’ electronic mailing to announce your availability and circulate your résumé.
If you are a GS-14 or GS-15 aiming for the Senior Executive Service, apply to join the Senior Executives Association at www.seniorexecs.org. By doing so, you will probably generate contacts and insights that will help you land an SES job.
Even many active professional organizations for feds are not well advertised. So ask your colleagues and managers for leads on organizations that would be appropriate for you.
• www.feb.gov. The Federal Executive Boards site has hyperlinks to boards in cities nationwide. FEBs frequently offer resources similar to those offered by professional organizations.
• www.usa.gov. This Web site has an A-to-Z index of agency Web sites. Regularly check the career section of the site of each of your target agencies for openings; contact managers in your target offices for informational interviews; and review the press releases of any agency that invites you for an interview.
• www.govloop.org. This new, fast-growing social networking site is run by Steve Ressler, a federal information technology program manager and a co-founder of Young Government Leaders.
• www.federaltimes.com. Click on the Career Information tab to read Federal Times articles on career issues.
Speaking of computer resources, did you know that Microsoft Word has built-in résumé templates and a résumé wizard for creating eye-catching hard-copy résumés? To find these resources, open a Word file, click on “New” under the File tab, then click on “General Templates,” then “Other Documents.”
To access more résumé templates from Microsoft’s Office Online Web site, again open a Word file, click on “New,” then click on “Templates on Microsoft.com.”
Whenever you e-mail your hard-copy résumé, send it as a PDF attachment so that its formatting won’t get fouled up during its electronic journey. Quickly convert documents into PDFs at www.pdfonline.com/convert_pdf.asp.
Lily Whiteman is author of “How to Land a Top-Paying Federal Job.’’ She is a public affairs officer at the National Science Foundation. Her Web site is IGotTheJob .net.
