Just fill it out and get on a hiring list! Hopefully, you too can avail yourself of all these bennies, that is, after you have been “put thru the paces,” up to and including `nine separate interviews,'” and, of course, a thorough background check. What will your neighbors say about you??
Oh, and uh, I forgot to mention the six-month to one-year “probationary period.” Only a fraction of the bennies will kick in before this period is over. During this time, your “future career” could be in the hands of a bureaucrat who has 1/10th of your education and experience, but by virtue of longetivity, connections, knowing too much (or all three of these), occupies the position as your “supervisor.” This is where you will find that whatever you thought you knew doesn’t matter. Hang in there, refrain from pointing your antlers towards anything resembling a headlight . . . and . . . chin DOWN!
Everybody’s got to pay their dues at one time or another. You’ll get through it :=)[/quote]
Ah, yes, BG, and your description of this seemingly endless, often demeaning, and frequently fruitless exercise does not include the dreaded KSAs. You can have postgraduate degrees with honors, years of progressively responsible and invaluable work experience, and glowing references from employers who availed themselves of a suicide hotline when you handed your resignation in to them. However, if you don’t deal with the KSAs in precisely worded responses, you’re SOL. Your application will never reach the hiring officer.
And keep in mind that it can take six to eight hours or more to apply for a low to mid-level administrative position in some agencies (you don’t even want to think of the time it can take for an top-level scientific job), not knowing whether or not there is an internal candidate to whom the job has already been promised. (This is one reason agencies like the FBI and CIA are accused of incompetence at times when their intelligence does not live up the the agency’s reputation: people who enter Federal service in low-level clerical and secretarial positions can apply for and receive preference for analyst positions by virtue of their seniority. It could be that one of the analysts charged with collecting pre-9/11 terrorist info was responsible for operating the copy machine, delivering the mail, or entering data in their position prior to that.)
However, this article *is* comparing apples to oranges, as others have observed. This is an extremely difficult, if not impossible, task. I’ll agree that low-skill, entry level positions probably pay better, but the “higher wages” earned by many Federal employees are quite often the product of years of seniority rather than the positions themselves. You used to see this quite often prior to the cutthroat 80s, when many corporations got wise to what was going on, and found ways to legally rid themselves of senior employees and replace them with inexperienced younger workers. Government employment is the last bastion of job security in the US, and its practitioners are well aware of that fact and seldom leave.
But when you get to the mid- and high-level positions (for which there is no internal candidate) that require significant work experience and advanced education, the pay is equal to, or quite often, significantly less than private sector. In addition, there are often huge salary ranges for these positions that depend not only on education and experience, but on your geographic location (cost-of-living adjustments). As for benefits, it really depends on what you’re used to. Again, private employers, in large part, have been “cheaping out” on benefits for years, offering fewer options that are frequently more costly to the employee. Many offer benefits to their low-level workers that fulfill their promises of “benefits” but that are far less generous to those offered to their management and executive employees. However, there are some blue-chip employers who offer lucrative benefits packages across the board that far outstrip what Federal employees receive.
It’s highly complex, and I don’t believe that the studies cited in the article have been analyzed and interpreted with anything remotely approaching skill by the reporters. That being said, I agree with flu: those who are outraged by the article should go get one of these jobs. Without a doubt, they are probably your best shot at job security these days, especially if you are unskilled and lack education. Just realize that it’s a long and frustrating process, and you’ll have no shortage of competition.
