I applied to one government job and the process was just onerous. It wasn’t a crazy job, mostly doing typical .NET web stuff in the context of a much more interesting non-tech domain. Didn’t pay well, but the work and location made it interesting enough to consider.
My initial issue was during the application, there were required fields for all sorts of data including making me enter Name/Phone Number for every boss I’ve had. Unfortunately I don’t have everyone’s phone number. There was warning about how knowingly putting in incorrect information would get your application thrown out. I figured though, that I wouldn’t get knocked for not knowing the Phone number of some guy I worked under years ago so I just entered a placeholder number.
My other issue is how inflexible and bureaucratic it felt. Before submitting the application it asked a series of yes or no questions. Usually along the lines of “do you have X years of experience in Y” most of which I could answer with “Yes”, except the last one which was a really explicit “do you have experience writing this specific type of web application in this specific industry”. I suppose I could have lied and said “Yes”, but then I’d just look like an idiot when it came to an interview. I answered “No”. Of course I can’t be sure, but given the rejection reason I received, I can imagine that that “No” got my application tossed out. Outside of that it seemed at least on paper that I was completely qualified.
I’m not sure how they’re going to fill that role. I can’t imagine the poll of people that have the exact intersection of domain skills they want is very large.
That experience really put me off on federal government work. With some of the salary ranges they have, compared to the sort of people they want, they seem to be choosing beggars. Maybe different agencies are better than others, but it seemed like the application process for federal civilian jobs was pretty well centralized. I’ll add a surprising number of the jobs I saw were not open to the general public.
My initial issue was during the application, there were required fields for all sorts of data including making me enter Name/Phone Number for every boss I’ve had. Unfortunately I don’t have everyone’s phone number. There was warning about how knowingly putting in incorrect information would get your application thrown out. I figured though, that I wouldn’t get knocked for not knowing the Phone number of some guy I worked under years ago so I just entered a placeholder number.
My other issue is how inflexible and bureaucratic it felt. Before submitting the application it asked a series of yes or no questions. Usually along the lines of “do you have X years of experience in Y” most of which I could answer with “Yes”, except the last one which was a really explicit “do you have experience writing this specific type of web application in this specific industry”. I suppose I could have lied and said “Yes”, but then I’d just look like an idiot when it came to an interview. I answered “No”. Of course I can’t be sure, but given the rejection reason I received, I can imagine that that “No” got my application tossed out. Outside of that it seemed at least on paper that I was completely qualified.
I’m not sure how they’re going to fill that role. I can’t imagine the poll of people that have the exact intersection of domain skills they want is very large.
That experience really put me off on federal government work. With some of the salary ranges they have, compared to the sort of people they want, they seem to be choosing beggars. Maybe different agencies are better than others, but it seemed like the application process for federal civilian jobs was pretty well centralized. I’ll add a surprising number of the jobs I saw were not open to the general public.