Hello to everyone from beautiful Sarasota. This is the first time I have ever used a venue like this to communicate with other people; I think I might like this.
I wanted to take the time to introduce myself and give you some of my perspectives. First of all, my name is John Frazier and I have been with MilitaryStars for one week and I am loving life!! I spent 22 years in the Army and my last assignment was on the Army Staff at the Pentagon. After I retired I went to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a Human Resources Manager, with a focus on recruiting. Basically, what this means is that I have seen many, many resumes and applications for different types of jobs within the Federal Government. For the most part, the federal agencies now use online systems for candidates to apply for jobs.
This leads me to offer up a couple of pointers for candidates applying to these positions online. Basically, working at the DIA, I ran through at a bare minimum around 45 resumes per position I was looking to fill. Now, think about that for a second: your one resume was thrown into a pool of 45 others, and by simply looking over what you sent, I made a decision to keep your resume for further consideration, or to toss it out. I imagine most of you would probably want your resume in the ‘keeper’ pile, so here’s the biggest mistakes that I have seen when reviewing online applications. The areas of Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSAs) and your work history are by far the most important areas of the job application. When you provide your work history and answer the KSAs, GO INTO DETAIL.
For example, a KSA might ask, “Do you have work experience using DBASE?” If you were to answer this as, “I have 15 years experience using DBASE,” I would not be considering your application for the job. Write something that tells someone in my position what your experience actually was, not simply that you have XX years experience, but what types of tasks you performed and skills you learned in those years that subsequently qualifies you for the job.
Basically, it’s not the amount of time you have worked in a specific area, but what the work taught you to do and what skills you have now as a result of doing that work. Apply this thought to your online job applications and to your resume as well, and employers will give you a second look rather than just tossing your application and resume into the enormous heap of ‘on file’ applicants. This is all for now, but I am looking forward to having more discussions on this topic.
