Master Class: Federal Resume Lab

OUR LEARNING LABS ARE A LITTLE DIFFERENT from our regular master classes. There are fewer slides and lots of personal interaction with you.

In our Federal Resume Lab, we worked only on federal resumes with all of our job candidates. Each participant offered either their current federal resume for review or a job listing from USAJOBS. Here are the Lessons Learned you can expect to see:

1. Be undeniably federal. Even though that two-page corporate resume does a similar job and contains much of the same information, corporate resumes won’t work for the federal government. Federal resumes are built differently and cannot be used interchangeably.
2. Don’t work ahead. Every federal resume is built as an argument that proves you are the best-suited candidate for the position. So, even though you would like to work ahead before a job listing comes out, it is a waste of time. Set up the alert and be ready to go when the listing appears.
3. Copy and paste from the questionnaire. But don’t copy and paste alone. Using the hidden questionnaire to identify the most essential skills is a great thing to do. But don’t copy and paste the entire listing into your resume as if that was your whole experience. You need to identify those skills first, then tell the story in the accompanying narrative paragraph using the STAR method you learned at TAP.
4. Results matter. The one thing I saw most often on federal resumes was a lack of results. It wasn’t that you did not have an impact at work—you did. You just aren’t listing them correctly. Watch our Undeniable Federal Resume master class to review
5. Use our resources. Find the Greenlight Worksheet and the Federal Resume Template linked below.
   1. Greenlight Worksheet
   2. Federal Resume Template