Federal Employment Services by Associated Resume Writers

Excerpted from "The Paper Dinosaur"
By Tom Kell, former public affairs specialist at the Office of Personnel Management for 23 years.

For more than a quarter century, Standard Form 171 reigned supreme. It was the federal government's universal job application form, aptitude test, initiation ceremony and career passport all rolled into one. . . In June 1994, OPM announced that the SF-171 had become a dinosaur; effective Jan. 1, 1995, it would officially start sinking into the tar. Federal agencies no longer would print and stock the forms, nor would federal job applicants be required to submit them. In fact, OPM may have begun the process-but it hadn't actually happened yet.

SF-171, OF-612, or Resume?
Although federal agencies no longer can require applicants to submit SF-171s, they can permit them to do so. Agencies also can permit applicants to use a new form, the Optional Form 612, or a resume. The OF-612 is much shorter than the SF-171 and is intended to be tailored by the applicant specifically to the position. It retains the structure of the old form for those reluctant to leap all the way to resume. But "resume" in federal personnel parlance is not as formless as it may seem. There are rules, which are set out in another OPM document, OF-510, "Applying for a Federal Job," a pamphlet that devotes two of its three inside panels to what your resume or application must contain. Items that federal resumes must contain, which many private-sector resumes probably don't, include (but are by no means limited to) Social Security number, citizenship, veterans preference, highest federal civilian grade, and high school name, city, state (and ZIP code, if you know it). The OF-510 is distributed with every federal vacancy announcement. It's available in every agency personnel office, on OPM's World Wide Web site at www.usajobs.opm.gov, and on other automated federal job information systems.

We recommend the OF-612 up to a GS-6 level, . . . But the form's 12 lines, even with a continuation page, are not enough to demonstrate a candidate's qualifications for a higher-level position. . . Justice Department employee Tracy Sharpe-Rice, who rates and ranks applications for positions up to GS-12, prefers the SF-171 as well. "When people do the resume, they do it like they're doing it for private industry, and it's so scanty," she says. She sometimes has to tell applicants who might have been qualified that she has found them ineligible. When they protest that they do, in fact, have the experience required, she has to say she's sorry. "I don't know you personally," she tells them. "I can only go by what you wrote."

Bill Hutch, a manager at the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, for example, has seen resumes that fail to provide the basic information he needs. "To write me a two-pager and say 'additional information available on request' is just not good enough," he says. "You have to give me enough information that I feel I need to talk to you."

OPM's Dick Whitford . . . says the SF-171 is too cumbersome. But unless a resume is written to meet the requirements spelled out in the OF-510, he says, it's likely to provide insufficient information for a personnel or hiring official.

From Whitford's perspective, the road ahead leads to increasing automation. But only a few others see it quite so clearly.

Paul Maraschiello of Associated Resume Writers, a Washington-area resume writing firm, says personnel offices eventually will scan job applications. Maraschiello is an unabashed advocate of the federal resume. "Anybody who submits a 612 is almost guaranteed to be disqualified," he says. "You put that 11 lines of text up against a 37-page SF-171 or a 20-page federal resume and you've lost, no matter what you've put in those 11 lines."

Application-preparation professionals say their services go beyond mere typing. A basic application package consisting of a resume, SF-612 or SF-171 with a cover letter and a limited number of "KSA's" (descriptions of the applicant's job-related knowledge, skills and abilities) typically run in the low hundreds of dollars. The cost goes up for more writing or consultation with the client. Executive-level job applications that require extensive documentation of the applicant's executive qualifications cost the most.

AVAILABLE ASSISTANCE
We can provide a full range of services, from developing winning Federal resumes, and answering ECQs, KSA's, and technical Questions to providing job search assistance, as well as counseling. For select clients we even provide a MONEY BACK GUARANTEE! Associated Resume Writers is located at 262-M Cedar Lane, Suite 2,Vienna, Virginia 22180. (703) 208-9770. E-Mail jobs@fedjobs.org