Navigating the federal career maze

During my time at Penn, I’ve noticed that there’s an increasing interest in government careers.  The number of College undergrads who succeeded in finding a job in the government after they graduate nearly doubled from 2008 to 2009.

It’s fantastic that Penn students are getting jobs in the public sector but I know that finding federal job postings can be a bit of a mystery.  Everyone knows about USAJobs, but most college students actually get their jobs by applying directly to the federal agencies and into one of their student programs and by networking, just like people do in the private sector.

That means you have to do thorough research of opportunities that interest you.  For instance, if you’re looking to work abroad, don’t just apply to the State Department, but also include other agencies that have an interest internationally, including the Department of Agriculture, U.S. Agency for International Development, and the International Trade Administration.

Here are a few websites that I’ve found useful for researching federal agencies and opportunities beyond the usual suspects:

(1)  In the Partnership for Public Service’s Federal Careers by Field of Interest guides, you can find by major or career field lists of federal agencies hiring in those fields, top position titles, sample internships and jobs, and geographic distribution of those jobs.  This is how I find out that the Department of Defense is the biggest federal provider of communications positions and that you have to search for public affairs specialists if you’re look for a PR job in the government.

(2)  To find federal agencies located near where you want to live, try the new www.google.com/unclesam, the good old blue pages of the phone book, and the local Federal Executive Board‘s agency lists.  When I typed “San Diego psychology positions” into www.google.com/unclesam, a bunch of jobs for psychology graduates in San Diego area federal agencies appeared in the search results.

(3)   If you like numbers and can tolerate a less friendly interface, you also might like using Fedscope to research which federal agencies are located in your state and what and how many positions they have in your field.  When you’re on this website, click on employment and the most recent data (month/year) to access a wealth of federal employment data.

    Our wisdom on this topic is kept on the Career Services’ Make an Impact resource website. Check it out. And please share your tips with us in the comments section.

    Contest: Name Our Blog!

    We want YOU to help us name our blog! As you can see, our staff has been working hard to create interesting content, but the blog needs a makeover.  We are envious of creative blog names here at Penn like Under the Button, Quakers and Shakers, and Tripping Franklins, so we turn to you for help!  Entering is so easy, even a Princeton student could do it (but actually they can’t…the contest is ONLY open to Penn students, alumni, faculty and staff).

    How to enter:

    Just post your suggestion as a reply to this post using your Penn-affiliated email address. There is a limit of one entry per person, so give it some thought before submitting.  We will create a new logo based on the new blog title, so bonus points to those of you who suggest how your title could be translated into a graphic.

    We will be accepting entries until Friday, January 29th  (so you have two weeks…but if someone takes your creative idea before you submit, the prize will go to them).  And speaking of prizes, the winner will get a $25 iTunes gift card and their blog name in lights. Or, at least at the header of our blog.  We’ll announce the winner and new title here on the blog in mid-February.

    Good Luck!

    *Penn Career Services reserves the right to make the final decision on the new blog title, including selection of a title not proposed via this contest.

    Who’s on Your List…of References?

    By: David Ross

    Now that you may be working on submitting internship or job applications, consider identifying a list of references. As part of the application process, companies often request candidates to submit a list of individuals they can contact to learn more about you. Before you find yourself in a situation where you are indeed asked for a list of references, be sure to think of those people who know you well and can vouch for your capabilities.

    I would recommend devising a list of 3 – 5 individuals initially. Once you have identified possible recommenders, be sure to contact them and ask if they would be willing to serve as a recommender on your behalf (remember, proper etiquette is always important!). When you contact each potential recommender, be sure to provide them with a quick overview or update and let them know where you are in your internship or job search process. Also, confirm the best way to reach them and, as much as possible, try to notify them if you anticipate a potential employer will contact them for a reference check in the near future. Possible candidates for recommenders should include former supervisors or co-workers you have worked with extensively, professors that you may have assisted with research projects or anyone else in a professional capacity that knows you well and can speak to your work habits.

    As you progress through the application and interview process, don’t forget to have a list of your references available on paper should a potential employer request it. Devising your list now will allow you to focus on other important aspects of the application and interview process for internships and jobs.

    Don’t Let Your Case Interview “SPIN” Out of Control!

    If you’re thinking about a career in consulting, you already know that a “Case Study Interview” will be a major component of the interview process. I’ve found that a useful way to approach this challenge is to use the system of “SPIN Selling”, which was developed some years ago by Neil Rackham, based on his extensive research on “consultative” selling.

    The four letters of the acronym “SPIN” stand for the four steps in the system, and are a handy way to remember what kinds of questions you should use to handle the case study interview successfully. The first letter “S” stands for “Situation”, which means that you should ask questions about the features of the case that the interviewer presents.

    Here’s a typical case: “I’m the president of a medical device testing company with $600mm in sales per year, and am concerned about the costs of doing business with our clients. We make a variety of products used to test for pregnancy, allergies etc. and distribute them across the U.S. A third of our customers are hospitals and the other two-thirds are small clinics and independent medical practices, but that group only represents 15% of our sales, so I think I need to stop selling to them in order to save money. What do you think I should do?”

    If you just do the math, you’d see that eliminating two-thirds of this businesses’ clients would lead to a $90mm decrease in revenue, so you might be tempted to suggest ways that the business might make up for this shortfall–by finding more hospital clients, streamlining the manufacturing process etc. But according to Rackham, this could be exactly the wrong thing to do, for at least two reasons. First, you’ve simply accepted the President’s view of the situation, and second, you are introducing some ideas that, however creative they may be, haven’t even been put on the table. So instead of prematurely coming up with clever ideas, you should ask “Situation” questions like, “What are the actual distribution costs?” “How efficient is the manufacturing process?” “Which customer segment (hospitals or clinics and independent practitioners) has been more stable over time?” or “Which segment might increase in size?”

    “S” questions like these might yield information like, “We ship over 3000 testing kits a year to most of our hospitals but only 40 or 50 a year to our clinic customers.” “Our clinics and MD’s have been loyal, steady long-term customers and we’ve built our business on them.” “Our manufacturing and packaging logistics are state-of-the-art.” or “Our hospital business has actually decreased in the last few years because of the shift in the healthcare field to smaller, more independent medical practices.” Given this information, it’s pretty easy to see that just trying to get more business from hospitals or finding greater operational efficiencies might be totally off-target.

    The information you get from your “S” questions should be enough to move the discussion to the “P” step in the process, or questions that focus on the “Problems”. The goal here is to get a greater understanding of what the core issues might actually be, rather than just get more information about the “Situation”. [NOTE: At this point of the SPIN process, I find it helpful to remember what one of my counseling professors said to me years ago, “Never trust that clients are telling you the truth, always trust that they are trying to tell you the truth–and you have to help them do it.”]

    Typical “P” questions you could ask are “So what’s the actual problem you’re having with distribution–is it the number of shipments or the postage or what?” or “What problems would you have if you stopped serving your most loyal group of customers?” or “What’s the problem with concentrating your entire business on the hospital segment?” “P” questions like these are critical because they cut through the generalities of the “Situation” and get down to the real issues.

    Let’s say that the interviewer responds to your “P” questions with: “The problem with distribution? It’s the hundreds and hundreds of little packages that we need to get out the door every week.” Or, “If I abandoned my most loyal customers, we’d lose a lot of good will.” Or, “If I focused on the hospital business, my revenue stream would probably go down.” As you can see, “P” questions not only get down to the specifics, they also are a great way to look at all sides of a problem and bring out issues that haven’t been previously mentioned or considered.

    Responses to “P” questions lead to the third stage; “I”, or “Implications” questions. A typical “I” question is, “Let’s suppose we could solve that problem–what would that do?” The “I” stage is the most crucial part of the “SPIN” process because it gets the client to think about problems in new ways, actively consider various outcomes and begin to focus on the right priorities. A response to an “I” question about the problems with distribution, for instance, might be “If I could do something about the number of packages we have to mail every week, I could still keep my most loyal customers and serve the hospital business at the same time.”

    “I” responses like this one naturally lead to the last stage of the “SPIN” process–establishing the true “Needs” of the case. In the example I’ve used, this is the moment in the interview when you can suggest that the president’s true “Need” in the case I’ve used is to reduce the number of packages mailed every week–a far different outcome than finding new hospital clients or streamlining his manufacturing or packaging process.

    Using “SPIN” can not only help you handle the Case Study Interview more effectively, it is a highly effective tool in the field of consulting. To find out more about it, the link to Neil Rackham’s web page is: NeilRackham.com.

    Gearing up for Career Fairs

    Welcome back, students! Though it’s only the first day of the semester, it’s not too early to start thinking about our big Spring Career Fair – which is just a little more than a month away on Friday, February 19th.

    The Spring Career Fair brings together a wide variety of employers from diverse fields. Everything from restaurant management to education to the financial sector will be represented. All majors from all of our schools are welcome to attend.

    You can check out a list of who’s attending by logging on to PennLink and clicking on the “events” tab.  Note that the list is growing every day!

    In preparation for the fair, you can have your resume reviewed by a Career Services counselor and make a list of which employers you would most like to visit with on the 19th.

    There’s even a great Career Services podcast entitled “Making the Most of a Career Fair” that gives you some quick but important tips on how take advantage of everything a career fair has to offer. Listen to our CareerCast here.