BLMJobs Online Deployment --\
Better, Faster, Easier Job Hunting

**A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**February 12, 2004**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The Bureau of Land Management satellite network presents live
from the BLM national training center in Phoenix, Arizona, BLMJobs
Online, an interactive workshop designed to introduce BLMJobs Online to
the HR community, to managers and employees and to explain what this new
conversion means to each of you. Now your instructors, Melissa Dukes and
Sherian Long.\
\
M. Dukes: Good morning, BLM, from beautiful Phoenix, Arizona. I\'m
Melissa Dukes, human resources officer for the Colorado state office.\
\
S. Long: Hello, I\'m Sherian Long and I\'m the human resources officer
from the California state office.\
\
M. Dukes: Sherian and I would like to welcome you to today\'s broadcast,
better, faster easier job hunting, also known as deployment of BLMJobs
Online. This has been an exciting week for us. This is our fourth
broadcast, Sherian and we\'ve had a chance to talk to a lot of people in
the bureau about this deployment, and we are excited to be talking to
you as well. Before we get started in today\'s program, though, we would
like to introduce Marilyn Johnson, assistant director for human
resources management, and she has a few words to say before the program
gets started. Marilyn?\
\
Greetings, friends and associates. I\'m Marilyn Johnson, the bureau\'s
assistant director for human resources management. I would like to
welcome you to this satellite broadcast on the deployment of BLMJobs
Online, one of our key E gov initiatives within human resources. E
government is one of the items on the president\'s management agenda.
Not only does implementation of automated staffing support the
accomplishment of this goal, but it also fulfills the needs articulated
in the bureau\'s workforce planning initiative. This is an exciting time
for all of us within the bureau, because our move to Internet-based
staffing opens the door to new and positive ways of filling our
positions. The new system has a wide range of benefits for employees,
supervisors and HR professionals.

I would like to take a moment to highlight some of those benefits. For
employees, the new system will reduce the time it takes to complete an
application and will make it easier to update your application. You will
also be able to post and update your resume online. Once you\'ve applied
for the desired position, you will receive an e-mail notification
letting you know that your application was received. For supervisors,
BLMJobs Online will allow you to hire the right person with the right
skills at the right time because job announcements will be accessible to
a wider range of potential applicants. This increases the potential to
have a more diverse applicant pool. In addition to this, automated
staffing will allow hiring officials to be able to reach applicants
faster, which in turn will cut down on the amount of time that a
position will be left vacant. For HR professionals, there will be more
consistency in the procedures for application evaluation and will cut as
much as 25 days off of the recruitment process. This will free up more
time for you to serve as consultant and advisor to management and will
make you more accessible to them as they try to hire the very best for
their organization. I encourage you to fully participate in this
broadcast, follow along in your workbooks, participate in the exercises
and use the push-to-talk microphone to ask questions. I wish you the
very best and I\'m looking forward to working with all of you in
ensuring the success of this new and exciting system.\
\
M. Dukes: Thanks, Marilyn for those kind words before the program
begins. We\'re excited about the system and today\'s broadcast but we
have a few technical things we need to go over before to be sure the
broadcast goes as smoothly as possible. We know there are hundreds of
people watching today\'s broadcast and there will be a different couple
300 this afternoon. We\'re trying to use push-to-talk technology and I
know most of you have access in your location. If you\'ve never done
push-to-talk technology, it\'s straightforward. You can pick up the
microphone, or leave it on the count for you have it in front of you,
you need the microphone about 12 to 15 inches from your mouth, push the
button, giver us your name and location and then release the button.
That\'s the only way you will hear us is with the button released.

We\'ve noticed as we\'ve got hundreds of people attending the broadcast
we frequently have more than one person come in at a time. We\'ll call
the name of the person we hear first, deal with their question, then go
to the second person. We want everybody to take an active role in
today\'s broadcast. For those of you who don\'t have access to
push-to-talk technology, we are accepting faxes. The fax machine is at
the counter with us. You can fax us your questions or your comments. Or
concerns. The fax number is up right now. For those of you who are maybe
in a conference room that doesn\'t have a fax, I know a lot of
conference rooms are not equipped with all that technology in one place,
and all you have is a speakerphone or regular telephone, that\'s
perfectly fine, we are going to accept telephone calls as well. That
number will be coming up now. We\'ll take those calls. So any way you
have access to talk to us we want to talk to you. But because we have
hundreds of people participating in today\'s broadcast, we\'re going to
limit when you can actually contact us.

As we go through different topics or segments, keep notes if you have
any questions, and if we don\'t answer your question during our
discussion, at that time at the end of our dialogue we\'re going to ask
you to call, preferably use push-to-talk, but if not, fax or call us so
we can have a dialogue about what kinds of issues or questions you have.
But with so many people participating, we did have to limit it and not
keep the bridge open all day. But it\'s gone really well the last three
broadcasts that we\'ve had so we know today will go just as well for
everyone else. In addition to Sherian and myself, we do have folks from
the national human resources management center sitting in Denver,
Colorado, who are also going to participate if there are any technical
questions we can\'t answer since they are the program leads and probably
know more about the ins and outs of the technology that we\'re using.
They\'re available to answer any questions that Sherian and I can\'t
handle. Who is there this morning from the national HRMC there in
Denver?\
\
Caller: Good morning, Melissa, it\'s Barbara and Natalie.\
\
M. Dukes: All right, you\'re both here. That\'s fabulous. Welcome both.
Like I said, if there are any questions that come up, we will throw it
to Barbara and Natalie to get their technical input. We look forward to
today\'s broadcast. We hope you have a great time. We hope you learn a
lot from the content that we put together for you, and I think it\'s
time to get started. So Sherian?\
\
S. Long: As Melissa has already mentioned, we have had two different
types of broadcasts so far this week, the first one was for the HR
community, for the changes that are occurring to them from their
perspective. Yesterday we did it for the supervisors and managers
because they have a different kind of impact but the one we\'re doing
today, this is designed specifically for you as employees. Our goals and
objectives that we are going to have today pretty much can be summed up
into two thoughts. The first one is we want to inform all of you about
our conversion to the BLMJobs Online system. Then also we need to review
with you some of those very key job hunting skills that are going to be
really important that you now focus on them. This whole idea of
automated staffing isn\'t cutting edge. We\'re not leading the pack on
this.

Certainly other government agencies, private industry as well as
nonprofit organizations have been moving into the same thing, and it\'s
not hard to understand. It makes good business sense. Their focus and
ours is all the same. We want to be able to have quality products coming
out and we want to do this in a very efficient, cost-cutting measures.
Automation itself certainly isn\'t new to the field of human resources,
either. There are a number of processes that we already do in an
automated manner of one kind or another, and if you want to follow along
with me on page 1 in your book, you will see some of those as I remind
you of them. First off, we\'re already announcing our jobs using the
OPM\'s website for USAJobs. We\'re processing all your personnel actions
through the Department of Interior\'s federal personnel payroll system
which we call FPPS, and that\'s also how we\'re paying you.

You\'re probably managing your own thrift savings plan now through the
TSP website. You make all your benefit changes and printing off your
leave and earning statements using OPM\'s employee express. And if you
registered yourself for this training, you went onto NTC\'s website and
used that. So what we have here is our newest automated staffing
program, which is just simply our next generation of a computer-managed
HR business solution. What I want you to take note of specifically is
the website of where this program exists. It\'s at WWW.BLM.gov/careers.
Now, having this little bit of background in mind, Melissa is going to
talk to us about the goal of the staffing process.\
\
M. Dukes: The goal of any staffing process is to ensure that we have the
right person with the right skills in the right place at the right time.
Now, this goal is a universal goal in the staffing business and it
doesn\'t mat for you work for the federal government, if you work for
state or local government, if you work for the private sector f you work
for nonprofits. That is why you always enter into a staffing mode. But
for the federal government it is a little different. We have our own
sets of laws, rules and regulations that dictate how we do our business.
Some of the primary ones, I think, that we have to follow will be merit
principles, prohibited personnel practices, the uniform guidelines on
employee selection and the Department of Interior\'s merit promotion
plan.

These four do not encompass all the laws, rules or regulations we have
to follow but they definitely are the ones that come to mind when we
start in the staffing business. But even though we have our own sets of
laws, rules and regulations, as Sherian said, we can use technology
that\'s in the private sector or that other governments use. That is our
advantage and the advantage of any staffing process, is that we\'re all
trying to achieve the same goal, just maybe dictated in slightly
different parameters. I know all of you have applied for federal jobs
before. Obviously, because you\'re sitting here watching this broadcast
and you\'re a federal employee. In fact, many of you probably applied
and were selected for more than one job. I would like you to sit back
and think about what it was that worked well for you, what did you think
that was positive about that process as an employee or an applicant? And
on page 2 of your workbook, jot down those ideas. We\'ll come back in 15
seconds and then keep moving on with the class. So see you in 15.

Welcome back. I\'m sure you had quite a few ideas come to mind and a
couple that Sherian and I always talked about when we were putting the
class together were the idea that we are complying in fact with merit
principles through our staffing process, and obviously as HR people that
is paramount to our issues and our goals. The other one is that we
really work hard to fill jobs with our \-- evaluate candidates using job
related knowledge, skills and abilities, very much focused on hiring
people to meet the needs of the position that we\'re filling. But we
also know there are things that frustrate people, and what we would like
you to do now is sit back, take 15 seconds again a think about what
frustrated you in that process, and we\'ll come back in 15 and capture
some of those ideas. So see you in 15 seconds. So, anybody want to
volunteer some ideas they came up with on what maybe was really
frustrating as an applicant? Kind of quiet out there.\
\
S. Long: Bridge is open.\
\
Caller: Hi, this is Jennifer.\
\
M. Dukes: Hi, Jennifer, from Montana state office.\
\
M. Dukes: Jennifer from Montana, what did you come up with?\
\
Caller: We think that we don\'t like to fill out the KSAs very often.

M. Dukes: Ah, KSA statements. Everybody hates KSA statements. So did I
as an applicant, I have to admit.\
\
Caller: Sometimes they don\'t quite reflect the job as accurately as
they should. Montana started off. Somebody else have another
frustration?\
\
Caller: Hello, Melissa, Kathy in the Colorado state office.\
\
M. Dukes: Hi, Kathy.\
\
Caller: Hey, Melissa, you look great, by the way.\
\
M. Dukes: Thank you, dear.\
\
Caller: The question I have is why is it \-- why does it take such a
long period of time to come up with like the best qualified list or to
even notify applicants, and through this process is that going to
change?\
\
M. Dukes: Gosh, that was such a great intro. Kathy, you\'re going to
discover probably in about 15 seconds that, yes, it will go faster, and
I wrote down here on the Elmo, long time to fill jobs. As an employee
applying for jobs I agree, that is the frustrating part and that is one
of those things that better, faster, easier job hunting is going to
produce. Anybody else have something?\
\
Caller: Queen, Washington from the Washington office. My question, some
type of jobs seem like they are pre-selected and it\'s frustrating with
the short limited period of time, like a two-week period.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. I\'m not sure that this changing how we do business is
going to change your frustration with what appears to be pre-selection.
I have to tell you, there are two schools of thought on this, and I have
managers who advertise jobs who have candidates that they think \-- or
employees they think would be good candidates, and I do encourage them
to encourage all of their employees to apply. But, you know, for the
most part, I think our selections are wide open and managers, while they
know people who might be really good never want to really tie themselves
down to a single candidate because there\'s always a better candidate
out there. Not sure this process is going to resolve frustration for
you, but I do know pre-selection is kind of a frustration for
employees.\
\
S. Long: There was something that someone said there at the very
beginning that really struck me, and they said that not only \-- they
hated writing KSAs, understandably so, but it was that KSAs didn\'t
necessarily seem like it was the right ones for that kind of job, that
it wasn\'t going to allow you to really express information that you
think is really key to what that position is to begin with. I think
you\'re going to find something about this in just a little while that
may help with that.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. We\'ll take one more call. Anybody have any feedback or
issues on their frustrations with the staffing process that they want to
share? I have to admit those four are really good, and the ones that I
think are process-focused, the KSA statements, the long time and the
KSA\'s maybe not being job related those kinds of things I think are
going to be resolved using automated processing. Is this process going
to make it faster? That\'s a great segue. The reason we call this
better, faster, easier job hunting is because it really does appear to
be that way. From a better standpoint, candidate are going to be
evaluating themselves using the same criteria or similar criteria
between each state. So there\'s going to result in more consistency
between the states. Your applications can be submitted online, and they
can submitted online up to the very last minute of the open period, two
minutes before the closing date, sitting at home.

You can e-mail your application in or submit it envy you a the \-- it in
via the Internet. I know for people who rush to the post office to make
sure they get that postmark so they will be considered, that problem
goes away. And another thing that I think is really better about this
system is that you\'ll \-- you can, if you choose, and this is a choice
issue, you can if you choose receive electronic notification before a
vacancy even opens, or as a vacancy opens. Not before. It\'s the day the
vacancy opens. It\'s telling you if you have specific criteria, for
example, you\'re interested in a range job in Colorado, you\'re going to
get an e-mail notification we\'ve post add range specialist in Colorado.
So you know right then you\'re able to apply for a job. Sherian?\
\
S. Long: I would agree with you. I was just listening to what you said.
I wasn\'t expecting \--\
\
M. Dukes: Sorry. I thought you had something else.\
\
S. Long: No, just listening.\
\
M. Dukes: Faster is the one thing I think everybody is going to
appreciate here. This is the biggest one, the one Kathy brought up, we
believe applications are going to be referred to selecting officials
possibly even up to 25 days or even more faster than they are right now.
We\'re hoping to have applications referred to selecting officials
within three days of the closing date. Practically unheard inform
today\'s current staffing mode. Another problem I think a lot of people
got frustrated with is that if we haven\'t \-- staffing specialists or
assistant who is out of the office on travel, training, whatever, that
that action just sits there waiting for the specialist or assistant to
return. That isn\'t going to happen to anyone in the office because of
the way we do refer candidates electronically. We will be able to help
out.

Another thing that I think is really faster, and this is faster more for
employees than really the process, is that your application,
particularly your resume and your basic background information, can be
input within BLMJobs Online up front. That means when a vacancy
announcement comes up, you\'ve got your e-mail notification of a range
job in Craig that you want to apply for, all you have to do is go in and
answer these specific targeted or focused questions that takes about 15
to 20 minutes instead of the number of hours it normally takes to write
KSA statements, and then hit the send button and you ever\' applied. So
particularly if you use that method of building your application in
advance, which Sherian is really going to talk to you about a little
later, applying for jobs is very fast. We are talking 15 to 20 minutes.
So what\'s easier? I think the biggest thing that\'s easier is there are
no KSAs, and that means there are no KSA statements have that to be
prepared when submitting your application. And that, I think, for every
applicant, and I know for Jennifer and the folks in Montana, very much
an issue they had is that those KSA statements are going away and you
are not spending the hours it takes to try and write them in that
two-and-a-half page limit we try to ask people to do. That is an awful
lot of work to address five KSAs in half a page and say everything it is
you need to say. So that\'s gone away and I assume for most people that
is the best thing and probably the easiest thing about automated
staffing.

The other thing is that your application can be updated whenever you
wish, because it is electronically maintained and it does maintain it in
a resume, that all you have to do is go in, open your application file,
which is resident in BLMJobs Online, and update your resume to either
reflect job changes or skill changes or maybe adapt to the job you are
applying for, and Sherian is going to go into resume building a little
more later on, but that is a nice thing. That\'s a lot easier than the
old days when you would have to roll, and I remember these things,
rolling the 171 in the typewriter and trying not to make typos because
the more you used white-out the uglier it looked. All that\'s gone away.
I think you will find a lot of the processing that frustrated you are
gone with automated staffing. It really will be better, faster and
easier. Just so you know, there are five basic automated tools that we
talk about when we talk about automated staffing.

I know you\'ve heard or seen some of these. So we wanted to do a basic
definition so that everyone would operate with the same fundamental
language, and those five are USAJobs, Recruitment One Stop, QuickHire,
BLMJobs Online and FIRES. I\'ll explain each of those five to you so you
kind of know what that jargon actually means. USAJobs online is
something I know you\'re all familiar with and it\'s the federal
government\'s Internet job board and typically right now I think we\'re
up to about 15,000 jobs on any given day posted in USAJobs. It is \--
you need to think of it in this new electronic age as a portal to
individual agency jobs such as BLM\'s jobs. But it\'s something we all
know how to use, it\'s something we all have access to. So very easy way
to find and apply for jobs. Recruitment One Stop is OPM\'s project name
to program they developed and actually hired monster.com to help them
with to improve the customer friendly nature of USAJobs. USAJobs, while
you can do job searches, used to not be that easy, as they kept on
modifying it finding ways to make it more customer friendly, with the
partnership with monster.com they\'ve accomplished five important goals
through Recruitment One Stop.

The first one is improved job searches. I don\'t know if you\'ve gone
online recently to USAJobs, but it is a lot easier. It\'s different than
when we started, but when we started we only had a few thousand jobs.
Now with the 15,000 jobs it really is very functional from that improved
job search. Another one, a clean understandable job announcements, and
this was, I think, particularly true for non-feds, but even federal
employees, our federal jobs have a tendency to be very jargon focused.
We describe specialized experience as being equivalent to one year at
the next lower grade as opposed to explaining what that means, and if
you have know idea that the lower grade from an 11 is typically a 9, you
don\'t know what that means. But hopefully most people in the federal
government do, but they are very jargon focused in HR and they\'re
trying to get us out of that add make them much more clean and
understandable to anyone who goes online to identify potential job
opportunities. Another one is electronic resume submission. Right now
about halfway through USAJobs\' life they did start allowing you to
submit resumes electronically. Didn\'t always arrive. There were issues
with that. They just really needed to improve the functionality. They
are working on that to even make it more effective because so many
federal agencies are going to automated staffing programs, and there are
multiple vendors out there. So they\'re trying to make their electronic
resume submission compatible with all.

A fourth one is resume data mining, which is a search tool for search
officials and HR specialists to see if there are lots of candidates out
there. Do I maybe need to recruit at different grades because there
seems to be practically no qualified applicants with resumes resident in
USAJobs? So this is really more of a selecting, recruiting tool. And the
last one is applicant status checking. Wouldn\'t it be nice to know if
somebody through that resume data mining actually is looking at your
application for a job in a place you\'d indicated you were interested
in? One of the best things, I think, about the improvements of USAJobs
online is it is less mysterious or it has the staffing processes really
behind the scenes so you never know really what\'s going on. With the
applicant status checking they\'re trying to improve that and keep you
fully engaged in the process.

The next one is QuickHire. I know lot of you have heard the phrase
QuickHire, not sure what it meant or maybe if you have been involved in
temporary seasonal recruitment, you may have heard for it. QuickHire is
the vendor name. It\'s not the only program out there, but it is the
Department of Interior\'s automated staffing program of choice. It
essentially uses \-- it solicits applications electronically, evaluates
them electronically and the evaluation is done using targeted or focused
questions and we\'ll go through that more in detail later on. Because
QuickHire is the software name, we couldn\'t call our program BLM
QuickHire, so what the program folks at the national HR center tried to
come up with a good name, and BLMJobs Online was the name think chose to
caught our automated staffing system or staffing process. It uses the
QuickHire software and it is used for all vacancies except temporary
seasonal fire positions, and there\'s a reason for that, and it is
primarily because the department has really elected to recruit temporary
seasonal fire employees as a department as opposed to our individual
bureaus or agencies. They really see this as a better and more effective
way to recruit and refer candidates. So what they have done is, it\'s
kind of a two-stage deployment, is they\'ve built criteria for
candidates for temporary seasonal fire positions and the criteria is the
same regardless of what agency you\'re applying for, and so now that
they\'re in the second step, which is to consolidate those vacancy
announcements, and they\'re consolidated right now for Wyoming and
Colorado, our temporary seasonal fire jobs are listed under a Department
of Interior vacancy announcement.

The other temporary seasonal fire jobs in the bureau are actually listed
under BLM vacancy announcements, but the criteria is the same. So we can
ensure consistent evaluation between the states and between the bureaus
for any of the candidates who are applying for our jobs. So that\'s just
to give you, I think, some basic fundamental jargon. So as we use
phrases and terms, you know how that all relates and you won\'t be going
through some of this kind of blind. Now it\'s time to get into the it
nitty-gritty of what we\'re talking about, and Sherian will cover that
for us.\
\
S. Long: I\'m sure you I thinking, hurry up and get it to. I tuned in to
find out what the changes are that have occurred. First thing you need
to realize we actually have six steps you are either directly involved
in or you\'re impacted in by when we\'re doing the staffing process.
Those are the job search, the application, the application evaluation,
the referral, the interview, and finally the reference check. You need
to understand, we\'re not eliminating any of those things. We still have
to do them. But it\'s the way we do them, that\'s what the real change
is going to be. So that\'s what I\'m going to talk to you about. If you
want, you can follow along on page 5 of your workbook and you\'ll see
what those things are.

We\'ll start off with part on the job search. I know what you currently
do, like everyone else, you go out onto the OPM website, USAJobs, and if
you\'re really interested in looking for another job, you probably do it
weekly. Then again maybe if you\'re only just kind of interested, it may
not be quite as frequent. Well, this hasn\'t changed completely because
that\'s still where you\'re going to start. As Melissa mentioned about
this Recruitment One Stop, the OPM decided this will be the portal
because when we\'re talking about the American public, they don\'t even
know what all various agencies are that are out there, so they wouldn\'t
know how to go to all the different websites. It\'s hard to believe, but
there\'s people that don\'t know what BLM is either. So they decided
with this one portal everyone one could come \-- could come here and get
started. Once you go there and come to one of our jobs we\'ve announced
using the BLMJobs Online, then it\'s going to bring you right over to
it. But the key to really making this a lot quicker is if you have
already done this pre-registration we\'ve talked about using the website
of [WWW.BLM.gov/careers](http://WWW.BLM.gov/careers).

Now, as Melissa told you a little bit earlier also, the best part is if
you do this pre-registration, you\'re going to have the ability to
indicate by series and/or location which of the types of vacancies
you\'re interested in. So that when we post that particular one, then
you\'re going to get an e-mail saying, hey, there\'s this vacancy. It\'s
your choice then if you want to apply or not apply. You could actually
request you have notification of every BLM vacancy announcement that is
out there. But I\'d be careful what I request, because recognize that we
have hundreds of them open, and I think we probably all are getting more
than enough e-mails already.

Of course, don\'t forget that if there are positions that you\'re
interested in with other agencies, then you would need to be scanning
the USAJobs anyway, looking for those, and if there are vacancies that
you didn\'t pre-identify, you\'re still going to need to be going out
there onto the USAJob website to look for those. Now, I did mention
something to you about this pre-registration. So I do want to explain
what in the world that is, and all we\'re saying there is that this is
the time, it\'s as though you were sitting down with your first
application, and you\'re going to put in your own basic personal
information and you would be completing your recommendation. It\'s our
recommendation to you that you use some sort of a word processing
system, like word, that we all have, and that\'s where you can practice
developing the resume itself. You can then simply cut and paste that and
move it back over into the area that\'s set aside in your BLMJobs Online
record. You\'re going to have 16,000 characters of free space. So it\'s
easy enough to put it right in there. You might be concerned about,
well, if I\'ve got this sitting in that database is everybody going to
see it? The answer is no. All of that is going to be password protected
for you personally. When we talk about this application, now we\'re
talking about the open period of when we have a job up there. So what\'s
happening right now is every time we announce a position, we get
applications in, some of them are still using the SF-171, some folks use
that OF-612, and other people just created their own kind of format as a
resume.

I can tell you that they\'re just kind of all different because there\'s
nothing structured, there\'s nothing defined about as what you have to
do, and I can tell you it\'s kind of frustrating for us as HR folks or
even for the supervisors because we\'re having to scan all through these
things looking for some very key critical information, but it\'s not
necessarily located in the same place. We also find that even though
some are very well written, we also have those that are quite, frankly,
poorly put together, and we see a lot of acronyms that we have no idea
what those things are supposed to mean. Generally speaking, you should
know, supervisors don\'t even read every word of those 20-plus
applications we receive. Again, they\'re simply scanning them looking
for that key critical information that\'s there. But under this new
process, this is the best part, that whole thing is a thing of the past.
Let\'s say that you have not registered but you ever\' been out there on
USAJobs, you say, oh, here\'s a job I\'m interested in, you go to it and
you click on it.

It will then link you back over into our BLMJobs Online system, and it
will start you off, prompt you to begin your basic record, putting in
your personal information, and because this is a job you\'re interested
in applying for, after you have put in your resume, you\'re going to
have to answer some questions concerning your basic qualifications, and
then you\'re going to respond to some task statements. At the end of
that, you hit that submit button. So let me explain very clearly again
what the process is. You\'re going to go to the USAJobs website, it\'s
going to link you over to the QuickHire, if you have not yet put in your
resume you\'re going to have to do it at that time, you\'re going to
respond to the basic qualification questions, you\'re going to answer
the task statements, and then you\'re going to submit your application.
Then within just a couple minutes after that, you\'re going to get an
e-mail back saying, ok, we have received your application.

Now you are I'm thinking, wait a minute, what in the world is this task
statement? Task statements are actually very focused type of questions,
and your responses could be in various formats. It may be that they\'re
going to look for a multiple choice answer. They may be asking for
multiple answer. It could be that it\'s a yes or a no. It might be a
true or false. A long essay kind of response, a short little response,
or it could even be a match. Once you\'ve submitted your application,
that system is going to rate you right away, but it is not going to be
the finalized rating, because you still have an opportunity during the
entire time that application \-- or the announcement is open to go back
in and make any changes you want to your resume or you might want to
make changes to your task statements the way you rated yourself and the
responses that you gave. You\'re thinking, why would I want to do that?
Let\'s just say, for example, that this was an application for an HR
position, and maybe it\'s a classifier, and if the classifier had \--
when they wrote their application, they didn\'t put in a whole lot \--
or expand in the full level of experience that they\'ve had relative to
their involvement in classification, and yet they had been asked some
number of questions on that, they might think, you know, I think maybe I
might go back in here and refocus again and edit my resume more so I\'m
sure it\'s real clear in the resume that I have done the way I\'ve
answered in the task statements. Now, one thing you really need to be
aware of, and that\'s the closing, because when the announcement closes,
they all close the same time across the bureau, and that time is going
to be midnight eastern time. So if it\'s \-- my folks in California that
have applied, that means you\'re only going to have until 9:00 at night
to submit your applications and I know we all have a tendency to wait
until the last minute.

Also, if this is going to be an open continuous announcement that has
this periodic cut-off date, the closing time for those is 6:00 p.m.
eastern time. So if you\'re in Colorado and you\'re wanting to apply,
keep in mind, that closing, then, is going to be at 4:00 p.m. mountain
time. Before I go into the next part starting with the evaluation, I am
going to open the bridge and see if there are any questions we need to
clarify for you as far as the mechanics of how you\'re going to go about
applying for a job.\
\
Caller: This is Sarah Jensen from the Washington office.\
\
S. Long: Yes, go ahead.\
\
Caller: It\'s not necessarily having to do with mechanics, but I
wondered if you anticipated these changes that are being streamlined in
the process going department-wide or even government-wide? I guess the
reason I ask is because I wonder then if I would want a job, for, say,
within the department if I would need to have my KSAs still saved as
well as my new BLM streamlined resume still saved?\
\
S. Long: Actually that\'s a very good question, because the department
has made the determination that QuickHire software is the one it will
use throughout the entire department, not all of the agencies are as far
odd head as we are, USGS has been using it for I would say at least two,
maybe three years \--\
\
M. Dukes: Actually six.\
\
S. Long: But I do know that the other agencies are all required to come
along with that. I was going to say, basically the way OPM has said is
everybody has to come in through their portal and they don\'t care how
the departments use as the back end side, in our case the QuickHire, but
department has made the decision that QuickHire software is how we\'re
going.\
\
M. Dukes: I think some of the stuff I read on Recruitment One Stop also
indicated that the government-wide is going to some kind of automated
software. There are multiple programs out there, and we actually looked
at the other softwares before we purchased QuickHire, but my sense is
that within five years I would be shocked if there\'s anybody left in
the government who isn\'t doing essentially some kind of automated
staffing process. Most of them are going to the targeted or focused
questions. You might still find a few that are asking for narratives,
but they\'re all moving that way. So \-- and I think that is OPM\'s
goal, once again to replicate as much as possible the way the real
world, in this case, private sector, evaluates applications. So I would
be sprayed if in five years you had to do KSA statements for anybody.
That includes the little itty bitty ones.\
\
S. Long: That\'s true. You have to remember that Marilyn mentioned at
the beginning that this is in support of the E government initiative and
I just saw an article a couple days ago that was talking about president
bush in his 2005 budget that he is pushing specifically human resource
management under that E government initiative. So I\'m sure that five
years probably is not very far out and that in fact you won\'t have to
deal with all those KSAs.\
\
Caller: This is Kitty in New Mexico state office. I was wondering about
scanning your 171 forms, because there\'s a lot of information there
that I\'m a terrible typist and don\'t want to input.\
\
S. Long: If you choose to scan it you can, but then you\'re still going
to do to do a cut and pace out of that that into our system because
we\'re not going to be accept your version of electronic resume. It has
to be placed inside the QuickHire software.\
\
Caller: That\'s fine. Cut and paste is easy.\
\
M. Dukes: The other thing you need to be sensitive to, I know some of
you use the old 171 programs had that a lot of \-- essentially was built
using a word processing program, it\'s 16,000 characters, and all of
those little paren. marks or slashes all count as characters. So you
need to make it a text document and not have format around it, because
it is going to take up a lot of space that you would probably rather
devote to your actual description of your experience.\
\
S. Long: I think the idea is making it pretty isn\'t going to be the
point for you. You really want to get the information out there. Are
there any other questions? Ok.\
\
M. Dukes: I think, Sherian, part of Kitty\'s question you\'re going to
answer when you talk about resume writing because you even cite a sample
we proceed provided to everybody.\
\
Caller: This is Kathy Krone from grand junction. What happens when you
have people who come in through the front to apply and they have no
computer skills and they don\'t know how to even turn one on, let alone
type anything?\
\
S. Long: I\'m going to talk about appear little bit late or when we get
into the policies and the implementation and how we deal with those
exceptions to the electronic process. So if you\'ll just be patient,
I\'ll get to you. Anything else?\
\
Caller: This is Mike Wade in Farmington, New Mexico. I have a question.
Yesterday you indicated that the statements were for 10,000 characters
and today you\'re saying 16,000.\
\
S. Long: If we said 10,000, it was a slip of the tongue, because it is
16,000.\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
S. Long: Any other questions? Ok, if not, then I\'m going to move on
into the portion concerning the applicant evaluation. What we\'re doing
currently I\'m sure seems somewhat subjective to many of you, the
supervisors abdomen the HR specialists have worked together an they
develop what is called a rating or a crediting plan and then we take
your narrative KSAs and compare those together, you know, to \-- and
provide a ranking so to speak or a score for you. How long do those
things take? Well, sometimes it may take us up to 30 days, and it\'s
true, sometimes it\'s longer. There\'s a lot of things that have
impacted that all along. Part of it is how soon can we get to it once it
closes because we always have a lot of workload going on in the office
and we have multiple positions that are open. Then, of course, there was
time that we\'ve had to spend with the paneling with that. So, yeah, we
understand fully that it has been very time consuming. Your ability,
too, of how well you wrote those KSA\'s really played heavily into how
well you came out on the rating.

Now, as we\'ve said, we\'re going to have it quite different now because
KSASO, as far as BLMJobs are concerned, are completely a thing of the
past. Instead, this QuickHire software is going to be doing the rating
just as soon as you have submitted it, and it\'s all based upon your own
self-rating. Now, I\'m sure some of you are already thinking, yeah, but
what about those people who are going to over inflate and they\'re going
to claim a lot more than what they really have done? Well, once the
applications have closed as of midnight, that\'s when the system does
the finalized rating, and, of course, it\'s electronic, so it\'s done
just like that. But then the HR office will take the next one to three
business days to do a quality control check, and what we will be doing
is taking a look at each person, the way they did their ratings, and
we\'ll compare it to the resume to ensure that there is something in the
resume that does, in fact, support the way you have rated yourself.

I to need to remind you of this, and some of you probably remember on
our application forms the way they are in hard copy now, it\'s telling
us that these are federal job applications. Well, this is a federal job
application system. Same rules apply. If you were to provide us with
false information or trying to create a fake I.D. or simply are not
truthful, then you are subject to the same penalties that have always
existed, and that is, you may well not be hired because of that. It
could be that you could be disbarred from applying for federal jobs or
in some cases if you were already onboard, it has been the basis for us
to remove people from the federal service. One other thing you should be
aware of, too, concerning our getting the information back to you, we
can do all of this stuff electronically. So as soon as we finish that
three-day quality control, we have the capability then of going back and
electronically again sending you an e-mail that\'s going to tell you the
same kind of information we have had in those letters, that either you
weren\'t qualified or that you were qualified but you didn\'t rank high
enough, or, in fact, that you were referred to the selecting official.
Now, when we talk about those referrals, as we\'ve done in the past,
once we got through all this ranking process we\'ve had to go through,
we had to actually sit there and type those things up, and if we had
opened it up under an announcement for the public and then we did one
for merit promotion and then we have people who are noncompetitive
candidates, all on of those things were different lists much we typed.
We bundled these up and mailed them out to managers. That could take
anywhere from 1 to 5 days depending on where they\'re located. Well, now
when we talk about sending a resume, there isn\'t anything to do because
the system has taken care of this for us. As soon as we have completed
the quality control, what we\'re going to do instead is send an e-mail
to the selecting official and we\'re going to be giving them a password.

This is going to allow them to have access into that database,
specifically for their job, and they will see the certificate, then,
electronically and they\'re going to see your resumes electronically.
They may or may not choose to print off all those resumes. It\'s however
they want to deal with it. The certificates are still going to be given
to them in the same method or same order that we currently do, all those
under public announcements we do under the delegated examining unit that
we refer to as the DEU, it does come out in ranked score order, the
score is listed there, same as the veterans preference is list there
had. If it\'s something under the merit promotion or even under
non-competitives, what we do is we provide an alphabetical listing of
those top ranking candidates. Following their receipt of this, of
course, is going to be that interview process. And there isn\'t anything
we can do in QuickHire software that\'s going to make this any quicker.
What we encourage the supervisors to do is recognize this is going to
happen so much faster and in fact we are probably not even going to have
to announce these things for 30 days.

We\'re finding from other agencies\' experience that the numbers of
applications are so much greater, the pools are so much bigger, we\'re
able to kit offer after two weeks. So we need them to clear the
calendars and get prepared and ready to start on the interviews as soon
as possible. One of the things, too, in the past that\'s really delayed
getting to the final interviews is those panels, and as I\'ve mentioned
earlier, the need for panels is virtually been eliminated with this
process. One last thing that does occur that some of you may not realize
happens, has to do with reference checks and those are still very
important and necessary, and supervisors will follow through with that.
When you\'re putting your resumes in, it is going to be asking for your
current supervisor\'s name, so they can go back and do that. If there\'s
someone else you want them to contact as a reference, you can give them
that information during the actual \-- or interview with them. How long
does all this take?

Well, our old methods took 1 to three months, and I\'m sure you\'re
already sitting there thinking get real, it\'s more like six months. And
probably in many cases from the time a vacancy occurred until there was
a job being filled, might well have been six months. But we\'re going to
see with this one, setting budget issues aside and with when they
actually let you start to fill it, the whole process is easily going to
save 1 to two months. So we think this alone is going to make everyone
so much happier, because it certainly does for us in the HR shop. I know
what gave you was pretty much a quick thumbnail sketch of things, so
before we go any further, and before Melissa talks to us about those
task statements, so we can actually show you these things so it will be
clearer, we\'re going to open the bridge one more time and see if you
have any other questions we could answer for you.\
\
Caller: This is Christie in Durango. I was wondering if the interviews
themselves have to be conducted over the phone or can the e-mail be used
to conduct interviews?\
\
S. Long: There\'s nothing in the law that says it one way or the other,
but I doubt seriously that a supervisor is interested in getting into an
e-mail chat in order to do an interview. Generally speaking they \-- the
real preference, obviously, is to be able to have a face-to-face
interview but then second best is to be able to have that discussion on
the telephone.\
\
Caller: Ok. Thank you.\
\
Caller: This is Kitty in New Mexico again. At the state office in Santa
Fe. You mentioned that your supervisor will know when you\'re applying
for a job. The former way of doing it \-- or did I mishear you? You had
a choice of not having someone contact your immediate supervisor \-- or
your current supervisor. Did I get that wrong?\
\
S. Long: Oh, you\'re talking about when you\'re filling in the resume
and you\'re the supervisor; is that correct?\
\
Caller: Yes, I\'m also interested in finding out if, for example, you do
not want your current supervisor to know you\'re applying for other
jobs, is that still available for the employee?\
\
S. Long: Sure.\
\
Caller: I guess I misheard you.\
\
S. Long: In fact, I have just been doing a whole lot of interviews
recently and I had several people who said that very thing, they
preferred not to let their current supervisor know, and they asked that
I not call them. I said, that\'s fine. And it was a concern that they
would rather their current supervisor not know that they were looking
elsewhere because they thought it may cause some uncomfortable feelings
in the office, and that\'s perfectly acceptable.\
\
Caller: This is Jennifer from Montana again. I had a question. If you
are the type of person that has experience in more than one area, more
than one job field, can you create or are you supposed to create more
than one job resume reflecting each field that you\'re qualified for,
and if so, how does that work? Also with your supervisor, because
depending on the job I\'m applying for, it may not be that I don\'t want
my current supervisor to know that I\'m applying for the job but one
supervisor from the another position might have been better qualified to
comment on my experience.\
\
S. Long: Ok. No, first off, you only can have one resume out there at a
time for a particular vacancy. However, your point is well taken in that
sometimes, depending upon what the position is that you\'re applying
for, there is certain information you really want to emphasize more in
one than in another, and at way it works is, as soon as that particular
position closes, it in essence takes a copy of your resume and places
into it a staging area. So that particular resume, then, is locked in.
You can then go right back in and change your resume of record to
reflect the different aspects of what you want for another job, and then
when that one closes, that particular resume again locks into the
staging area for that particular application.\
\
Caller: How long are they in the staging area, then?\
\
S. Long: until we finish our quality control.\
\
M. Dukes: One option you could pursue is to build different kinds of
resumes in the word processing software. You are allowed to use your
government computer off hours to develop your resume as long as it\'s
not disruptive to the office because I do know a few of you do share
computers. So you could have, in my case a supervisory and a
non-supervisory application that, while it\'s the same work history, I
really emphasize different things and one way to do that is just to
maintain that in your computer at work, and so as you\'re applying for
jobs, cut and paste a little differently depending upon the jobs you\'re
applying for. So you could easily have one for range, one for NRS and
one for maybe a lead or supervisor. So that\'s one way to do it in
advance. That saves you money. Saves you time.\
\
One thing, too, I understand the concern about which supervisor is the
better one. Those are things that are really important that you just be
right up front during the interview and tell the supervisor, this is who
I think is going to be able to give you the best information concerning
me. Because I can tell you, being on this side of the desk and having to
be doing the interviews, I really don\'t want to waste my time having to
call supervisors who really don\'t know about you relative to the type
of skills that I\'m looking for. I would rather get to those who really
do know you. So it helps me a lot when people will just tell me that
kind of information right up front. Are there any other questions?\
\
Caller: Yeah, this is Jennifer again. Sorry to be \-- so many questions.
What if you don\'t get to the interview point in order to tell them the
other supervisors that you want them to call?\
\
S. Long: If you didn\'t get to the interview, then you\'re not \--
basically you\'re not going to wind up getting considered and there\'s
not any chance of your getting selected, so it\'s not going to make any
difference is the bottom line.\
\
Caller: So they\'re not basing your qualification on what your
supervisor is saying, I guess.\
\
S. Long: absolutely not. Remember, the rating is based upon your
self-rating on those task statements. Ok. Thanks.\
\
S. Long: There are any other questions that anybody has?\
\
Caller: This is Kathy in Meeker. I just had a comment or concern. I\'m
concerned if that it\'s only a two-week open period that you\'re
shooting for in the future a person on annual leave or fire detail might
miss that opening.\
\
S. Long: Ok. I think that\'s a legitimate issue that\'s come up. That\'s
one of the reasons why we specifically indicate that you can
pre-identify for you those positions that you\'re really interested in
so that way you can get an e-mail. That e-mail doesn\'t have to come to
work. That can come to your home if that\'s where you want it to be or
if you want to set up one of those \-- is it \-- hotbutton \-- hotmail,
that\'s it, where you can access that from anywhere. You can do that,
too. It doesn\'t make any difference us to what you do. Also, if there
is \-- there\'s something in the merit promotion plan now that says
you\'re going to be gone because I recognize it\'s harder for those of
you on fire to actually review e-mail. You need to make sure that your
supervisor is aware of that so they can help you out. Now, let me remind
you again, we\'re not saying specifically it\'s going to be two weeks.
We\'re just thinking that it probably will be that way. Depending on how
many candidates we get. But if we start getting 75, 100 candidate for
all of our jobs, there\'s just no reason to keep it open any longer than
that.\
\
Caller: This is Gretchen in Havre, Montana. We have a question up here
as far as documentation when they ask for, I don\'t know, a transcript
for a typing certification, how are you supposed to send that over the
Internet?\
\
S. Long: You\'re not. I\'m going to tell you exactly what to do with
that just a little bit later on in the program also when we get to the
nuts and bolts of our policy. Are there any other questions? If not,
then I think this is something that you\'re \--\
\
Caller: This is Mike Wade in Farmington. How many candidates will be
referred to the selecting official?\
\
S. Long: It will probably be 10. It will somewhat depend upon where the
natural break is in the scores that we have. Wouldn\'t you say so,
Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: Yeah, that actually is one of those things that doesn\'t
change. We go with natural breaks now and we will just continue to do
that, obviously with external recruitment sources under delegated
examining rule 3 still applies. It\'s one of those things that Sherian
kept reminding the supervisors, it\'s not how we do business, it\'s the
processes of what we do. But referrals won\'t change. This is really an
extraordinary dialogue and really please all of you are participating.
It will be interesting to see when we get to more discussion on
interviews and resume writing and reference checks if we continue to see
this kind of dialogue.\
\
S. Long: Right now I think it\'s really important that we move forward
and let you see those task statements and understand exactly what those
things are. So, Melissa, why don\'t you go ahead.\
\
M. Dukes: What I need you to do is to turn to page 6 of your workbook.
This is really complicated stuff, and we\'re going to go it through slow
to make sure you understand how we\'re changing, how we do business. I
recognize this might be for many of you the first time you actually see
that magic stuff that we do in HR or with our rating panels to determine
who is referred. So we want to make sure not so much that you really
master what it is we do today because we won\'t be doing too much longer
but that you understand the relationship between KSAs and rating plans
and task statements. Task statements are focused or targeted questions
that you evaluate yourself on that are directly related to the job
we\'re filling, and we use those task statements, then, to evaluate a
candidate\'s background. In the middle of page 6 is a brief duty
statement we took from a rangeland management specialist position, and
it\'s about allotment management plans. For those of you like me who
aren\'t range specialists, don\'t get real wrapped up on the fact that
you don\'t know what this is talking about. Just get the general idea of
what this duty is, because then we\'ll go through job analysis, KSA
identification, rating plans and then task statements. So let\'s take 10
seconds and just get that basic duty statement down so you understand
\-- so you can go into the next part of the dialogue. So 10 seconds.\
\
M. Dukes: So we\'ve had a chance to read about allotment management
plans. Now, the next step in developing our KSAs and then our task
statements is what\'s called a job analysis, and that\'s where you take
the entire position description and you start identifying those
knowledge, skills, abilities and personal characteristics that are
required to perform the duties of the job and then you really narrow it
down to what KSAs can you evaluate from paper, because not everything
can be evaluated using paper, and what\'s really essential to the job.
What we did is we identified three basic knowledges for this duty, and
they are knowledge of the principles, practices and theories of
rangeland ecosystem management, knowledge of allotment management plans,
and knowledge of rangeland management monitoring techniques and methods
to analyze, interpret, et cetera, et cetera.

So here we have the three basic knowledges that we would then start
translating into possibly only one KSA. We gave you a specific KSA that
we developed for this duty, and it\'s the ability to evaluate
rangelands, including the ability to design and monitor range studies,
interpret the Data and identify the management implications. So duties,
analysis, what specific KSAs can we identify or evaluate using a piece
of paper. Once we\'ve got those KSAs identified, and typically it\'s
five or six, we\'ll then start developing rating criteria and this
rating criteria is five levels. We have to define three of those
typically, 1, 3 and 5. 5 is someone who can walk in and hit the ground
running in BLM. I used to work in the Navy we would say hit the tech
running. It\'s the same concept. Here\'s your supplies, desk, computer,
go forth and do. So that\'s the 5 point level. 3 point level is the
person has a lot of related skills but there are still gaps in their
experience where they will have to have some oversight or development or
maybe have the task defined in a little more detail. So they have
related experience, possibly not the independence or breadth that
you\'re looking for. And at 1 point, which is the lowest point we can
assign to someone who is basically qualified but in reality has know
directly related experience to this specific KSA.

Now, we\'ve given you an example of what that criteria is, and at the 5
point level we talk about someone who has completed all facets of a
comprehensive monitoring program. Well, at the 3 point level we talk
about someone who has completed many or some of the aspects of a
comprehensive program and participated in all other aspect of that
program. And then there are some other differences I think you can
identify between the 5 and 3 points which are defined on page 7. Now you
are probably sitting there going, that\'s what you\'re looking for? I
never wrote my application that way. The reality is a lot of people, as
hard as we try to develop rating criteria that would be similar to how
people write their applications, which is why we typically use the
supervisor as a subject matter \-- or a subject matter expert to write
this stuff because they\'re going to know better than an HR specialist
what a GS-11 range specialist is going to need, this is the kind of
material we come up with, and you can tell while it\'s defined, it\'s
job related, you then have to apply it to what people actually write in
their applications, and that is their KSA statements, but it\'s also
there \-- what\'s in their application, being a 177, 612 or resume.
We\'re not going to let the KSA stand-alone. When they make claims I did
this in my previous job, pass legitimate thing in their previous job. So
Sherian mentioned there is quality control that goes on in BLMJobs
Online.

There is quality control that goes on today. So it\'s not once again
different. The method we use is a little different, but the idea and the
fact that we implement quality control before we refer candidates still
is in place. But as you can see, it is really hard to start to evaluate
applications, and the more applications you get, the harder it is to be
consistent. If you\'ve got 10, you pretty much know from applicant 1 to
applicant 10. Applicant 20, you start getting distance from number 1.
We\'ve had applications where we\'ve had 30, 40, 50 qualified candidates
we had to apply a rating plan to and it\'s hard to be consistent the
further you get away from the first candidate. So as you can see there
is some subjectivity that gets introduced here because you are trying to
interpret what people right in their application and compare it to this
criteria and that\'s one of the best things we think about going to
automated staffing is we are with self-rating getting away from that
subjectivity on the part of the rating candidate. But obviously we have
to write task statements once again that are evaluating knowledge,
skills and abilities directly related to that set of duties and that job
analysis, and we gave you one.

It\'s not obviously the only one that would apply to allotment
management plans but it\'s a beginning, and this one is knowledge and
skills related to range improvement, design and implementation, and at
the first one there is no experience, and at the fourth or highest level
or skill in this particular task statement is the person has \-- claims
that they\'ve designed and implemented range improvement projects. So
this is the first of many task statements that would be developed to
address allotment management plans and then the kinds of criteria, and
this is what \-- as Sherian said there are multiple kind of answers.
This is what\'s considered a multiple choice.

Pick the one that most closely applies to your experience. What I\'d
like you to do now, it is as an applicant, it is a lot better to apply
competitively for a job if you actually understand how these task
statements are selected. So what we would like you to do now in your
small groups and location, and it sounds like you\'re doing of good
dialoguing, so what we would like you to do is take two minutes and
think about what other task statements we could ask that evaluate
someone\'s experience in allotment management plans. So take two
minutes, think about the task statements, think about the kinds of
questions you\'d ask, multiple choice, multiple answer, true/false,

yes/no, short or long narratives, maybe some matching. We\'ll get back
together in two minutes and see what you came up with.\
\
M. Dukes: I hope you found that interesting and probably a little
challenging. Did anybody come up with something they would like to share
with the rest of the group? We could call on Jennifer. We know they\'re
doing a lot of talking up there. Actually, we got this stuff from
Montana. So we would like to hear from Montana.\
\
Caller: Well, you gave me such a good lead-in. I did come one a couple,
but I just said I wasn\'t going to call in again. Maybe you could have
something, a question that referenced their involvement with working
with teams and the other one I came up with was supervision, work leader
skills.\
\
M. Dukes: Leadership, team leader, supervisory skills I think are all
really useful. One that I came up with was kind of, from the rating plan
where we talked about you being involved in all facets of comprehensive
plan, well, let\'s say there are eight steps or eight facets to that
plan, you could actually list the eight and then say check all that you
have personally been involved in developing and implementing, and so
someone might pick two and someone might pick six and someone might pick
up all eight. That\'s what\'s considered a multiple answer. That was
another one we came up with. Thank you, Jennifer, for jumping in. We
know there are a lot of other offices out there that have range jobs. So
did anybody else come up with anything different?\
\
Caller: This is Gretchen in Havre. We as group came up with how do you
evaluate somebody\'s writing skills if you\'re just going through
questions when there\'s a lot of plan writing and things such as that
nature and how do you know that somebody else didn\'t fill out their
application and that applicant is that person?\
\
M. Dukes: This is an extraordinarily good question. You could set up
questions regarding plans. You could ask questions relative to that. You
could also do a short answer or even a long answer. Obviously we don\'t
have the computer evaluate someone\'s long answer but it does give the
selecting official some idea of both the candidate\'s writing skills,
concise writing skills. So there is that possibility there. And plan
writing might be a very good combination of task statement questions
where you know, I\'ve written these things. Could you explain what you
did or what it covered or how you impacted it? So there are some ways to
do that. The other thing, and this is obviously one of the things you
check out with a reference. You can tell in somebody\'s 20-page
application their writing skills, and you can tell in somebody\'s
80-page application they don\'t have the ability to write things
concisely. Obviously if you have writing skills as a critical issue in
your position, you may end up using that as something to ask a
reference. I noticed they said they did range improvement plan writing.
Could you talk to me about your opinion, are they good at writing these
things? Sit all inclusive? Is it controversial? Sit commune
communicative? That was a \-- an excellent point on how you look at
multiple questions. We appreciate that.\
\
S. Long: It occurs they could also have had some follow-on questions in
there, too, relative to for the types of documents that you\'re writing,
then do you have few corrections made? Does it seem to be just slightly
editorial? Or do you have a lot of corrections that are done when you
submit them? And are they sent back to you for rewrite? Those kind of
follow-on questions they branch out on to try to elicit more information
from you.\
\
M. Dukes: Excellent point because you\'re right, that\'s \-- when I look
at my staff and looking at their writing skills there are people I edit
and there are people I don\'t, and that\'s experience, because it is
still somewhat learning my writing skills as well as honing their own
skills. So I think that really is excellent. Anyone else come up with
anything they would like to share? Or did you find this particularly
hard or easy? Because that\'s always, I think, a question for us. How
did it go? I won\'t pick on the folks in com. I did that yesterday. \--
in Colorado. I did that yesterday. Any other insights, questions,
suggestions? Ok. I understand that. Actually I understand a couple other
things. One, we\'ve been together over an hour, and you probably are
thinking, is there a break coming soon, and there is.

I just want to wrap up with one last closing statement. Part of
deploying BLMJobs Online is the task statement development, and
obviously if we went through this process every time we advertised a job
we\'re not going to speed up anything. What we\'ve done is we\'ve
actually put together a group of HR specialists to develop task
statements for a number of occupations in the bureau, they\'ve been
working with subject matter experts to actually build a task statement
library. So as deployment occurs, and Sherian is going to go into that
in more detail a little later on in the broadcast, we\'re not going to
be slowed down by having to start from scratch every time we have
vacancies.

The other thing is we will have access to every state\'s criteria as a
result of this process. So the crediting plans that Montana used and
Colorado used normally we didn\'t interface with each other, now we will
all be using the same criteria, which I think reinforces that consistent
evaluation because we will be asking many of the same questions in the
same way, at least for similar jobs and grade levels. But I think it\'s
time to take a good 10-minute break. I imagine you\'re all ready to take
a good long stretch because we have a lot more to cover in the next
section of today\'s broadcast. So we\'re going to see you back here in
10 minutes.\
\
S. Long: Welcome pack. I hope everybody made it back from the break. We
have quite a bit more we\'re going to cover and she is going to do
something you will like now and going to be able to show you what it\'s
going to look like when you go into the BLMJobs Online.\
\
M. Dukes: Before we get too far into this part, Sherian and I did want
to let you know this really isn\'t a marketing pitch. We\'re not trying
to sell you something we personally don\'t believe in. I did go into
BLMJobs Online and submit an application. I also went into Recruitment
One Stop \-- USAJobs and do an application there because they are
different processes, and really once I got over the initial concept of
particularly the resume builder one in USAJobs, really think from an
applicant standpoint this is going to be extraordinarily easier. So we
did want you \-- didn\'t want you to think we\'re just trying to sell
you a bill of goods. We really have gone into this and thought about
this. We think this is for all of us, not just HR and selecting
officials, but employees as well, really an extraordinary opportunity.
Applications really need to be different in electronic staffing. They
need to be clear, but more importantly they need to be concise. The
interview is going to be different. You know, now you\'re only selling
yourself in a five-page resume or maybe a four-and-a-half page resume so
your interview is going to be different. Reference checks are probably
going to take on a little more significance. Somebody raised a question
about writing. And we talked about follow-on skills and interview skills
but now more than ever you\'re probably going to be talking to the
reference about an applicant\'s writing skills because you don\'t have
an application that has as much detail as it used to have to really
judge them fairly. But we\'re going to go over these three things after
we give you a glimpse at BLMJobs Online itself.

I would like you to turn to appendix B which starts at page 23, and
we\'re going to go over a few of the key screens you\'re going to see
when you go online into \-- with BLMJobs Online to submit your
application, and you can do that as soon as this broadcast is over. Two
weeks from now when you have your resume all ready to cut and paste into
the resume block. Let\'s go to page 23, which is the first page that you
see when you go to BLMJobs Online and obviously it\'s the normal stuff
you get on an application, your name, address, phone number. There are a
couple things I want you to know. Yes, your Social Security number \-- I
know you can\'t read this real well but we\'ll go over the idea. Your
Social Security number is in there for tracking purposes only. It\'s how
they have your application separated from everyone else\'s. It is not
released. It is not available to either the human resources office or
the selecting official. So the Social Security number is required, but
it is encrypted software and well protected.

There are a couple other things that the company does to make sure that
your applicant file is protected and you\'re the only one who can go in
there, and they have what\'s called a secret question and a secret
answer, and the secret question for the sample is, mother\'s name and
the mother\'s \-- and the secret answer is wicked. I didn\'t make this
stuff up. There are a series of choices you can pick for your secret
question and you need to remember which question you picked and the
questions are such that you have to \-- all you have to do is answer the
question and you don\'t have to remember all that extra stuff. There is
also a password process to get into BLMJobs Online. Once again, multiple
protections. It\'s encrypted, the Social Security number is encrypted
separately, and plus there is a secret question and a secret answer. So
this is a fairly sophisticated control system.

The next one I\'d like you to look at is page 24. Unfortunately I picked
up page \-- this is just basic application questions and you\'re going
to recognize these questions because you\'ve already answered most of
them. For instance, are you a vet? It goes through a series every
information to say \"yes\" or \"no\" if you meet definition of a
veteran, and then if you do some other specific information and then
question number two are you a current federal employee. So standard
application questions. You\'re not seeing anything unusual. You\'re just
seeing the questions themselves online. Now, the sample on page 25 is
actually where you input your resume and it is, as we said before,
16,000 characters. I did have a resume built in Microsoft word that\'s
just about five pages when I copied it over. It\'s 15,400-something
characters. So you\'re going to be looking at about five pages. Now, it
is a straight cut and paste. So you\'re going to need to include all of
your resume information in there, which is the dates of the job, the
title, grade level, supervisor\'s name, supervisor\'s phone number. Now,
if you don\'t want your supervisor contacted, that\'s actually a good
place to put that. Supervisor\'s name, phone number, please do not
contact, make it real clear. You can put it in bold. You do need to
remember you are copying over characters. Don\'t use lots of different
fonts. Don\'t use lots of interesting characters. This does copy over as
is. So if you have space breaks or line breaks in your application, that
will all copy over when you go into BLMJobs Online. Actually, I have to
tell you that is different than USAJobs, but once again USAJobs uses a
resume builder software.

For those of you who are dealing with FIRES, you will also know that
FIRES has resume building software. So the applications look different
in FIRES than they do in BLMJobs Online. Basic resume copy and paste.
Once you go in there, and if you want to update your application, all
you have to do is you can modify it online or you can just have a
different resume, cut the one out or delete it, and then copy a new
resume in. Is he it\'s your choice on how you best update your
application. The next screen page 26 I know is very hard to read, but it
is the notification questions, and the first one is, no, please don\'t
notify me on jobs. Middle one is notify me about all jobs. Third one is,
I would like to be notified by e-mail about new job postings that meet
my criteria. And then it\'s going to ask your criteria and your criteria
is essentially grade, series and location. Location can be as broad as
Colorado or as small as Meeker, Colorado. So it gives you both the
combination of towns and state or just state. I did go in and do that.
That is, I think, one of the better things about software, is you don\'t
have to go online to keep looking at the jobs that you\'re interested
in. Is there something open? The e-mail notification will occur. The
last screen we just made a copy of for you so you can see.

On page 27 are what in fact what we would call a task statement
question. The first one is a qualifications question, and this
particular qualifications question has to do with age because we did
pull it off of a permanent FIRES vacancy, obviously age is not an issue
on temporary jobs but it is on permanent, and to become first-time
permanent firefighter in the federal government you must be 37 years old
or less. So we have a yes/no birthdate question. While you don\'t
normally see birthdate questions, it\'s legal in this particular
occupation. The second one is identify your firefighting experience and
then it gives you a number of choices. As we talked about on quality
control and for filling a job, that is an initial attack, and you check
it, we will go back to your resume to ensure somewhere in there you talk
about initial attack command so that for those employees who are honest
and truthful in their applications, they won\'t be overtaken by
employees who have a tendency to inflate their experience. It\'s a
little harder, actually to inflate your experience. They\'re relatively
straight answers. But we will go back to verify your claims of
experience are in, fact, validated in your resume.

So that is essentially what the screens look like when you go in until
you\'re actually doing task statement questions. What you\'re going to
notice is it reads exactly like a 612, for those of who have been around
an extremely long time it will read like an 171. So there\'s nothing new
being asked in the questions, it\'s just you are being asked using
resume format. Before we go o do you have any questions specifically
about the mechanics of BLMJobs Online and the software itself? Anybody?\
\
Caller: This is Joe in Amarillo.\
\
M. Dukes: Joe in Amarillo, how are things in Texas?\
\
Caller: It\'s snowing a little bit. Pretty nice. You mentioned that we
need to include the application information on the resume like at the
top of the resume, some formats call for that. Won\'t that you a \--
effectively limit us to just applying for one job at a time, then?\
\
M. Dukes: The information you need to absolutely include, and I\'ll pull
out my resume and put it over here, obviously the basic information,
name, address, phone number, that is found in the basic questions. The
information about job title, grade, addressed, your supervisor, that is
not. That needs to be part of your resume, if you\'re talking about
BLMJobs Online. So, no, you don\'t need to include anything that
replicates what\'s in the software, but if it\'s not in the software,
and that would include like job titles, grade, that kind of stuff, you
need to make sure it sits in your resume. Did that answer your
question?\
\
Caller: Yes, thank you.\
\
M. Dukes: Any other questions?\
\
Caller: This is Kitty again in Santa Fe. What if we get anxious and hit
the button twice while we\'re putting data into this particular page,
what happens?\
\
M. Dukes: There are a come interesting things in BLMJobs Online, and I
think these are things you\'re going to appreciate as an applicant.
Essentially the information is saved unless you hit delete and obviously
if you hit delete you would have to re input it, but once you submit it
to the system, you can always go back and edit or update it and that
includes when you\'re pre-applying. Let\'s say an announcement came
open, it\'s open for two weeks, it\'s the third day of the announcement
and you\'ve pre-applied, so you submit your regular application but as
you\'re going through the task statements you start to realize maybe
your application needs to be updated. So then you could print out those
task statement questions and then work on your application and amend it
until the closing date. It\'s actually sitting out there and you can
edit it until that last minute, whatever time it is before midnight
eastern time, you can amend your \-- either your task statement answers
or resume. Even if you submit it, you can always amend it up until the
closing date.\
\
S. Long: I\'m not certain, but was your question what if you
accidentally hit the submit button twice?\
\
Caller: Or you hit the forward button or backward button and basically
you get out of the program. Accidentally get out of the program.\
\
S. Long: You can always come back in again. That isn\'t a problem.
Everything you\'ve entered is saved. These things stay forever. And if
you fully submitted it, and they you realize, for whatever reason, you
hit the same submit button again, it will stop it and tell you \-- you
can\'t do that.\
\
M. Dukes: Thank you. I hope between the two of us we were able to answer
your question.\
\
Caller: This is Doug from Washington.\
\
M. Dukes: Yes? Could you step back from your mic a little bit? You\'re
getting a little fuzzy. We would love to hear your question.\
\
Caller: How about cover letters?\
\
M. Dukes: You cannot submit a cover letter WAN electronic application
\-- with an electronic application system. So anything you would want
typically in a cover letter, and those would be things like I\'m a
dynamic person who brings in the really energetic thing, you can put
that at the beginning every your resume if you think that\'s critical.
In fact the resume builder software in USAJobs actually asks you that
question. So that is \-- you just might in a different place. You
wouldn\'t have a cover letter in electronic software.\
\
S. Long: I think probably the point you\'re making, too, though, is if
we are saying right now you\'re limited to 16,000 characters, do you
want to waste that space in just one of these nice to do cover letters
or do you really want to use it to articulate the experiences you\'ve
really had.\
\
M. Dukes: Yeah. So \-- I hope that answered your question. I\'m not sure
that\'s the answer you wanted to hear, but I hope it answered your
question. Anybody else?\
\
Caller: This is Mike Wade in Farmington. By like to know if you can
print out all these initial questions before so you can pre-review them
and use that as a hard copy before you actually submit your answers to
the questions?\
\
M. Dukes: On the basic application software, yes. But I think you\'ll
find from the basic application that\'s relatively straightforward. If
you are talking about the task statements and qualification statements,
yes, you can also print those out. And it might be a legitimate thing if
you are applying for a job that takes you on a different path in your
career and you want to make sure it\'s a legitimate job for you to
pursue and your resume supports what you\'re responding to. So, yes, you
can print that out, both parts every it.\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
M. Dukes: Any other questions?\
\
Caller: Terry in Phoenix. How about if you\'re applying for two jobs in
different areas that close on the same date, say a fire job in one state
and a range con in another state?\
\
Somebody asked this yesterday. We now know the answer to that. This is
going to be a little difficult. If they close at the same date, whatever
resume is in there for you at closing time is what\'s going to be
submitted. So you can\'t submit a resume and do all the task statements
and then go in and change your resume for the second job and submit it
and have different represent resumes show up. Because they actually pull
your resume on what\'s actually in the content at the closing moment of
the announcement, you need to really look at your resume and is there a
way to adjust it to address both jobs. If they close one day apart, you
can obviously change it the second day. But because they\'re closing
exactly the same time, you\'re going to have to be a little careful on
your resume to make sure it addresses both jobs, and I think when
Sherian goes through resume writing there are some hints and tactics on
how you can describe your differing experiences on the same job that are
probably \-- that will probably pop up in that discussion.\
\
S. Long: Right. Yes.\
\
M. Dukes: Probably once again not the answer you wanted to hear, but it
is what \-- the answer to the question. So\... thanks, Terry. Any other
questions out there?\
\
Caller: This is Vicki in Boise. On page 23 it says at the top external
user information, and I guess my question is, are we all external
users?\
\
M. Dukes: I\'m going to throw that question to Barbara. When we were
putting this together we did pull external application information, but,
Barbara, is the initial questions the same whether you\'re currently
federal employee or not?\
\
The questions are the same, but this was an example and I happened to
just choose I\'m a \-- so, no, if you\'re going in as a current
employee, you\'ll show up as an internal user.\
\
M. Dukes: So the title is different but the questions are the same. So,
thanks, Barbara for that answer. I\'m glad you picked that up. I
actually, because I had answered all the questions, I didn\'t notice the
title. Thank you for pointing that out. Anybody else have any other
questions? Ok \--\
\
Caller: This is Gretchen in HAVRE. You want to know if a person can be
granted an extension.\
\
M. Dukes: There is a specific regulatory requirement to extend for
veterans coming out of military service. Beyond that, there is no
requirement and, no, you cannot get an extension. Now, Sherian and I
were talking about that for a little bit for those of you \-- that\'s
the biggest advantage, obviously of having Internet. Because you can be
on travel or on vacation and almost anyplace you can go you can get
access to the Internet. So hopefully you wouldn\'t need an extension.
Now, if you\'re aware of a job coming open and you are going to be, as
Kathy mentioned, at fire camp and you can\'t \-- it\'s going to be a
small fire camp and there may not be Internet access, though there
should be, but if there isn\'t and you know a job will open two days
after you leave, it might be worth contacting the personnel office and
asking if the task statements are ready to go, could they send that to
you and essentially we would have to have you submit the application
hard copy and we would key your task statement answers. That\'s the best
we can do for it. Extensions right now, because there is such an
availability for Internet and the ability to preposition yourself, there
is no extension possibility other than the one regulatory requirement we
have to maintain which has to do with people coming back \-- in this
case typically from Iraq. So strongly, if you\'re aware of a job coming
open right as you\'re getting ready to leave, talk to that human
resources officer. See if there\'s a way you can do the task statement
answers in advance so they can work with you to get your application
submitted electronically. All great questions. We really appreciate it.
As you get into BLMJobs Online, and you come up with other questions,
which you probably will, please, we\'ve already talked to your HR folks,
they are also going in this, learning how to use this software, so if
you have any questions, please give them a buzz. I know they will be
more than willing to answer it. So I think it\'s time to go on to
resumes now because we have a lot of questions on that.\
\
S. Long: We would be just totally remiss if we didn\'t talk to you some
more about your resumes. Because remember, as we\'ve already indicated
several times here, you\'ve got a limited space, and this is the time
when you\'re going to be selling yourself. Of course, we\'ve already
told you, too, you can do this ahead of time, which is the way that we
were really recommend that you do. When you go out on that website you
will see a block that\'s going to simply say, pre-registration. That\'s
what it is you\'re going to hit and get started in this process. But you
also need to get comfortable writing resumes, and the real key to this
is being very focused and learning to be succinct. Now, in your workbook
we have given you, starting with page 10, quite a few tips about how to
write really good resumes. I\'m not going to go through all those with
you because you\'re certainly capable of reading those things, but
there\'s just a few things I did want to point out to you.

For example, use your own words. Don\'t use those things that are out of
a PD. I guarantee you we all recognize that. What we really want to
know, what the supervisor wants to know, what is it you have done? Also,
I wouldn\'t even worry about using those necessarily complete sentences,
like \"I write reports.\" You would be much better served simply
starting off with the verb saying \"prepare reports.\" That way you\'re
still getting the point across but you\'re not wasting up those
additional characters. And watch out for those long confusing sentences.
I know sometimes I read things that people have written and it just kind
of goes on and on and on. I think what in the world were they trying to
say? Be careful about that kind of thing. Oh, my gracious, yes, be sure
you watch out for those acronyms and colloquialisms that not everyone is
going to understand, and you are, remember, trying to convey
information. So make sure it\'s going to be clear to the reader. There
are really a lot of good books and references out there that can help
you with this sort of thing.

In my own state office we have this particular one for writing the
federal red may. There\'s lots of others out there. So it\'s not like I
would recommend this one only, but as I was going through it, I thought,
you know, there were some great thoughts in there. Also, in \-- I think
it was in December some of you may be getting those e-mails on a daily
basis from the federal employees news digest. Theirs is called \"federal
daily\" and they had a link to an article that was concerning converting
your description into great resume content. We have the website, if
you\'re interested in going out there, because that kind of concisely
puts it down for you. They\'re going to bring that URL up there for you.
It is a little bit longer than the one for BLMJobs Online, so you can
see it\'s that\.... . If you don\'t get all that, feel free to send me
an e-mail. You\'ll find me in the Lotus Notes address book under Sherian
long, and that\'s my name the one spelled very strangely, but go ahead
and I will send you back that URL for it. Another thing I would suggest
you do is contact your own human resources office. They may well have
some things that are there for you that you can use as your reference
guides and get some ideas about how to really handle your own new
resume. Because don\'t forget, that resume that you\'re writing is
really the first impression that someone is going to have of you, and
the question is the way your resume looks now, is that truly the
impression that you want to leave? Do you have any questions concerning
this before we move on to the next part?\
\
M. Dukes: I think one think Sherian put together when we were putting
together the workbook was appendix C which was a three-page resume but
has an extraordinary amount of content and it is, I think, what a lot of
selecting officials would like to see, just that nice tight three-page
resume you put together in appendix C.\
\
S. Long: This particular one we have in there for you is something I had
written up based upon a lot of the information that was in this book
that I was showing you. So you can follow something like that if you
would like to.\
\
Caller: This is Sam in Amarillo. I have a question about converting
private industry information, for those of us who have been outside and
come back. Is there anything you would recommend for that?\
\
S. Long: Part of it is the rules I just indicated. Don\'t use acronyms
and those sort of things. Chances are we\'re not going to understand it.
But as long as it\'s just in terminology that\'s understood, because,
remember, ultimately the one who is going to be looking at this is the
supervisor, and if \-- they\'re going to be in the field of work that
you\'ve been associated with. So they should be able to understand it
pretty well.\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
M. Dukes: One thing I have noticed, because when I\'ve been doing
research in private sector stuff, they talk about level 4, level 3. It
took a while to figure out what that meant. Senior specialist. Lead full
performance, journey level, intermediate, entry level. Those things
actually communicate clearly the level of the position in the
organization. So while our GS grade confuse the private sector, their
levels kind of confuse us, too. So be a little careful on some of those
job title or job level things that don\'t immediately transfer over.\
\
S. Long: I think that\'s a good point. Definitely watch out for those
kinds of titles because we really just don\'t know. Any other question
on resumes? We do have something coming up that\'s really important,
too, and that has to do with your interviews. Melissa is going to talk
about that.\
\
M. Dukes: When Sherian and I were putting this together we both had been
interviewing a lot so I think as I go through this material I\'ll
probably turn to Sherian a go, do you remember when we talked about
that. Interviewing for selection for officials changes when we go to
automated staffing, but \-- its value and significance in the process
does not change. It\'s one of the most important processes we go through
in making a selection, and for you, the employee, it\'s the last big
hurdle. It\'s not the last thing we do. But it\'s the last thing you\'re
personally involved in. We\'ve given you, I think a five-page handout on
different interview techniques, some sample interview questions, some
reasons why people bum out in interviews, and we did a lot of research
on that as well as looking at our own personal experience. In those five
pages I think there\'s a lot of good content and like the resume
information it\'s one of those things you really need to take some time
and review when you\'re getting ready to go to an interview.

One of the things \-- there are a couple of things that we look for in
interviews as selecting officials, particularly now that we\'re dealing
with lots of five-page resumes. We obviously want to go in and explore a
little more deeply with you the technical information you\'ve given in
your resume or the technical information you\'ve claimed in your task
statements. So obviously \-- and a lot of you are probably experienced
with this, we do ask you technical questions to give you a chance to
explore your technical parts of your career. But that is not the primary
or only piece of the interview. A lot of times we\'re really focusing on
personal characteristics, things that are not well evaluated from a
piece of paper. And that could be something like adaptability or
flexibility to very critical personal \-- two very critical personal
characteristics in the federal government. Your ability to influence
others. And those of you who have worked in the field and dealt with
like EISs, pulling data from obviously very conflicting groups and
trying to get them onboard and accept where we\'re taking them is very
hard and very complicated and a lot of that is best obtained in the
interview.

To be perfectly frank that are there are lots of things much happened in
\-- there are lots of things that happen in an interview. A lot of
people when you ask them about themselves, they give you their work
history, when we\'re really wanting to know about you, what kind of
person you are, and those will include those key critical personal
characteristics. I think you can find some of those in the PD but really
if you did a little job analysis, you would probably find out what kind
of personal characteristics we\'re looking for.\
\
S. Long: This is important. I know I\'ve been starting a lot of my
recent interviews with that. Set aside the work experience. Tell me
about you, and it is surprising how many people have not thought about
how they would describe themselves, and this is where you really have
that time to sell yourself relative to those attributes and competencies
that you have that you certainly couldn\'t have put down on a piece of
paper. Maybe it\'s some of those things you typically would have put in
the cover sheet. Now is the time to sell you self on that.\
\
M. Dukes: A lot of people think getting selected for a job is all about
beating the competition and I think Sherian hit the nail on the head.
It\'s about marketing yourself. The person you\'re most likely to beat
in a selection process particularly at the interview is yourself. This
is about marketing you. You\'ve made it to the interview. Obviously you
have a lot of directly related technical experience and you are one of
the best candidates who applied for that job. But now you need to really
focus on marketing. And there are some \-- I think some really key
components to marketing yourself and the first one is that you\'ve done
the research necessary about the job so you ever\' identified the skills
that are needed and that is going and looking at that PD and looking at
all those duties and doing your own job analysis. It\'s kind of
surprising when people read PDs how much more they actually know. It\'s
also possibly about looking at the website, if you\'re applying for a
job where somebody you know knows that selecting official, what are they
like, what are they interested in? So research is very key.

During your interview you\'ve built a really positive image and a
positive attitude, and there are some things that I think are key in the
five pages we talk about on building a positive attitude and positive
image that you aren\'t a negative person, you\'re not bringing a lot of
attitude or agenda items here, you\'re not leaving your job because you
hate working there. That might be why, but you don\'t really share that.
What you share is the positive aspects of yourself and your personality.
One of the things that as we were getting together and we did a lot of
research on this stuff was something I read where you\'ve told good
stories in response to the interview questions. You don\'t say I did.
But you kind of put it in the context and frame of a story. Maybe it\'s
because we\'re HR people and kind of chatty anyway that we like stories
but I have to admit, really respond to people\'s stories during an
interview. It gives me an idea on how they think, what they value, how
they approach things and once again, are they a positive person, will
they be a wonderful asset and addition to my staff.

Another one is that you let the interview know that you have what it is
\-- what they want. They\'re hiring you because they, or whoever they
hire, because they want something specifically accomplished, and that
specific accomplishment requires some specific skills. So you need to
make sure that they know that you have those things that they\'re
looking for. And finally you need to let them know you want the job and
there are many ways to do that. Actually \'did have someone I hired who
told me at the end of the interview, when can I start? But that wasn\'t
at the \-- didn\'t just lay there as a statement. What she was telling
me throughout the response \-- responses to her questions, and she did
talking about going looking at BLM on the net because she never worked
for BLM before, I\'m really interested in your job, and I\'ll I\'d
really like the chance to be assigned those duties. I really want to
work for you. So make sure that they know you want that job. So, you
know, a lot goes on in interviews, and I think Sherian and I both had
lots of experience, and I think she has a good story she wants to share
with you.\
\
S. Long: As Melissa said, I have been doing a lot of interviews. I
suppose in the last couple months I\'ve had to do 30 or 40 different
people, and it\'s really been interesting to me. Certain characteristics
I\'m seeing, you know, typically \-- particularly since we\'re in a
field that could be anywhere in the government, I usually will start off
and ask them, so, are you familiar with BLM and what we do? I was kind
of put off when the first one said, could you spell BLM for me? I
thought, uh-oh, here is somebody who really hasn\'t gotten it. Or
somebody else\'s responses, I never got around to looking at the
website. I thought, hmm, I don\'t think they were really interested. No
preparation to it. The other kind of things are kind of typical
questions, because we can\'t give you a test, there\'s no question about
that, so we will ask you to provide some scenarios us to, it\'s like,
can you describe a situation when you did such and such, and lot of
times I\'m getting nothing but a blank look back. Means they haven\'t
given any thought to what it is that they do, and everybody knows how
complex of something you\'ve handled, and you should be thinking and
preparing yourself in that method. So sometimes I\'ll get, ah, well,
I\'m sure if I ever had something like that, this is what I would do,
and I\'m usually thinking, ok, we\'ll forget that one. So the other
thing that always strikes me is the fact that I\'m asking a question,
sometimes people ask me, could I repeat it again, no problem. But then
I\'ll have those that I\'ve asked the question, and they don\'t even
answer it. They go off on a tangent somewhere and they totally forget,
or maybe they never listened in the first place. So my recommendation to
you is really clue in to what the interviewer is saying to you, make
sure that you understand it, and then answer that question directly.\
\
M. Dukes: I think when we were putting this together one of the
questions that we found that was really cool was, what are your reasons
for success? And we started \-- how would we answer that? One of the
things we decided we had to be careful on is I\'m a hard worker.
Obviously. Everybody is. So what was it that we thought about was really
unique about us? And that\'s what we thought we needed to take that
answer to. So what I\'d like you to do is to take 30 seconds, and this
question is on the top of page 18, and try and answer that question.
What are your reasons for your success? We\'ll come back in 30 seconds.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. I hope you got some good ideas down there. Able to leap
tall buildings in a single bound. Whatever those ideas were. But what we
would like you to do next is to partner up with the person sitting next
to you and we\'re going to give you to do this, one minute for each of
you, practice is what interviewing is all about, so we\'re going to give
you a chance to practice. So take a minute, one of you answer the
question first, practice your answer, and then at the minute change and
the other person gets to practice their answer. So for this exercise,
we\'re going to give you two minutes and then come back and wrap up our
discussion on interviewing. .\
\
M. Dukes: I hope that actually went well for you. But as it \-- I think
shows, you have to kind of step back a minute and think about some of
these questions, how do I really sell myself in a positive way? It goes
back to this about marketing. This is not the time to height your light.
Do you have any other questions about interviewing, that little exercise
kind of showed you that was easy or hard or you had an interesting
response to that? So anything on interviews before we move on? The
bridge is open.\
\
Caller: This is Mike Wade in Farmington again. We have one of the people
who would like to know about body language that\'s either good or bad.\
\
M. Dukes: You know, there\'s actually a lot of research out there on
body language, and I think the \-- probably the couple most important
things are eye contact, but you don\'t have to stare at somebody. You
can just kind of like maintain eye contact, if you\'re thinking, you
don\'t have to stare at them while you\'re thinking, and kind of relax
but not slouching. If you\'re really interested in a lot of body
language stuff, there\'s books out there and things on the web. What you
want to come across as open and approachable and honest. And if you can
do that with your body language, I think you\'re in good shape.\
\
S. Long: You\'re saying something that I think is really important,
because I was talking to one of the ASDs, and he said sometimes it\'s
awkward when we\'re doing interviews because you know, actually \--
particularly when it\'s a BLMer, you know the person and some will come
in and they just kind of lounge there in the chair and they\'re very
casual and they seem to forget that they\'re now in a formal setting. So
that\'s something they are going to look for. I would also recommend
that when they ask you questions you probably don\'t want to roll your
eyes back like that was stupid. That\'s going to say something, too. So
\--\
\
M. Dukes: Respectful is definitely important.\
\
S. Long: Exactly. You want to be somewhat relaxed as opposed to being
terrified. Be confident. You know the work.\
\
M. Dukes: I know a lot of people get concerned on what\'s better,
face-to-face interview or telephone interview. The answer is they each
have their own strengths and weaknesses so one is in reality no better
or worse. There is no requirement to do everybody the same in an
interview. You just do what you can with the candidates, though I know a
lot of people because they can\'t fly individuals in will just prefer to
do telephone interviews with everybody. Personally I like telephone
interviews, when you can roll your eyes and slouch, but more importantly
you can have your application in front of you, you can take notes as
they\'re asking the question, and there are a couple other things. I
think this shows up in one of those five pages f you want to think about
a question and say that\'s an interesting question, let me think about
it, don\'t \-- take think about it for five minutes, but take 30
minutes, take a deep breath. Personally as an interviewee I like
telephone interviews, I have no problem with face to face, but they both
have their strengths and weaknesses. So don\'t be concerned if you think
face to face is better that you end one a telephone interview. It\'s not
better. It\'s just different. But they\'re both equally valuable and you
can still market yourself both ways. Any other questions on interviews?
Or any insights from \-- what are the reasons for your success?\
\
Caller: This is rich from the Washington office.\
\
M. Dukes: Yeah, rich.\
\
Caller: If you receive notification you\'re on the certification list
but knowing it might take one or two months before the interview takes
place, do you recommend notifying selection official if you know them
just to inquire as to how long it\'s going to take?\
\
M. Dukes: A couple things. With QuickHire, one will hope that \-- what
we\'re encouraging managers yesterday and we\'ll encourage them every
time we send them \-- get ready to send them a CERT, if they know we\'re
going to give them the CERT three days after the closing day, book their
calendars off early. One of the supervisors brought up yesterday, by the
time they got the list, the best candidates are gone, which may or may
not be true in every vacancy, but that bodes for why you speed things
up. The other thing is you don\'t want to come across as too pushy. And
if you \-- I would recommend if you have those kind of questions that
you start first and foremost with the HR office, find out if they know
when we\'re expecting to have the interviews, a lot of selecting
officials the reason it takes them a while to set these things up is
their calendars are booked and they find some of the stuff frustrating
because they don\'t have time to talk to individuals. So if you have
that kind of question, I\'d suggest you go to your HR office but we
really are hoping that the process changes at the interview as well and
it happens much more quickly than it does now. That was a good marketing
answer.\
\
S. Long: Yeah, I think so. Besides \-- as an interviewer, then I don\'t
have any problem if somebody were to call and ask me that, saying that
they already know that they were referred and that they\'re going on
vacation, because I certainly don\'t want to have to hold things up
because someone is on leave and I would take that into consideration so
that\'s fine.\
\
Caller: Is this a \-- this is Phil in Las Cruces, New Mexico field
office.\
\
M. Dukes: You\'re echoing a little about that. Could you turn the volume
down on your television? We can\'t hear you real well because of the
echo.\
\
S. Long: This needs to be our last question, too, so we can move
forward. So go ahead.\
\
Caller: They\'re trying to turn it down. I have a question on page 13.
It says, find out much as you can about the interviewer. How do you do
that if they\'re in another state?\
\
M. Dukes: You would be amazed how big your network is in the bureau. You
could also contact the human resources office and find out who the
selecting official is, could they give you any information about them? A
lot of our field offices have web pages that kind of talk a little bit
about the field office. But while you may not personally have had
experience with that individual, I would be very surprised that you
don\'t know somebody who has. But you can start with the HR office and
the Internet and find out a little more about them before you go into
the interview. If there\'s only a little bit you can find, I think
that\'s perfectly ok, as long as you went to the effort. I really don\'t
want someone to come in and say I checked you out and found out you went
to college at \-- so don\'t get too wrapped up on that. But I think now
it\'s time to move onto reference checks which is the next part and this
is the funky part because as critical as it is, it\'s not something
you\'re personally involved in. This is essentially based on your
personal reputation and what you have done before you. In a reference
check, as a selecting official, we\'re usually looking for a couple
pieces of information. One is to find out \-- to validate our
impressions of you and your experiences as well as your abilities on
certain things we talked about in the interview or in your application.
The other thing is to check out you personally on things that we can\'t
get from applications or interviews. Are you a reliable employee? Are
you dependable? Do you work well with others? Are you easy to supervise?
These things are important. I\'m not going to pick somebody who is hard
to supervise no matter how good they are. I don\'t have that interest in
bringing that kind of element into my staff. So I do use reference
checks, and actually I was filling a job not that long ago and had two
candidates, it was a GS-12, and I had somebody who was a GS-12 with the
forest sir, but had somebody with a 11. You would think the Forest
Service person would have been the best candidate, and they were edging
out just because they could hit the ground running as we always like the
most experienced person.

On their reference checked, I asked would you hire this person again. 30
seconds of dead silence. Finally the answer came back, it depended upon
the job, and it was enough for me based on that one response in the
interview \-- in the reference check to not select the candidate. So
while I think a lot of people aren\'t aware of how serious a reference
check is, reference checks are a make and break scenario for a lot of
people and it is all based on history. If you are interested in a
long-term career with the bureau and moving up and around in the
organization, you need to make sure that wherever you go you leave a
positive reputation. Because that reputation will follow you no matter
where you go in the bureau. Sherian?\
\
S. Long: We need to talk about the implementation schedule now, and this
isn\'t a turn key system. Not that it couldn\'t be, it\'s just we\'re
not at that point to be able to. We deployed the system as of 1st of
February. So we have now begun advertising some of the positions using
that BLMJobs Online. But the continual transition will take place over
the next several months, and that\'s because first and foremost we have
to complete building that task statement library. As we mentioned
earlier, this is one for the bureau, so we had the senior person from
each one of the states come together, and they took the initial task
statement training, and then they were sent back to their states with
the responsibility and assignments to develop those for the 38 most
populace series we\'re using in the bureau. And to respond to a question
that we had yesterday, they are \-- there are task statement that are
different depending upon the grade level of the position they were
actually \-- we\'re actually filling.

We\'ve also had to set up some additional training for our HR
specialists, for both the QuickHire software itself as well as in the
task statement training, and when they get back in their offices, and
what they\'re doing is working with subject matter experts, so it\'s
possible maybe even some of you all who are senior specialists in your
particular field, you might even be contacted and asked to help out on
this as well. Now, I haven\'t any doubt that because we have changed not
what we\'re doing but how we go about doing it that you\'ll have some
questions because it did impact some of the policy, and we have just
about finished promulgating all of the policy that is going to be
changing, so let me give you the question and I\'ll respond and
hopefully this will answer most of these things for you. First off, the
question is, what jobs do we have to use QuickHire for? And the answer
to that is it will be for all permanent and temporary positions. We also
as an option may choose to use this for filling detail positions or it
could be for interest announcements or maybe even for recruiting for
SCEP positions, but those are strictly optional based upon the selecting
official. Now, the way it stand for these next few months, if the task
statements are already in the library, then we are going to require that
the job be filled using the BLMJobs Online. If the task statement is
assigned and under development, then it will be already all right for us
to continue to fill the job using traditional methods we do now. So
don\'t throw out your KSAs yet. Then if the task statement is not in the
library and it\'s not been assigned to anyone for the development
itself, then we\'re asking the specialist and the subject matter experts
in that state to step up to that task and to develop them. The bottom
line on this one, of course, is that by 1 October all our jobs are going
to be filled using BLMJobs Online, and how quickly each state is doing
that is going to be dependent upon the training that\'s necessary for
the specialist there. But we anticipate all of that is going to be
completed by March.

Now, I know a question that came up earlier on had to deal with what
about people who either are totally computer illiterate or they don\'t
have any access to the Internet anywhere. The answer to that is that
you\'re required to do electronic. That\'s the way the system works. But
if the person can demonstrate to the HR office that in fact they do not
have this capability, then what we will do is print it all off for them,
we will send it to them, and then they must get that back us to because
we will input it into the system. If you\'re talking about a problem of
just not real good computer literacy, they can call us and we\'ll walk
them through that, letting them know exactly what to \-- button to click
on and that sort of thing. Now, if they are filing non-electronic, you
need to understand they\'re required to provide to us the identical
things that you who are filing electronically do, and that means that
we\'ll have to have all that personal information appeared we\'re going
to have to have the qualification information, their resume has to be
input and must have responses to that task statement.

What happens to that five day mailing if it\'s hard copy? Sorry, but
everyone must meet the same requirements. So if we have sent it to them
hard copy, they\'ve either got to get back to the mail in time for us or
they can fax it into the office. That\'s perfectly acceptable. And that
kind of leads us into that, well, what about those additional papers
that we sometimes require? Maybe it\'s a DD-214 which we\'re using to
verify your veterans preference, or those positive education
requirements where we have to have a transcript? The answer for that one
is that we don\'t have the fax imaging capability yet but we all have
fax machines, so you may use your \-- the fax machine right there at
work and fax it to us in our office, and the telephone numbers for that
will be listed in the vacancy announcement. We must have that
information, though, within the \-- those three business days after it
closes in order to complete our quality control because that is part of
the process. Also on the noncompetitive candidates, we will be referring
all of those, and if for some reason we have 50 noncompetitive canned
dots, all 50 names are going to be referred to the selecting official.

The selecting official will simply follow the merit promotion plan as
far as which of those candidates they may choose to interview. Now, you
can find some of those questions with the answer for you already on page
20. Let me just give you some simple advice when we\'re going through
this process. Read those announcements carefully to make sure that you
have followed all the instructions that are in there. Make sure that you
submit the information that\'s required, and that would include that
supplemental. Don\'t forget about what the closing time is. It\'s based
upon eastern standard time, not where you necessarily are living. And
remember this\... we can\'t accept anything after the closing time. And
it\'s really important we get it because it could result in you simply
being disqualified. Now, I just want to tell you a couple things about
the future of what we have to look forward to in a relatively short
period of time.

Right now we\'ve already told you that there is a \-- this Recruitment
One Stop, and, of course, you can have a resume resident there, and you
need it there if you\'re going to apply for other government jobs, but
right now we also have to have that resume resident in our BLMJobs
Online. They\'re working at having a link there. So we will ultimately
reach the point, and we certainly will let you know when it happens,
where you only have it to have it in Recruitment One Stop because when
you apply for one of the jobs it\'s going to pull that resume right over
there with you. We can expect to see some structured formatting to come
on the resumes, and finally, this should be good news to everybody, we
have a team working on the way our vacancy announcements are written. We
recognize that they probably have a lot \-- or maybe way too much
verbiage in there now that is more HR kind of stuff as opposed to the
way people talk and understand. So they are looking at streamlining
them, making them very consistent in where you can look in the resume
\-- in the announcement for that type of information, and hopefully
they\'ll be much clearer for you. Now, before we close off on this final
part, we\'re going to open the bridge and ask if there are any other
questions that you have?\
\
M. Dukes: Just one thing, I know some of you are a probably a little
concerned, will the broadcast go down? We know it\'s 11:00 here and
we\'re expected to go off the air now, we do have a few extra minutes.
Just a handful. To wrap up and take last-minute questions before we
close off. So just recognize we can go a little bit over because your
participation is important.\
\
Caller: This is kit knee New Mexico. I have two questions. One is, how
long will the resume stay in the system? Do you have to log on in order
to keep it active?\
\
S. Long: The answer is it stays forever. At this point in time it will
be in there forever. We can\'t get rid of it.\
\
Caller: Thank you. Second question is: You\'ve been through training
forever an ever. How far back would you recommend when you list your
training one should go?\
\
S. Long: Let\'s say you\'re a senior specialist now. Those things you
were doing in your basic courses early on, that\'s not going to be that
pertinent at this point in time. So I wouldn\'t go way back into the
early years.\
\
Caller: Thanks.\
\
S. Long: Any other questions?\
\
Caller: This is Laura from Tulsa. When is VANNA white going to come and
turn the letters back there?\
\
S. Long: The letters \--\
\
Caller: On the screen behind you, on the squares?\
\
S. Long: Oh, I see, because we have all of this stuff. Good question. No
answer.\
\
M. Dukes: We\'ll have to ask Marilyn that one. Any other questions from
anybody out there? Looks like I think we\'ve covered everything they
wanted to know.\
\
S. Long: That\'s good. We just have a last couple final thoughts to
cover with you \--\
\
Caller: Thank you very much. It was very helpful. This is rich from
Washington.

S. Long: Great. Glad to hear that. Some of the issues that you brought
up early on was the KSA statements, not liking them, the fact it takes
so long to get any of this stuff done, the concern about some of the
perception of pre-selection and KSAs that weren\'t job related. I think
owl our explanation you recognize although we can\'t fix everything,
there\'s a lot of these issues that are going to be taken care of using
our new BLMJobs Online. We just want to remind you as employees what
you\'re going to be getting out of the benefit is you\'re going to get
electronic notification back that you\'ve got your application in as
well as your status we\'re going to have consistent evaluation across
the bureau. It will not be subjective judgment call based on a lot of
different specialists. Certainly you will have a lot faster referral
from the time it closes until the time we get that certificate to the
manager themself.

As we told the supervisors there are several things that are good for
them and it\'s also going to be good for the HR office. Now Melissa
mentioned that these good interviewing skills are absolutely essential,
and recognizing that the bureau is working on some training to help you
guys to hone some of your interview skills. So watch for the information
that will be coming up to let you know where you can be able to sign up
for it. Finally, I just want to remind you one more time, and encourage
you strongly, go out there onto the website and get yourself
pre-registered for the bureau\'s BLMJobs Online, and that website again
is WWW.BLM.gov/careers. One other thing. When you\'re out on that
website there is an area there you could click on that\'s for frequently
asked questions, and if you go out and look you might find some things
that have been kind of rolling around in your head that you didn\'t want
to ask on the air but I think you\'ll find it really helpful. Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: I think at this stage we would very much like to thank Marilyn
Johnson, assistant director of the bureau for human resources management
for her kind and encouraging words at the beginning of the broadcast. We
would very much like to thank our producer Leon Thomas, the director Kim
Menning and all the folks here at the National Training Center in the
production room and the booth for all their hard work and effort through
the least few days. We couldn\'t have done it without them.\
\
S. Long: And most of all we want to thank you for your participation. We
know that you guys are all really busy, too, and it\'s hard to take a
couple hours out of your day to sit through this process. We really
appreciate all those of those brave enough to use the button and talk to
us. We wish you the very best in your careers. Bye-bye.\
\
M. Dukes: Bye!