Interested in a Job with the US Government? You’ll Need a Federal Resume
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Of course, there’s a difference between a federal resume and a resume for the private sector! Here I interview Kathryn Troutman, the author of the Federal Resume Guidebook about the essential differences, the thought process behind them, and how to write one.
Jeff Altman 00:04
So my guest today is Kathryn Troutman. Kathryn has helped 1000s find great paying jobs with federal and state governments through her books and through her practice. Her award-winning Federal Resume Guidebook (I’m sorry if it’s blurry. But the blur feature on Zoom is working very well today) continues to be one of the top-selling resume books in America. Now in its seventh edition as of June 2022, it’s had the highest sales number this year to date of any of the resume books sold in America according to Bookscan, with almost twice the sales of its closest competitor Kathryn, welcome. Thanks for making time tonight.
Kathryn Troutman 00:50
Thank you so much. You’re very welcome.
Jeff Altman 00:53
So we’re talking about federal resumes and federal resume versus non federal resume? Like, what’s the difference between the two?
Kathryn Troutman 01:04
Oh, my gosh, there’s so many differences. But the number one difference is the length of the resume. Private sector resumes are average two pages. One or two, mostly, two. Federal resumes are on average five pages, or maybe longer, because people need to add more content in writing. Because the HR people human resources people have to see the words on the page to check off the box. So if you’re a supervisor, you need to say how many people, what kind of people, where private sector, you might just say, supervisor. But you have to give more detail for federal. So length is the biggest difference. The second biggest difference is it has to match the announcement. But that’s not really different. Private sector, you have to have that apple to apple thing also.
Jeff Altman 01:50
So when you say announcement, you’re talking about the job ad, the job description, something along those lines. And it’s interesting, because the public, sorry, private sector, they don’t want to see everything. They want to get an idea that you’ve matched the requirements. But they work with the assumption that when they interview you to confirm all the details there. And you’re saying the federal resume . . . state, as well, want to see everything.
Kathryn Troutman 02:17
On paper, black and white. That’s right. If you don’t put it in black and white, that shows that you have one year or three years of specialized experience, you might not get best qualified. It’s very important.
Jeff Altman 02:29
So let’s say we’re talking about a three-year person. Would you have a summary area that says three years of experience, or three plus years of experience working with whatever it is that’s in the announcement?
Kathryn Troutman 02:45
You can if you want, but better than that would be to just go to the work history section in the resume and show that you had job number one is one year of experience in this field of work at this level. Job Number two is two years experience in this field at that level. So they really want to see the dates in the work history section that shows the three years. That’s where they want to look
Jeff Altman 03:11
Fascinating and very different than the private sector. So how does the government respond if there’s a gap between the two jobs where it’s been one year and two years, but in the middle? There’s another position in there? How do they tend to think of that?
Kathryn Troutman 03:32
They don’t care. They don’t care? No, no, no, no.
Jeff Altman 03:36
And private sector, many firms will.
Kathryn Troutman 03:40
Federal they don’t care. They just want to see that specialized experience at that next level below. That’s what they want to see in their eagle eye looking for it. And that’s what they want to see. And if you have gaps in dates, where college or kids or something . . . doesn’t matter at all. Just know, skip it.
Jeff Altman 03:59
Fabulous. Fabulous helps women a lot because women in the private sector often have a disadvantage by that period of time that they were taking care of kids.
Kathryn Troutman 04:11
That’s too bad, right?
Jeff Altman 04:13
So if someone’s writing a resume, what should they prepare in advance in order to be able to write the resume?
Kathryn Troutman 04:23
Well, it’s very good. Actually, if you go to USAJobs, that’s a website where all the jobs are posted, or most of them
Jeff Altman 04:31
Kathryn Troutman 04:31
Yeah. Okay, go there. First thing set up your profile. There’s a profile thing you have to set up, answer a bunch of questions. And there you will find a builder a resume builder. And here’s why it’s important because a federal resume if you do not include month and year, to month and year, and hours per week, it’s over right there. So the builder prompts you to put in the required fields. It’s very helpful to do that. So go ahead over there to that builder and start building the resume. The dates, the places, education. And I’ll take you an hour for sure. That’s the starter version of the resume right there.
Jeff Altman 05:15
So do you take an hour or because if you take an hour, it takes other people three?
Kathryn Troutman 05:22
Well, I’m, they’re not done in one hour, that’s just the first hour. That’s just a setup. Let’s just do that.
Jeff Altman 05:32
And I gotta call us for a second because I realized they’re applying through a system. And apparently, the system does not really do adequate screening that’s ultimately reviewed by a human who makes the actual decision versus in the private sector, you know, the classic complaint about an applicant tracking system is it’s called the black hole for a reason. And resumes go in and never come back out with interviews. And you’re saying that all it’s doing is accumulating data but it’s not being, shall we say, acted upon by the system? It’s humans who make those decisions?
Kathryn Troutman 06:10
No, no, it’s not. You just begin the building there. And then there’s more to do, but nobody looks at it there. It’s just you’re building your own resume. The only way they will look at your resume is if you actually submit for a job. You have to find a job and then more to do, then submit, then somebody will look. Some human person, not an AI.
Jeff Altman 06:32
So, again, just making sure I’m hearing this, right, you’re saying this is just like, I’ll use another equivalent, a LinkedIn profile that resides on usa.gov. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. And then once you’ve applied for a specific job, someone may actually look at the resume and the profile, maybe the . . .
Kathryn Troutman 06:57
No, don’t look at the profile. No,
Jeff Altman 06:59
okay. They just look at the resume and they make a decision at that point. So what’s the purpose of the profile? If they’re not gonna look at it?
Kathryn Troutman 07:08
Well, I don’t know.
Jeff Altman 07:10
Thank you! I love honest answers!
Kathryn Troutman 07:14
They let you do it, you know, they just want to collect data. Now, I understand that they might start mining data out of the profile, such as resume or education, or keywords or something. I don’t know if they’re doing that or not, but just just do the profile, and who knows what they do with it. But when you go to apply for a job, you’re gonna have to answer some more personnel questions. So there’s one thing before they look at the resume. So let’s say you submit. Before they look at the resume, there’s another aspect of the application, and it’s called the assessment questionnaire. It’s a . . . it’s a test, a skills test. And you have to skill yourself at certain skills that are important for the job. So they will ask you your skill in writing and then you have the skill yourself A through E. E is usually the expert, but not always. So you skill, you mark your skills, there could be 15 questions. And if you check off the highest level, that means you got 100. Now, if you don’t check off the highest level, and you check off middle way, your score might be 70. And so then your resume would not be looked at. So that assessment questionnaire is very important in this process, because you need to know that it exists, and score yourself the best that you can based on your background.
Jeff Altman 08:34
Do you think it gives you a sense of how you should look at your skills? Well, I’ll use oral communication, just for lack of anything better. So if someone is not an expert in communicating in English, and let’s say it’s an A to E scale, do they define what a, b, c and d are? ,
Kathryn Troutman 08:57
Oh, yes! I’ll tell you what it is– A. I don’t know anything about this. B, I have education in this, but I’ve never done it. C is I do this work, supervised. D is I do that work independently. And E is I’m an expert, or I’m a supervisor or I help other people with this task.
Jeff Altman 09:18
Beautiful. I’m glad they define that because it’s so easy to cheat in theory.
Jeff Altman 09:25
You know what people do more than anything is they deflate? They choose to choose D instead of E because they see the word supervisor or expert and they say ‘Oh, I’m not super I’m not expert, D. Well, if they say D on 15. That means they got a 75 score, and they are not good then. It’s too bad.
Jeff Altman 09:45
Interesting. So folks, what you’ve just heard is, don’t be nice.
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Kathryn Troutman 09:51
Don’t deflate.
Jeff Altman 09:53
Don’t deflate your experience or delegitimize your background. The probability is you’re more expert than you think you are. All those criticisms that you’ve heard out there, lies that you’ve started to believe, and just give yourself the E that you deserve? Because otherwise <buzz> through the trapdoor, right?
Kathryn Troutman 10:16
Well, the E level is really awesome because it says, ‘Do you help other people?’ Or ‘do you train other people in this work?’ A lot of people help other people with oral communication skills. They might give me tips on how to speak or do a briefing or answer customer service calls, handle complex cases, other people would help them with this.
Jeff Altman 10:37
When they get to the interview. That’s not the topic today, folks, it’s really about the federal resume. But if or when they get to the interview, are they going to be asked to give examples of what they’ve done along those lines? Typically, I know there are always exceptions.
Kathryn Troutman 10:54
They might. We don’t know for sure. But they might have ‘can you tell me about a time when you gave a briefing or customer service orientation for staff? What were you doing? How did it turn out?
Jeff Altman 11:06
Gotcha. Thank you. This is great. With education, what sort of things? Do they want to see an education? And how should it be presented on the resume? At the beginning? At the end? Where does the system or where do the screeners like to see it?
Kathryn Troutman 11:25
Well, there’s a couple of things. Number one, if you have a recent degree, or a new degree that you’re trying to change your career moving into that direction, education should be at the top above work history. For sure. They like to see the courses that are in the major, the title of the courses should be written on the resume, typed out. Major Courses 123456. They would also like to see any technical skills that a person has gained in college. New skills, software programs. So you need to add them and type them on the page. They might also want to see if it’s a Master’s or PhD. The name of your thesis or your dissertation, and the work that you did to write this important document. Like eight sentences. Eight sentences. The title, of course. If the person had a capstone project in their major, they want to see that the title of the capstone and the work that they did with a capstone. So education is built out in federal resumes, recent education, recent, like five years or so . . . something like that. Private sector resumes–it’s two lines name of your major, degre,e school, city. That’s it. Federal, it could be a half a page with all this information that’s relevant because here’s the thing. The managers, if you do get forwarded to the manager, they won’t see your transcripts. And they might want to know what courses you had in this major. They get are going to give you the education to do this work. Then one more thing, very important. I recommend using the builder, but there’s a really big problem. Education is at the end with the builder. So what you do is you print preview, the resume, when you put it all in there. Print preview, copy it out, put it into a Word file, move education to the top, and you submit with a print, copy and upload. So your education will stand out.
Jeff Altman 13:28
Sweet, great tip. And again, you know, for many, like I’m someone who’s, I got my masters in 99. So that’s more than 20 years past, they wouldn’t really care about the courses I took. Maybe. And there was no thesis, a master’s in social work, no thesis. So interesting the way that it’s done on the federal level. What other differences do you know of that people should be aware of in preparing their information or writing the resume for the federal resume?
Kathryn Troutman 14:11
Well, the vacancy announcements in USAJobs are kind of long and complicated. And people don’t know which section of the resume is of the announcement is the most important to match to their resume. That’s the key. The section in the announcement called qualifications or qualifications required. That’s a section that you want to really pay attention to to match the resume. And that announcement will usually say, your resume must include one-year specialized experience in 1234–like four or five things that they want to see one year. That is what you have to match. And what I do to match for my clients when I’m coaching, is I’ll take two or three words out of each sentence, in that section, and I feature those words in the resume. And my resume format, I call the outline format, because I make an outline out of out of those words. And that becomes the basis of my duty section for the resume. It’s just like a mirror of the announcement. So the HR person who wrote the announcement will see their words in the resume, not a full paragraph, not a whole sentence because you don’t want to do plagiarizing whatever, but three words, okay, three words. So you might see project management, teamwork, problem-solving, and maybe customer services. Those would be the four skills. Those words in my format would be all caps. And there would be a little paragraph for each.
Jeff Altman 15:49
And in private sector, you know, I tell people always look at the qualification section section of description, because that’s what they care about. You know, if you have the experience, you make sure it’s within the resume, and thus you’re tailoring the resume. But the thing about capitalize is interesting.
Kathryn Troutman 16:09
You know, the HR people are looking at the resumes on a computer screen, and about six by six inches or something. And they need to see those words, they need to see the dates, so they can see the one year or whatever the years they want, and then see those words at that level. And that will help you to get best qualified, and it will help you to get referred to a manager. So you want to make the resume very readable because of the computer, eyes, human person sitting in a chair like me right now.
Jeff Altman 16:42
Interesting. So I’m gonna use the project manager example. Let’s say they’ve worked for this organization for four years. Maybe project manager was one of the four years, would you put project manager in all caps? And then in parenthesis next to one year to be clear? Or would you just let it slide that the four years might cover you there?
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Kathryn Troutman 17:07
Yeah
Jeff Altman 17:08
Cool. Yeah.
Kathryn Troutman 17:10
Just put the dates up there and the right month and year, month and year, 40 hours. Well, you gotta say 40 hours a week, you have to have your hours per week. That’s another big no, no. But the builder will prompt you to put that as mandatory. So then you put your four paragraphs, and then you need to have a section called key accomplishments. And that’s when I want to know, okay, you say you have project management experience. Prove it. Tell me the projects that you managed, I need the name of the project, the scope of the work, your role, actions you took and results, maybe eight sentences or seven sentences describing a specific project. What you did and the results the customer? I want specifics.
Jeff Altman 17:53
Gotcha. And it sounds like the way you stated that, what Kathryn sounded like she was saying to me is like, follow the star format. And just put it into the resume. Don’t wait for them to invite you in. Because you’re never going to be invited in.
Kathryn Troutman 18:08
Yeah, that’s right. And the government, we use, we use CCAR format, which is same as Star. CCAR stands for the context, the challenge, the action and the results. It’s the same Ias STAR, though,
Jeff Altman 18:20
Yeah. What else should people be ready for when putting their resume together? And by the way, for those of you who are going to be listening to this as a podcast, she has a sample resume up on the wall behind her? And for those who are on video, yeah, there’s a resume there and doesn’t look radically different than
Kathryn Troutman 18:39
That’s a student resume there . That the student resume and all of that information you see, right there is college.
Jeff Altman 18:45
Gotcha. The whole thing is college. Right.
Jeff Altman 18:49
Gotcha. So back to you. So what else should people be doing with your federal resume to get results?
Kathryn Troutman 18:58
Well, it’s really good if they at the very top of the resume, if you have technical skills that you need to do for your work like you do in your job, like your audio visual podcast work, put a skill section at the top of the resume. Because a lot of people blend their skills into the text in the work history and education and everywhere. Don’t do that anymore. Now you’ve got to have a separate section called skills or technical skills, computer skills, software skills, and have it as a separate section. If you have certifications that are important for your work, like OSHA, or you know, even a driver’s license or whatever your certifications are, put that at the top also, because they’re gonna want to see those. Very, very important. And then, start building the work history section, which is the meat and potatoes of the resume, and go back in detail 10 years and then after 10 years, shortening it. They don’t need to see a long detail of a job that you held 15 years ago, they might want to see, you know, for four lines but not have a page. That’s where people get writing too much.
Jeff Altman 20:07
Yeah, I heard you say earlier to emphasize the last 10 years. And the further back you go, because there are some of us who are not people with 10 years of experience anymore. We have significantly more. The stuff that you did when George W. Bush was president is less relevant for you getting interviews than anything else. Cool. What else? What else?
Kathryn Troutman 20:33
Let’s see. Well, the accomplishments will go back to that, to the STAR and CCAR format. Most of the resumes that I see as a federal career coach, come to me with no accomplishments at all. No, it’s all duties. It’s all position description stuff. Then sometimes when I look at the resume closely, I see an accomplishment in the middle of a paragraph or in the middle of a bullet. It’s not visible. It’s not visible. You must feature your accomplishments if you want to get referred to a manager. If you want to get an interview. Accomplishments are critical to get further up the line.
Jeff Altman 21:17
So how do you think someone should feature accomplishments? Is it as simple as bolding them
Kathryn Troutman 21:25
You type the words Key Accomplishments in all caps, colon, and then you write 123 with bullets, and those little accomplishments are five sentences. They’re not a one-liner? No one-liners, no one-liners? Not in the government.
Jeff Altman 21:40
Beautiful, and that’s per company. Is that the preferred? What do you tend to do for the overall resume? Key Accomplishments?
Kathryn Troutman 21:50
Oh, no, no, per company. Keep it in the work history. Keep it anchored to the dates where it was done. Anchored to the dates?
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Jeff Altman 22:01
What I’m hearing you say, repeatedly, and I’m testing it, just to make sure I’m understanding it, is that the government wants meticulous detail of what you did, how you went about doing it, the dates involved, the number of hours per week that you work, because there is a difference in value to someone who’s working 10 hours a week, versus 40 to 60 hours a week, doing that kind of work. And they just want to know. They don’t want to do a lot of work digging it out of you.
Kathryn Troutman 22:37
They won’t do it. You’re done. It’s done. And here’s here’s some really good news. This is not a black hole situation. You will get emails from OPM, that will tell you
Jeff Altman 22:52
the Office of Personnel Management?
Kathryn Troutman 22:53
Yes. They will tell you what’s happening with your resume. Make sure you look in your spam folder. There’s no doubt they’re gonna go there. So look at the emails and it will say right on the email, you were found to be ineligible, maybe, because maybe you did something wrong. You did not show the one year specialized. Or it might say you were found to be best qualified, and referred to a supervisor.
Jeff Altman 23:21
Miracle upon miracles! Hallelujah!
Kathryn Troutman 23:25
I know, it’s like a party. And so if you see that word referred, that means the resume is on the desk of the manager. Wow.
Jeff Altman 23:35
Who gets resumes on desks Come on!
Kathryn Troutman 23:39
They actually do that. They print them. That’s why the USAJobs, the builder resumes are not so good, because get the printed form. So then, if you’re on the desk, and we don’t know how many they forward. It could be 10 or 15, or 30, or 50. Or I don’t know for sure it depends on the job. So you’re on the desk, and the manager is going to look at all of them. I’m hoping. And they decide who to interview. They might interview five to 10 people, maybe five or seven. You want to be chosen for the interview. You really do. You want that interview. So the accomplishments and the technical skills and the way the resume is presented, it’s easy to read. It’s very important for you to get picked out for the interview. Very important. So my format that’s in that book you just showed is really good. That one there
Jeff Altman 24:33
And thus what we’re talking about, a five page resume, student resumes probably shorter
Kathryn Troutman 24:39
Yeah, three pages. Yeah.
Jeff Altman 24:41
Three for a student? I worked at a pool
Kathryn Troutman 24:45
That’s one education section right there. That’s one. Almost Well . . . their skills are up there at the top and everything. So yeah, three pages for student would be probably fine.
Jeff Altman 24:57
Five for more experienced person. Yeah, how? What’s the maximum like, you think someone with experience should consider?
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Kathryn Troutman 25:06
Well, some people write much longer resumes than that. But you know, these poor HR people, I think the max 10. The max NASA accepts is a 10 page resume, it says right in their announcements and pages.
Jeff Altman 25:18
Wow. And you’re noticing folks, I’m saying, Wow, a lot, because this runs counter to everything I was ever trained in my 40 plus years of doing search related work. It’s the exact opposite. Like if I’m told, for students, a one page resume is more than enough. Kathryn’s saying three. If I’m told two to two and a quarter is enough for a veteran person, she’s saying five, and in some cases, as many as 10. It’s exactly the opposite. And who would care if you work 40 hours a week in the private sector.
Kathryn Troutman 25:54
In federal, if you don’t put down 40, nobody even looks at your resume. It’s mandatory. A lot of people make that mistake. I wish I knew how many. A lot of people don’t really believe month and year, hours per week. They don’t touch the builder. And they’re done. They’re out.
Jeff Altman 26:09
So you might have someone who isn’t sure of the month? Because it’s like seven years ago. Is there a way of communicating that you’re not sure like? Fascinating.
Kathryn Troutman 26:23
Figure it out. The best guess you got.
Jeff Altman 26:26
Okay, that’s fine. In private sector with a resume, I tell them next to the date to put approx which signals ‘I’m not sure.’ You’re saying just guess. If confronted later on, like, is the government going to do a background check?
Kathryn Troutman 26:42
Oh, yeah.
Jeff Altman 26:43
And if they find something incongruent in the dates,are they’re gonna just <buzz>
Kathryn Troutman 26:48
the resume is not the security document. You have to fill something else later, with dates. And you might have to research the dates a little bit deeper for security clearance. Resume is not a security clearance document.
Jeff Altman 27:00
Fabulous. Thank you. This is fabulous. What haven’t we covered yet that we really should?
Kathryn Troutman 27:06
Oh, let’s see. The interview is another test. You know, they score you one to five on your answers. They ask like seven questions. The questions are not yes or no questions. They are open, open questions. Tell me about a time when you lead a project and the project had a problem with it? What was the problem? How did you resolve it? And what happened? So they asked these multipart questions that have to do with the job. So you have, if you have accomplishments in your resume, you will probably be pretty good. But if you don’t have accomplishments already written down in the resume, you might not do well with the interview because it’s storytelling, big time. Just storytelling.
Jeff Altman 27:50
Gotcha. Yeah. Kathryn, this is fabulous. How can people find out more about you, the book, it’s blurry, It’s a workbook, folks. It’s yeah, it’s not a little tiny book. It’s a workbook.
Kathryn Troutman 28:05
My website is resume-place.com. And you can find the book there. I highly recommend the book. I do . . . the samples that are in the book work have worked. Every every sample in the book is a real person who I asked that I put your story and your case in the book. So they’re real. They are in the outline format with all cap words like I described. And they show accomplishments under key . . . it’s a visual picture of what your resume should look like. Federal. Very important. VERY.
Jeff Altman 28:38
What’s cool is she also shows you resumes that don’t work. The before and after area pretty profound.
Kathryn Troutman 28:50
Right in the very beginning of the book. I have four before and afters and it’s studying. skinny little bullets, and then a big block of words and then awesome outline format. Right there.
Jeff Altman 29:03
Kathryn, this has been fabulous. Thank you. And folks, we’ll be back soon with more. I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. Hope you enjoyed this interview. If you did and you’re watching on YouTube, share it, leave a comment, do something that lets people know it was worthwhile. I also want to remind you visit my website, TheBigGameHunter.us There’s a ton in the blog that’s going to help you with job search, hiring more effectively, management leadership, resolving workplace issues, career change, a whole bunch of stuff there that will help you. And you can find puot about my courses which you can rent or buy, my books and guides. Again a lot there to help you.
Jeff Altman 29:42
Lastly, connect with me on Linkedin at linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter Have a terrific day and most importantly, be great!
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching, and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2400 episodes.
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