The Essential Parts of an SES (Senior Executive Service) Federal Job Resume - How is Yours?
September 30, 2008
If youre applying for a position as a senior executive with the federal government, you need a top-notch SES federal resume in order to be interviewed for a senior executive position.
When the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 was written, the people who framed it envisioned the Senior Executive Service (SES) as a corps of senior executives with solid executive expertise that valued public service and had a broad perspective of government. They intended the SES to be a body of executives, not a group of technical experts. The point is that successful candidates for SES jobs should function well as executivesand executives are paid to oversee technical experts, not to compete with them.
Leaving aside for the moment the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs) that define the competencies required for entry to the Senior Executive Service and are used by many departments and agencies in selection, performance management, and leadership development for management and executive positions, lets focus on the two most important parts of a federal SES resume:
Your profile (also called a career summary) and your achievements.
A profile or career summary is a short statement that highlights your abilities in a manner that makes it easy for anyone reading it to speedily pick up on them. Because a single job posting may easily draw thousands of applicants, your profile has to stand out from the herd to get noticed. Your profile should be a short professional biography in no more than 10 lines.
For example, a good profile statement might read, Master of Business Administration with substantial operations management experience. Demonstrated capability for supplying the highest level of corporate services while significantly reducing costs. Fully conversant with all facets of purchasing, security, managing staff, planning facilities and cost accounting. Trilingual English, Spanish and Italian. Reduced overhead by 25% by instituting new competitive bidding procedure that improved quality of service.
The achievement part of an SES federal resume should list your accomplishments in a brief, easy-to-understand format that avoids generalizations and uses numbers to describe the results of your actions.
For example:
Designed and wrote new guidelines, policies, flow charts and employee handbooks that increased productivity and saved $40,000 annually
Received award for improving employee performance by 25%
Coordinated continuing education conference that improved managements ability interact positively with workers
Reduced the number of grievances filed by workers by 60% by obtaining their input for and involving them in management decisions
Whatever your SES career objective, what matters most is concise, perfectly crafted SES federal resume copy that meets the criteria of the post for which you are applying in a fashion superior to those of your competitors for the job.
This level of resume writing is best left to professional resume specialists who can take your information and package in a winning way.
Federal-Resume-Writers.com specializes in writing federal, military and SES resumes including OPM approved, Resumix, KSA and ECQ documents. With certified federal resume writers on staff and government application specialists, and some of the finest editing staff in the industry, Federal-Resume-Writers.com has effectively helped thousands of clients break into a career in the federal government or obtain a promotion from within the US government. Any reproduction or reprint of this article must include this information.
Federal Government Resume
A resume is a personal and professional branding. It details exactly who you are professionally, and displays many personal identifiers about you as a person. It is essential to think of your resume as a personal selling tool. You must be certain tha...
When Do You Need a Military Conversion Resume: Getting Ready for Civilian Life
When you leave a military career, you have a diverse and unique set of skills and work experience, but probably need a military conversion resume. The things you can do are valuable in the civilian workforce but only if private-sector employers unde...
What is a Federal Resume and How To Write One
The federal resume is one of three documents required for official applications for jobs within the federal government. The other two are the OF-612 and the traditional SF-171 and its hard sometimes to figure out which agency wants what document, b...
How Do I Write a Resume Objective?
One of the most important parts of writing a resume is making the resume objective. The objective is usually immediately below the top section of a resume . Most often the resume objective contain a few sentences summarizing the position you are appl...
The Dynamics of a Navy Resume
Writing a Navy resume is very similar to writing a resume for any other military branch. In most cases, the individual has just been discharged from the Navy and they are looking for a job in the civilian sector. These individuals must remember that...
Your Resume is Outdated
Its a fact. If you have not looked for a job in the last few years, and even if you have, you probably dont know how to do it. So please read on. It could mean the difference between being called in for an interview and being passed over for a more s...
Sample Medical Sales Resumes - An Effective Beginning
The beginning section of a resume is very important as it sets up the rest of the document. For example, here is a sample beginning of one of the most effective medical sales resumes Ive seen. It was modeled after a similar resume that was successfu...
What Mobile Car Wash Companies are Looking for in a Resume
There are many large mobile carwash companies and mobile auto detailing companies in the United States of America. Many of these companies dominate large regions or large cities. A mobile carwash Company or a large mobile auto detailing company con...
Effective Resume and Cover Letter Writing - Part One
To begin, make a decision to discard any former knowledge learned about the rules of resume and cover letter writing. People commonly become stuck in bad writing habits from a time gone by.It is almost a certainty that since you last wrote your resu...
How To Create An Online Resume
This is the age of the Internet. No matter what type of job you are looking for, it is necessary that you have a copy of your resume online. An online resume or digital resume saves time and energy. Your resume website link can be easily emailed to a...