“You’ll need to put in an SF-182 for that.”
She furiously jotted it down in her UNICOR government-issued notepad.
“Are you writing that down?” her supervisor asked.
“Yes, I got it,” she confirmed. “But where can I find it?”
“Ask around.”
“Oh, ok.” She paused. “Where should I send it?”
“T2.” He responded quickly without consideration before realizing he had caught himself in an agency acronym. He clarified, “The Travel and Training Team.”
“Oh, isn’t that four T’s?” He dismissed her question to allow her time to catch up on her notes. She was afraid to ask her next question, “Where can I…?” In an attempt to not look foolish she attempted to preempt the inevitable, “Should I ask...”
“...around. Yes.” Her supervisor confirmed. He was determined to be helpful and eager to respond to her question before she even finished asking it.
“Any other questions?” He questioned.
“No.” She lied following up with a meager, “thanks.”
“Glad I could help.”
Hannah was hired four months earlier as an environmental engineer at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s San Francisco office. Her degree was in biomedical engineering, but HR did not have the relevant Position Description so it was the best they could do. In school, Hannah had specialized in designing medical devices that could perfectly and precisely complement the human body without suffering from rejection. It was the perfect analogy for the rejection she was currently facing trying to acclimate to her new position.
On the day of her job interview, the hiring supervisor was not available due to a last-minute illness, so a suitable Human Resources Representative led a panel of diverse experts in fields unrelated to the job she was being interviewed for. After a lackluster interview, Hannah was certain she would not be called again, but, to her surprise she was contacted several weeks later with a job offer.
“Is there not a follow-up interview?”
“Oh, no need. We are in quite a rush to complete this hiring action, actually.” The specialist assured her.
“Wouldn’t the supervisor like to meet me?”
“Yes, he would! But unfortunately it would just delay the process.” She reassured Hannah. “I informed him you were a very qualified candidate.”
“Really?” Hannah was surprised since she really felt terrible after the interview. Perhaps she had done better than she remembered.
“Yes, certainly! We have positions to fill and you were our strongest and only choice!”
Hannah found the entire process confusing. The Environmental Protection Agency was her dream job. She had always wanted to work there, but had been dissuaded from applying in the past due to the convoluted process. Yet here she was being offered a job without having done so much as put forward an application.
The process was explained very clearly by her future colleague Jeff. She had been referred to him by a friend of a friend who knew she was looking for opportunities in the field.
“You see, for any external competitive position, the agency gives preferential treatment to military veterans. The job is announced publicly on our website, but out of the hundreds of applications we receive, the only ones we are allowed to review are the veterans. Only until we make a job offer to every veteran who applies are we allowed to even interview any non-veteran.”
“What if the veteran isn’t qualified?” Hannah asked incredulously.
“As long as they have a relevant degree then they are qualified. It’s fair this way.” He remarked sardonically. “So yeah I would tell you to apply, but there’s not really a point.”
Out of the hundreds of applicants already in the deep end of the pool, Hannah was not one of them. “That’s too bad. I’ve been thinking about EPA since I saw your booth at a job fair a few years back.”
“Job fair?” Jeff perked up. “Did you leave your resume?”
Hannah reflected for a moment. “Yeah, probably. Why?”
“Huh.” Jeff considered for a moment. “You see, when we become too understaffed, they’ll create or exploit a loophole to get a bunch of people in the door. In turns out, a program was authorized by Congress years ago that allowed agencies to hire graduating students straight out of college. They called it the Federal Career Jumpstart Program. It was rarely used at first, but once hiring managers caught wind that it was a way to get fresh hires in the door, we were participating in job fairs like crazy. Problem was that the timing of fairs in the Spring meant that it wasn’t enough time to get folks onboarded by the end of the Fiscal Year when the vacancies were swept. So, Feds started putting on their own job fairs in the Fall and inviting students they were already in contact with to come to the fair and drop off their resume to make them retroactively eligible for the program.”
“So that worked?”
“Yeah, it worked great. Too great because that’s when the Inspector General caught wind of it. The IG concluded the program was a way to subvert the competitive hiring process. Since they couldn’t shut down the FCJP completely– it was created by Congress, after all– they instead just banned the agency from participating in job fairs. And that effectively killed it.”
“Oh.” To Hannah, the Federal Government seemed a daunting and enigmatic place. “So what does it mean for me since I already went to one of these job fairs?”
“It means I may want to have a chat with HR to see if they can find your resume.”
Ten months later, here Hannah was working as an environmental engineer inspecting public water systems for compliance with Federal drinking water standards: a position she didn’t apply to and that she was less qualified for than the hundreds of applicants who weren’t allowed to even be considered for the position.
It was for that reason she was trying to arrange for a tour of the local drinking water treatment facility. A tour that would require her to fill out a– Hannah glanced down to check her notes— SF-182.