From 2005-2018, I mostly did federal consulting with some stints in industry. Flipped my badge in 2018.

Figured I'd do a potentially educational AMA, if anyone's interested...

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Why?

Thank you for the insight

What is your educational background?

It's very tough to get into the feds these days. Took me ~18 months from when I started applying to fed positions to when I came on board, but there was the government wide hiring freeze in 2017 that contributed to that timeline.

My undergrad degrees were poli sci, criminal justice, and history, which I'm pretty sure have contributed exactly 0% to any of my career moves since graduation.

Federal hiring is completely broken across the board. Even on a good day when all the stars align, the hiring process from opening a req to onboarding someone is optimistically a 4-6 month process, most often 6-8 months or longer.

As far as advice...build a very detailed resume on USAJobs (point of reference, mine is 7+ pages). Fire and forget, apply for every single position that looks good to you (I've got 300+ USAJ applications under my belt since 2016). Networking doesn't do a whole hell of a lot unless you can get the HM to write the job description to be tailored specifically to you. Before you even get to the HM, you gotta pass HR, and they are legendarily incompetent across the board.

Unless you have some sort of hiring preference (e.g. you're a vet or you have a disability, etc), it is HARD to come in from outside. Vets automatically get pushed to the top of the pile for the majority of positions, so that's a real hurdle no matter what you're looking and can severely limit your chances to get in if you're not a vet.

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I decided to post this because I've answered quite a few questions on various posts and via DMs, so figured I'd make my own post in the off chance folks find it educational.

Feel free to joke about it or just keep scrolling, doesn't matter to me.

Ever thought about getting out of fed swamp and into commercial? I’m jaded already after a couple years

I've thought about it but have decided that I'm fine sticking with fed for now. I make enough $$ that I'm pretty pleased on the money side, though I know I'd make substantially more going commercial, and I have a quite high BS tolerance, so fed stuff doesn't faze me much.

I've also had some side gigs going for a decade (I run a few small businesses and also swim coach) that I wouldn't be able to maintain if I went commercial, unless it was a local firm that kept to a strict 40 hour limit. And in that situation, comp probably wouldn't be much different than I make now, so I haven't really pursued that angle.

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Curious to know how the process is going trying to negotiate an exit to industry from fed. Even in federal consulting I’ve been having issues trying to exit to commercial industries and tech, even when I am in the design/product realm. It’s almost likens black mark to employers. I’ve even stopped listing my clearance.

Yeah, it is tough. I have no problems staying in the federal space, I'm not really into the rat race and trying to earn as much $$$ as I can. I also have a quite high BS tolerance level, so I haven't really done much trying to target industry at any point in my career, earlier or now.

All that said, I've been running a handful of side gigs since 2010 and have them documented in my resume. I think that's been the deciding factor that gets me interviews in industry, along with my handful of industry years spread throughout my resume. Recently I've gone through the interview process for two positions at the same industry firm, turned down the first and then wasn't selected for the second. I know at least for the 2nd role, it was my side gig background that interested them in the first place, the HM said as much in my interviews.

I've generally had no issues getting interviews with other federal consulting firms, I've bounced around between a couple of the big names and two boutiques. Since I started looking in January to exit the feds, I've gone through the process with two brand name fed firms and am in the process with another.

You see any good public resumes that you would recommend to use as a good template?

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