Good morning. I am currently a senior associate in BugLaw, and I have applied to several trial attorney jobs in Chicago offices of federal agencies since the start of the pandemic. According to usajobs.gov, my applications to the DOJ and CFTC were “referred,” and my application to the SEC was received and my GS scale verified. But I haven’t received any updates on these applications in over a month. Does anyone here have any insights on these or on federal hiring generally? Thanks!

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I’m a current federal employee who has been through the fun of USAJOBS more than once so I know how frustrating it can be. This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but you may never get another update on the positions again. I just double checked my USAJOBS application statuses and I have jobs I applied for as far back as February of 2019 that still just say “referred” or “received”.

“Referred” just means that you made it through the initial computer screening, i.e. you answered the basic qualifications questions correctly and provided all necessary documents. In an ideal world this would mean that a real person would then look at everything and get back to you but I’m not sure how often that actually happens.

Hopefully, you hear something soon and if not, just know it has nothing to do with you and that it is unfortunately just an infuriating part of the process. Good luck and thanks for the gift of “Buglaw” from autocorrect!

likesmart

Thank you!

Thanks, autocorrect, for giving us all “BugLaw.”

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