How do americans become government employees ? Do they have to participate in a contest ? Is it curriculum presentation affair ? Bosses contract who they want ? How much discretion is there in the process ?
I've seen remarks about easy hours and such... are government employees (except soldiers I warrant) seen as having it easy ?
Working for government is well payed ? Well regarded ? Status wise ?I’ve worked for all three levels of government - Federal, state, and local.
For Federal employment I had to take a standardized test geared toward the type of work I wanted to do. My scores were then sent to managers of agencies who were hiring in that area. If warranted, I would be interviewed just like for any private sector job. The salary wasn’t huge, but the benefits were good (great insurance, very liberal leave policies, and lots of opportunity for education and training). I worked a standard 40 hour work week (not counting the horrible commute through Northern Virginia traffic).
My experience in State and local government employment has been pretty much the same, except for the standardized testing, which isn’t usually required at those levels of government (at least here in VA).
Government employees aren’t generally well-regarded by the public (“bureaucrat” is usually said with a sneer), but I’ve enjoyed my public service career. Sneer all you want - I get to have a huge input into the laws you live by.
It all depends on what government job you apply for. Some are just like applying for any other job - you send in a resume and a cover letter, get interviewed and are on your way.
Other jobs you have to pass a tough entrance exam.
And to work in the IRS you have to eat a baby.
Simply visit the Human Resources department at whichever level of government you intend to work. You could work for the city, county, state, or federal government. There are even job listings online that you can browse and apply for without leaving your house.
The hiring process is much like that of any large corporation. There will probably be a background check and a drug screening and possibly a civil service test.
As long as you meet the minimum requirements and you make it through the interviews and you’re the best man for the job, they will hire you.
As far as having it easy: I think there is shamming present in most all jobs. Some people will be lazy and milk the clock. Others will be hard workers.
Here in New York, state government employment is as highly regimented as everything else. There’s a Department of Civil Service that manages the whole thing. Periodically they’ll issue public notice of civil service examinations. People take the tests, the results are scored, and applicants are placed on a list. When an opening becomes available they interview from the list, starting from the top and working down. I don’t believe they have a lot of flexibility, but I’m working from memory here.
As to the taking it easy thing: I think it’s just another case of a tiny minority screwing up and giving all civil servants a bad name. Most public employees are really trying to do their jobs well, just like everybody else. Dealing with government is always a pain in the ass anyway, and if you get stuck with a jerk who’s no help to you and doesn’t seem to care, you may end up painting his colleagues with the same brush you slap him with.
The more experience I get, the more I realize that sometimes people aren’t helpful not because they’re lazy or meanspirited, but simply because they just can’t do anything. There are a godawful lot of rules, regulations, and administrative procedures that must be followed, and there actually is a reason for the existence of each and every one of the 15 or so forms you had to fill out.
I try to remember that when I have to go to the DMV.
Rashak Mani wrote
You’ll obviously get many views on this.
One view (that I propose many hold, and that in fact I hold) is that government workers do not work anywhere near as hard as private sector workers. They may be good people, doing honest labor, but the bottom line is that their productivity is much lower than people working in private industry.
Other perceptions that many (myself included) have on the subject:
Thanks for the responses… I’m not asking in order to get a job myself… since I am not american. Just kind of curious about it.
What would minimum requirments be ? Would we be talking about certain university majors ? Specific training ?
There are literally millions of government jobs – from lawn maintenance to CIA agents. There is just no way to generalize what training or pay rates or offered.
Here is the US government jobs website. Browse around some. The fact that you’re not American doesn’t necessarily bar you from US employment. For instance, we’re always looking for for people to spy on their own country. Got any secrets?
Depends on the job. For example, my first job for the state of New York required that I have a degree in one of a few specific areas and two years of experience in order to be able to take the written test. After scoring highly enough on the written test, I then had to pass a physical. Having one year of experience in that job made me eligible to take promotion tests for two other jobs. There are clerical jobs which require no more than a high school diploma, jobs which require any bachelor’s degree, and others which require more advanced degrees.
Bill H. writes:
> Once you’ve got a government job, it’s tough to get fired.
I suspect that this is not really true, although I don’t have a cite. Government jobs tend to be the ones that are necessarily more or less permanent, while private-sector jobs are more often the sort that come and go. For instance, consider jobs in space and rockets. There’s a certain amount of jobs at N.A.S.A. that stay pretty much constant - administration, contracting, basic research, jobs involving the launch of rockets. On the other hand, there are all the work on individual projects that are done in private companies. When a new project is contracted out, a lot of new people get hired. When a project ends or is cancelled, a lot of people get fired.
While it’s true that it’s harder to fire people for cause in the government, it’s also true that it’s harder to fire them for purely personal reasons. Not all firing in the private sector is about an inability to do the job or a decrease in the amount of business which means that some people have to be let go. Some of the firing is about a boss just not liking an employee.
Rashak Mani writes:
> What would minimum requirments be ? Would we be talking about certain
> university majors ? Specific training ?
First, you should realize that each government within the U.S. does its own hiring. There’s one system for federal government hiring. There’s another 50 systems for each of the 50 states. There are tens of thousands more systems for every city large enough to have employees and for every county. And being in one of the government systems doesn’t have much to do with employment in another one. Yes, sometimes people move from a state government job to a federal one or vice versa, but that’s no different from moving from a government job to a private-sector one or vice versa. You have to apply for the new job and the government will look at all your past employment, both government and private-sector.
Second, applying for a government job is not much different than applying for a private-sector job. If you’re applying for a job as a janitor at either a private business or for a government agency, they consider your qualifications as a janitor (and what qualifications are necessary for an entry-level job as a janitor?) On the other hand, if you’re applying for a job as a lawyer in the legal counsel office of either a private business or a government agency, you will need a law degree.
Well, applying for (and getting fired from) a government job is not exactly the same as for a typical private-sector job. Probably more like the private sector as you move from federal to state to local.
At the federal level, a manager can’t just hire and fire people at his whim. There are bureacratic hoops to jump through, including publicly posting the job, having a fair search process, etc. The manager can decide who they want to hire first, and then write the job specifications exactly tailored to the resume of the person they want, but the person still has to be objectively qualified for the job. And I know of more than one case where the manager wrote the position so they could hire someone they had picked out and ended up hiring someone else who applied for the job after it was posted. None of the federal jobs I’m familiar with require tests (mostly appropriate degrees and experience).
And firing most federal employees takes a lot of effort, so in many cases for a worker that’s just unproductive, it’s not worth the effort. (remember there are fewer incentives for a gov’t manager to keep payroll down).
As another point, many federal employees are doing the work because they believe in what they’re doing and want to server their fellow man.
The nepotism/cronyism/patronage factor varies more at the state and lower levels. Some state agencies are very professional, and some are basically dumping grounds for nephews, etc. of legislators.
Pay is less than private sector, but benefits better, one of the benefits being for the most part only 40 hours a week. Respect for white collar gov’t workers is generally neither more nor less than private sector. Fire and emergency personnel got a big jump in respect after 9/11 and military of course have an unusual but deserved level of respect right now.
As the OP is not in the US, he should know that prior to the late 19th century, government jobs were appointed on the basis of cronyism, nepotism and outright corruption. Every time a political party was elected, it replaced many civil servants with members of its own party. After the civil war, the system was reformed so that jobs were awarded more fairly. Eventually this led to the system of requiring applicants to sit for exams before being considered for civil service positions and the very structured government pay scale system.
Also, there are so called “exempt service” positions, where because of some specific need of the agency the need for the examination and qualified-candidate list is waived. These are less secure than regular civil-service career positions. The most frequent case of these is where the position is politically sensitive and the element of personal trust is essential – positions at the actual seats of “government” as opposed to civil service: legislative staff, Justices’ clerks, the White House/Governor’s Mansion/City Hall staff. In those jobs, politically-based selection can still apply. Also, there are exempt positions that are non-policy-related but non-permanent, where a choice is made to NOT contract the work to a private party but do it in-house, but the regular staff does not have that skill set in place. These have the defect that once the job is done, it’s done.
A lot of the “easy job” perception has to do, as mentioned before, with how if you’re in a regular civil service position, it is NOT “employment at will”, which is the norm in the US private sector, and many public agencies actually discourage overtime work (it throws off the accounting, which is not good when you budget is fixed by law).
I work for the State of Missouri. Here you have to participate in what is called the Merit System. Basically you apply for a job. OA (Office of Administration) determines if you are qualified for said job. If you are you sit for an exam, or you may just be scored on education and experience from your resume and/or transcripts. Then you get put on a list. As positions become open the department that wants to hire requests the list. They usually select the top 15 or so names from the list and send them letters asking if they are still interested. Then you set up interviews. Then you interview. This is another tricky part as each interview must be done exactly the same, asking the exact same questions. Any mistake in this area can start the process over. After the interview you decide who you want to hire, then submit that to your departments HR department, who does a background check and makes sure they will be allowed to work there. Then you offer them the job.
The downside to all this is that if there isn’t anybody that has applied for the job you have to offer, it can take up to 4 to 6 months to get applicants, give tests, score tests, etc… Kinda sucks to leave a position open for 6 months. Of course the upside is that it’s very difficult to get your nephew hired just becuase he’s your nephew. He has to know the material on the test to even be considered. Now, not all State agencies in Missouri are Merit agencies though, and as such have much more freedom in who and how long it takes to hire them.
I am about to become and Army employee (not in the miliitary) working on an Air Force base on a NASA project. There was a general announcement for the job, but they also called me specifically to let me know about it since I had contacted these people before. All the applicants are screened by a seperate agency to make sure they meet the minimum requirements for the position. The list of those who pass were sent to the guy in charge of the position who then condcuts interviews, etc. They then make their reccomendations to their bosses who make the final decision. This is not always the case, as in some instances they are required to take the candidate most qualified on paper. If the person accepts (I did) great, but if they do not they may not be able to take the second choice and may have to start the entire process over again. Even now that I have been informed that I was selected, the process is still not done as they are currently going over my resume with a fine tooth comb to check to make sure that everything I put there is exactly right. If not… who knows. It has been going on since February.
They have a reason for taking this long though. Most of these people are hired for life. If you are competent, you almost never get let go. In a recent case, the rotorcraft research department at a base dropped off the map. They had many highly specialized people who had nowhere to do their jobs except on the other side of the country. Some of them moved to the other coast, some decided to retire, but they found something for every other one to do. Nobody got let go. That is one of the big advantages.
This wasn’t the reason I took the job, though. It is true that they do not pay as well, but they have great benefits and there is much more intellectual freedom. I am a researcher, and the possibilities exist for me to do just about anything that falls into the general goals of the organization.
Passage of the Pendleton Act (IIRC) came about indirectly as a result of the murder of President Garfield by a disgruntled office seeker in 1881. Pres. Arthur signed the legislation and created the Civil Service System.
You would be surprised to know how much of this stuff still goes on around the third world. Quite common…
So tell us about government jobs in your country.
Same thing here in Tennessee, more or less.
We have jobs left open longer, though.
Sometimes for more than a year.
Pay is very low here, -20% of local private sector rates for similar work.
The level of hostility is very high towards State employees here in Tennessee. I’ve been assaulted twice on the job by members of the public, not counting the times people have spat on me, or thrown a glass of cola on me. We have a little tax revolt going on here. But it’s deeper than that. Tennesseans just fear and resent government. Period.
Former Federal employee here. Also keep in mind that (at least when I was working there) past experience was scored on a point system, and military veterans got a certain number of bonus points (and more if they had a service-connected disability, IIRC). Some jobs (security guard jobs spring to mind) were pretty much reserved for veterans.
Also, they’ve reworked the point system needed to qualify for certain grade levels since I left Federal employment, but it used to be that your boss couldn’t even promote you, once hired, purely on skill - you had to have a certain amount of time in at one grade before you could be moved up to the next grade, no matter how great you were at your job.