handbook.tts.gsa.gov Open in urlscan Pro
2600:9000:2156:8a00:11:81cd:ec00:93a1  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

GET https://search.usa.gov/search

<form accept-charset="UTF-8" action="https://search.usa.gov/search" id="search_form" method="get" class="usa-search usa-search--small js-search-form">
  <input name="utf8" type="hidden" value="✓">
  <input id="affiliate" name="affiliate" type="hidden" value="tts-handbook">
  <div role="search">
    <label for="query" class="usa-sr-only">Enter Search Term(s):</label>
    <input autocomplete="off" class="usa-input usagov-search-autocomplete ui-autocomplete-input" id="query" name="query" type="search">
    <button class="usa-button" type="submit" name="commit">
      <span class="usa-sr-only">Search</span>
    </button>
  </div>
</form>

POST https://touchpoints.app.cloud.gov/touchpoints/7f027ad6/submissions.json

<form action="https://touchpoints.app.cloud.gov/touchpoints/7f027ad6/submissions.json" method="POST">
  <div class="touchpoints-form-body">
    <input type="hidden" name="fba_location_code" id="fba_location_code" autocomplete="off">
    <input type="text" name="fba_directive" id="fba_directive" title="this field can be skipped" style="display:none !important" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off">
    <div class="section visible">
      <div class="questions">
        <div class="question white-bg">
          <div role="group">
            <label class="usa-label" for="answer_01"> Feedback for TTS Leadership </label>
            <textarea name="answer_01" id="answer_01" class="usa-textarea" required="required" maxlength="100000" placeholder=""></textarea>
          </div>
        </div>
        <div class="question white-bg">
          <div role="group">
            <label class="usa-label" for="answer_02"> Name (optional unless you require a response) </label>
            <input type="text" name="answer_02" id="answer_02" class="usa-input" maxlength="100000" placeholder="">
          </div>
        </div>
        <div class="question white-bg">
          <fieldset class="usa-fieldset" role="group">
            <legend class="usa-sr-only">Do you require a response back?</legend>
            <div class="usa-label"> Do you require a response back? </div>
            <div class="question-options" id="answer_03">
              <div class="usa-checkbox" id="question_option_5002" data-id="5002">
                <input type="checkbox" name="answer_03" id="answer_03_1" value="Yes" multiple="multiple" class="usa-checkbox__input usa-checkbox__input--tile">
                <label for="answer_03_1" class="usa-checkbox__label">Yes, please</label>
              </div>
            </div>
          </fieldset>
        </div>
        <div class="question white-bg">
          <fieldset class="usa-fieldset" role="group">
            <legend class="usa-sr-only">Are you comfortable with me sharing the question/feedback with the wider team without attribution?</legend>
            <div class="usa-label"> Are you comfortable with me sharing the question/feedback with the wider team without attribution? </div>
            <div class="question-options" id="answer_04">
              <div class="usa-checkbox" id="question_option_5135" data-id="5135">
                <input type="checkbox" name="answer_04" id="answer_04_1" value="Yes" multiple="multiple" class="usa-checkbox__input usa-checkbox__input--tile">
                <label for="answer_04_1" class="usa-checkbox__label">Yes</label>
              </div>
            </div>
          </fieldset>
        </div>
      </div>
      <p class="submit-button">
        <button type="submit" class="usa-button submit_form_button">Submit</button>
      </p>
    </div>
  </div>
</form>

Text Content

Skip to main contentSkip to feedback

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United
States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( LockA locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the
.gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


TTS Handbook
Menu
 * About TTS
 * Getting started
 * Training & Development
 * Travel and leave
 * Career Progression Framework
 * Performance management
 * Hiring, staying, or changing jobs
 * General information and resources
 * TTS Offices
 * Tools

Enter Search Term(s): Search


WRITING A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RESUME

This page provides an overview with examples of how to write a federal
government resume, which have content and formatting that differ from most
private sector resumes.


ON THIS PAGE:

 * How to write a Federal resume
 * General things to keep in mind:
 * And now, the resume!
 * Questions?


HOW TO WRITE A FEDERAL RESUME

Written by Amanda Costello, 18F content designer and gummi bear enthusiast, July
10, 2019.

Writing a US federal resume is hard. When I started writing mine, all I wanted
was a solid example. What needs to be there, in what order, and what would it
look like with real information. This is that example. (Law and Order chimes)

Below are excerpts from my federal resume, along with details and notes about
how it’s written and formatted. I want more awesome folks from all backgrounds
and experiences as colleagues. I don’t want the resume formatting or particulars
to be a mystery; it’s already a very challenging piece of writing.


GENERAL THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND:

 1. This resume’s job is to connect the requirements of the job posting to your
    experience using the straightest possible line. I printed out the job
    posting and highlighted every key phrase of the requirements,
    qualifications, and what kind of work this job would do. I then made that
    into a checklist to make sure each one of those things could clearly be
    mapped to my resume.
 2. Throw out your formatting. I used CAPS for headers, italics for mission
    statements, and bullet points. Expect that the bulk of your formatting will
    be stripped out. No columns, no fanciness. Just write. Hard.
 3. Speaking of writing: get your words going, and then get more words. I had to
    submit two writing samples, and that was where I could show off my content
    strategy particulars. Remember the job of the resume content: clear,
    straight lines between the requirements and your experience.

> Explicit disclaimer: This resume format is what I chose to use in applying to
> 18F in the US Federal Government’s General Services Administration. It is not
> the only acceptable format, but is what worked well for me. I currently work
> as a content designer at 18F, but put this together on my own time, using no
> government resources to do so. Using this formatting is not a guarantee of
> consideration. You still gotta do the work.

Want to chat more about this? I’m on Twitter: @amandaesque

My comments below will all be in code demo backticks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


AND NOW, THE RESUME!

Everything about this top material is standardized formatting. Go ahead and put
your own info in just like this.

AMANDA COSTELLO
123 Lutefisk Street
You Betcha, MN 55555
Mobile: 555-555-5555

Email:
Availability: April 1, 2020
Job Type: Permanent, Telework Work Schedule: Full-Time

Desired locations:
United States - MN

WORK EXPERIENCE

Below is an example of one job, and how I talked about it. I recommend listing
as complete of a job history as you can for at least the last 7 years, more
ideally the last 10 years. Here's a formatting example!

Workplace name, Unit name if relevant - City, State, Country
Your job title - MM/YYYY to MM/YYYY - Hours per week: xx

Mission statement(s) of the workplace, or summary of the company’s work on a
larger scale.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES A paragraph-long description of what the work was
overall. Describe your work using a wide scope, leaving the specific details for
later.

SPECIFIC TOPIC (e.g. CONTENT STRATEGY)

 * Examples are in a bulleted list, each point describing a project or part of a
   project, or a piece of work that fits the heading, plus matches up with the
   qualifications/reqs.
 * I chose to start each bullet with a past tense verb (Collaborated, Wrote,
   Managed, Edited), because that’s how I usually write resumes.
 * Some of these bullets reference specific things I wrote, and those were
   included as writing samples with my application.

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

Software you know, tools you use, best practices and methods. This can’t just be
a list, but has to have context in your work overview of how and why they were
used. Also, please throw Microsoft Word on there because I was once rejected
from a job in 2007 because I put “Microsoft Office” and the listing said
“Microsoft Word.” Word matching! Seriously!

SELECTED WORK:

 * Another bulleted list, this time of URLs related to work I did.
 * They had quick little blurbs underneath about what they were, and what I did.
 * Photos won’t come through on this resume, so no screenshots or anything.

End of formatting example!

University of Minnesota, College of Education and Human Development -
Minneapolis, MN
Lead Content Strategist - 07/2012 to Present - Hours per week: 40

The mission of the College of Education and Human Development is to contribute
to a just and sustainable future through engagement with the local and global
communities to enhance human learning and development at all stages of the life
span. The college is part of the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, a
land-grant high-level research institution, dedicated to generating and
preserving knowledge through research, sharing that knowledge through teaching
and learning, and apply that knowledge through outreach and public service.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Developed and led college-wide content strategy
combining current and prospective student needs with college goals for
recruitment and retention. Worked as a member of a cross-functional team
including designers, developers, business analysts, marketers, and well as
content strategists across 7 academic departments to promote and deliver
effective processes and consistent content strategy.

CONTENT STRATEGY:

 * Collaborated with college academic departments, research centers, student
   support offices, and senior leadership to develop a “bottom up” content
   strategy, prioritizing student needs based on their relationships with
   academic programs. Assessed content through the lens of recruitment and
   retention.
 * Wrote “Stakeholder’s Guide To Launch,” a two-page reference for the launch of
   a new college website. By anticipating the top questions stakeholders might
   field, this guide gave talking points surrounding new features, along with
   contacts for further questions.
 * Served as strategist, editor, and project manager for regular essay series on
   college diversity and inclusion work, written by academic leadership. This
   generated authentic, meaningful content and helped stakeholders better
   understand the time commitment involved in content production.
 * Established user-centered college voice and tone guidelines, using “A, but
   not B” format. This was informed by close work with students in formal and
   informal usability testing, and brand sort activities with college leadership
   and key stakeholders.

USER EXPERIENCE (UX) WRITING:

 * Combined findings from user research, new graduate student interviews,
   faculty and researcher focus groups, higher ed industry trends, and analytics
   to consolidate more than 600 areas of academic research expertise into 111
   categories. Categories were deployed across the college for consistent
   organization and increased findability of research work.
 * Developed strategy and standards to categorize and sort 127 academic programs
   and 111 areas of research expertise. This was incorporated into two web-based
   tools developed in-house and allowed students to explore college offerings
   and expertise independent of department. Wrote and edited descriptions for
   each area, capped at 25 words to promote ease of reading and top-level
   understanding.
 * Planned, edited, and delivered a “Web Writing Best Practices” guide for
   college content strategists. Formatted as a “one-pager” for printing and
   pinning up as a reference, this collected links to and recommendations from
   external tools and guides (Hemingway, 18F, King County Editorial Guide),
   internal editorial recommendations from the university and college, and voice
   and tone particulars. Strategists often felt intimidated and overwhelmed by
   the sheer amount of recommendations connected to good web content; this guide
   promoted four starting points to improve content: addressing the user
   (you/your/yours and we/our/ours), employing structured content, concise
   writing, and using plain language.

USABILITY TESTING AND USER RESEARCH:

 * Led and managed annual process of web usability testing, including project
   kick-offs, stakeholder workshops, scenario development, task analysis, lab
   and field-based testing, issues analysis, research and recommendation
   presentations to project team members, key stakeholders and college senior
   leadership.
 * Helped subject-matter expert teams and stakeholders understand their users
   through research and usability testing methods, defining problems and
   crafting effective solutions based on both quantitative and qualitative data.

COLLABORATION ON CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS:

 * Contributed to responsive redesign of college website by conducting a content
   audit, editing student-facing content for an overall 75% file reduction, and
   migrating updated content to custom-built CMS. Collaborated with design and
   development teams to create comprehensive style guides, pattern library
   interface copy.
 * Convened monthly “coworking days” among all college web professionals,
   bringing us together as a team of peers for a day of training, collaborative
   problem solving, idea sharing, and camaraderie. Set programming, mentored
   colleagues on presentations, and collected feedback to regularly adjust how
   our central content strategy was best supporting the specific work of the
   departments.

ADVOCACY AND OUTREACH:

 * Advocated for content strategy best practices to over 30 University
   departments by regularly meeting with peers and presenting to leadership
   stakeholder groups. Promoted clear, consistent, user-centered writing from
   all contributors, even those who don’t identify as “web people,” and
   facilitated collaboration across organizational silos to increase efficiency
   and support.
 * Consulted with faculty and staff in academic departments outside the college
   that frequently contributed to content strategy. Regular guest lecturer and
   student mentor in the Writing Studies program.
 * Contributed as one of four subject matter experts to the University of
   Minnesota’s Content Strategy Self-Help Guide, recommending resources and
   structuring process for the centrally-maintained system to help contributors
   at all levels improve content writing and strategic thinking for the web.
 * Frequently presented at local Twin Cities-based tech meetups, translating
   content strategy best practices to adjacent fields such as front- and
   back-end development, UX research, accessibility, interactive design, and
   marketing.

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

Provided strategic content design with skills in copywriting, style guides,
plain language, comprehension/reading levels. Conducted usability evaluations
using card sorting (OptimumSort), tree testing (Treejack), direct observation
user research methods. Worked on a cross-functional team that used Asana,
Trello, Slack, Hemingway, pattern libraries, Google Drive, MS Office Suite
(Word, Excel, Power Point), and semantic HTML.

SELECTED WORK:

 * CEHD Academic Programs, www.cehd.umn.edu/programs
   Developed content and structure for directory/sorting tool
 * CEHD Research & Expertise, www.cehd.umn.edu/topics/
   Created new content structure around college research, including categories
   and descriptions
 * UMN Content Strategy Self-Help Guide, z.umn.edu/csmap
   Subject matter expert for update to university-wide guide

VOLUNTEER WORK

Your volunteer work doesn’t count as experience for scoring, but is still good
to include. I used a format similar to the work experience job entry above,
though used the bulleted list format for duties and responsibilities, and
shortened everything up.

MinneWebCon Annual Conference - Minneapolis, MN - www.minnewebcon.org
Conference Director - 10/2011 - 06/2015

MinneWebCon is a two-day web conference in Minneapolis that encourages inclusive
grassroots knowledge-sharing. In addition to keynote speakers, breakout
sessions, and half-day workshops, our annual conference is a space for speakers
and attendees to collaborate, talk, learn, ask, test, and grow.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

 * Directed volunteer-run tech conference for 200+ annual attendees, bringing
   local and national speakers to the Twin Cities web community.
 * Oversaw event logistics, speaker recruitment and support, partnerships and
   sponsorships, promotion, and attendee experience with conference committee
   support and input.
 * Introduced speaker mentoring program, pairing conference speakers with an
   experienced mentor to review slides, practice presentations, and provide
   support.
 * Expanded conference to two-day event in 2012, adding half-day workshops to
   meet attendee demand for deeper learning.

SELECTED SPEAKING AND PRESENTATIONS

I do a lot of presentations and workshops, and they’re a big part of who I am
and how I share my work with the community. This is a shortened list to show you
what examples look like, including upcoming talks. Like volunteer work, this
does not count towards experience scoring, and is optional.

My resume listed about 15 sessions that I thought were particularly relevant to
this job. I also had sections on selected publications and selected podcast
guest appearances, because those are cool too!

“Title of the Presentation,” what kind of session - MM/YYYY
Conference Name - City, State, Country


 * “How Silos Learn: Working in the Idea Factory,” closing keynote address -
   08/2018 (scheduled)
   PSEWEB Conference - London, ON, Canada
 * “Better Stakeholder Wrangling,” half-day workshop - 10/2018 (scheduled)
   edUi Conference - Charlottesville, VA
 * “Better Stakeholder Wrangling,” half-day workshop - 05/2018
   Confab: The Content Strategy Conference - Minneapolis, MN
 * “Explain Anything to Your Boss & Grandboss,” closing keynote address -
   05/2018
   Manage Digital Conference - Minneapolis, MN
 * “How Silos Learn,” opening keynote address - 10/2017
   Digital Project Management Summit - Las Vegas, NV

EDUCATION

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN United States
Bachelor’s Degree MM/YYYY
Major: English
Minor: Japanese

You can add in particular awards or distinctions here too. I was not a
particularly distinguished student. :)

LANGUAGE SKILLS

Language: Japanese
Spoken Level: Novice
Written Level: Novice
Reading Level: Novice

This is totally optional. For each language you speak in addition to English,
list the levels at which you speak, write, and read. More details:
https://www.usajobs.gov/Help/how-to/account/profile/languages/

REFERENCES

Name: Super Awesomeboss
Employer: University of Minnesota
Title: The Best Boss
Email: teamlead@awesomeboss.com

While I listed references on my resume, it’s not required. The hiring folks
wouldn’t cold call your references, they’d ask you for their contact information
later on in the process.


QUESTIONS?

 * joinTTS@gsa.gov

 * File an issue
 * Contributing

Edit this page


TTS LEADERSHIP (ANONYMOUS) FEEDBACK FORM

×

Based on employee feedback, the TTS Leadership team has created an improved
process for obtaining employee suggestions, questions for leadership, and
anonymous feedback. If you have feedback and want to offer suggestions on how to
improve TTS, you're in the right place! (At the moment, only Dave Z and Diana
Cameron have access to the submissions. Additional individuals will be disclosed
here)


SUCCESS




ERROR

alert message

Feedback for TTS Leadership
Name (optional unless you require a response)
Do you require a response back?
Do you require a response back?
Yes, please
Are you comfortable with me sharing the question/feedback with the wider team
without attribution?
Are you comfortable with me sharing the question/feedback with the wider team
without attribution?
Yes

Submit

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This survey is intended for internal TTS employees. If you need additional
information, please contact tts-info@gsa.gov. Thank you!

An official form of the United States government. Provided by Touchpoints


Submit feedback to TTS Leadership