Lessons Learned for Vets
Lessons Learned for Vets
Federal Job Seeker Resume and Application Details with Lori Norris
Your federal resume just shrank and if you are looking to work for the federal government you have 2 pages to convey your qualifications for these roles. In this solo episode, resume writer and federal employment specialist Lori Norris walks you through the new two-page limit, the shift to merit-based hiring processes, skills-first hiring and the rise of assessments that can land in your inbox with a 24-hour clock. If you’re a transitioning service member or a veteran already navigating USAJOBS, this is your field guide to staying eligible, standing out and moving fast without missing critical details.
We start by decoding what actually changed: how agencies will certify smaller pools of qualified applicants, why keywords now matter more and what it means when occupational questionnaires disappear in favor of USA Hire or technical tests. We explain how to read “Who may apply,” how veterans’ preference points and CPS status still work and why some announcements may close early once they hit a candidate limit. Then we drill into the resume itself, covering exact fields you must include, what to cut to fit in two pages and formatting moves that keep you compliant and visible. Think months and years for every role, hours per week, recent measurable achievements and a clean sans serif format that keeps your resume file under 5MB.
You’ll also get a clear approach to the 4 optional 200-word essays that hiring managers, not HR, will read. We share prompts, strategy and structure, how to connect your commitment to the Constitution to the job’s mission, how to quantify efficiency gains you’ve driven, how to reference relevant executive orders responsibly and how to tell a concise work-ethic story with outcomes. We wrap with a practical application plan to tailor fast, apply early, track documents, watch your spam folder for assessment links and call the agency contact when in doubt.
If this helped you get clarity or momentum, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a veteran who’s applying soon. Your support helps more service members translate their skills into roles that matter.
Learn more about Lori's resume and LinkedIn services, where she specializes in helping translate military terminology at www.getresultsresumes.com
Connect with Lori Norris on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorinorris
Subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://tinyurl.com/llforvets22
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The Lessons Learned for Vets Podcast is sponsored by Seek Now and their Drive Academy. Seek Now is the property inspection industry's leading business and they created Drive Academy DoD SkillBridge and CSP internships to teach transitioning military service members and veterans skills that prepare them for lucrative and rewarding careers in the property inspection and insurance industries. You can learn more and apply today at www.internwithdrive.com.
Welcome to the Lessons Learned from Us Podcast, your military transition debrief. I'm your host, Lori Norris, and I've helped thousands of military service members successfully transition out of the military since 2005. Thanks for tuning in to hear the after action reports and real stories of your fellow veterans who are here to help guide, educate, and inform you as you navigate your own military transition. By the way, if you find value from today's episode, please share it with others. Leave us a review and post about us on social media. Hello everybody, it's Lori here with another solo episode. I know I just did one a couple weeks ago, but I have been getting a lot of questions, and there have been some pretty big changes to the federal hiring system. So I decided I was just going to record a podcast and just share all the knowledge that I've gained with everybody listening. So today we are going to tackle all the recent changes in the federal hiring process, how to navigate those, how to get your resume ready to go so it's acceptable for the new standards, how to deal with the essay questions, all the good stuff. So we're going to kind of cover that from A to Z and walk you through some of the biggest changes. So back at the end of May, there was a directive from President Trump saying that they were going to streamline the federal hiring process and make it more aligned with the private sector. They're trying to modernize the process, they're trying to simplify the process, and they're moving away from those very lengthy federal resumes and starting to implement some technology tools and uh into this process. So I want to go through that with you today, talk to you a little bit about all of those different things, and uh and we'll see what we can get through. And if you have any questions after hearing this, please reach out to me. Now, as you all might most likely know, most federal agencies are under a hiring freeze, with the exception of a couple of agencies, such as ICE and Customs and Border Protection, some of the different Department of Defense components. Uh, I think that the Secret Service is still hiring, last I heard, but there is sort of a freeze that is in place. It is expected right now to lift on October 15th. However, I probably when this is released, we will still be in the midst of or just recovering from a government shutdown. And so that is another issue that we're facing. But I wanted to get this out there so that you could start getting things ready to go under control and you were aware of all of the different changes. So as of September, let's see, what was that Friday? I think it was September 26th. They took USA jobs down, and when it came back online on September 29th, it the USA Jobs will no longer accept resumes that are any longer than two pages. So we're gonna talk about how to go through that. Uh good how to get your resume aligned with those standards. Okay. Also, the whole process of hiring is changing. Um, they're moving to more of a merit hiring plan, and they some agencies are introducing the use of assessments such as USA hire or technical assessments. Um, every agency, again, has the capability to make those decisions as to whether or not they want to use assessments, but just know that those are out there. The focus is going to become more on skills and knowledge as opposed to education. So in the past, you were often able to substitute education for experience. The focus is going to be less on that, and they are phasing out the use of occupational questionnaires. There used to be, as part of the application process, you were able to go through and answer a series of questions, kind of ranking your knowledge and skills in a certain area, and those are being phased out. Um, so some some of the organizations that aren't using those occupational questionnaires may be sending you a USA higher assessment. And just know that if an organization is using an assessment, it will tell you that is happening in the application process, but you not may not know until you're in that process. Um, and some of those are going to come as a separate link in an email within and must be completed within 24 hours. Just beware if you're out filling out federal applications, some of those, some emails when you receive something with a link in it, those are sent to junk mail. So I would be uh checking both my email and my junk mail if I was in the process of filling out federal applications because you don't want to miss that assessment. If you don't get it filled out in 24 hours, you will be considered to be disqualified for the role. Okay, so one of the other things that they're changing is that people are being asked to answer four essay questions, and we'll address those here in a little while. I'm gonna give you just some guidelines for those questions. Should you do them, should you not? We'll talk through that in a bit, okay? But all of the things we're talking about today are really for all of the um GS positions, whether it's a GS5 up to a GS 15, also the WG roles. So all of those are being affected by what I'm talking about today, okay? Um, and so I will talk more about those questions in a minute. Um, but first I want to talk about just the way that they were they're going to be looking at that pool of candidates. So their agencies can now certify a sufficient number of eligible candidates, whether they give a cutoff score, um, you know, everyone who scores above a certain mark to be considered, or a set number of candidates. So once that predetermined number happens, they can cut that application process off. And so that being said, when that hiring process, you know, kind of ramps back up, I would keep an eye on USA jobs and be ready to apply as soon as those roles are coming out because we don't know yet, you know, what agencies are going to be using what methods. So the process of ranking candidates is going to be still very similar in that they will be reading through a list of requirements, looking at the resume, and possibly the assessment, and scoring the candidates based on, you know, again, adding that adding up those numbers of, you know, you get a check mark as you showcase you have a skill, the person with the highest score move forward. Okay. Um, so that is still the process, and veterans preference is also still being considered in that process of scoring candidates. So as a veteran, every veteran gets five points added to their score. Um, but veterans with uh certain levels of disability get an additional five points. So anything above, I think it's nine percent disability, you get an additional five points. And then anyone who has 30% or greater disability is what's called a CPS status veteran. And those veterans, those candidates, excuse me, go to the top of the list of the highest qualified candidates. So that should be the same. Um, this rule does not change the application of veterans preference in those competitive examinations. Okay, so job postings are still going to be listed on usajobs.gov, and they're going to be organized the same way they've always been. And I want you to really think of those federal job postings as your roadmap or your cheat sheet for defining the qualifications that are necessary and identifying what you should be including in your resume. The keywords that are required for the resume, the federal government is saying those keywords are going to be included in the job posting. So it's important that you read through that job posting, that you really focus in on demonstrating that you have the skills and qualifications that the job posting has listed. Okay. Now, I do want you to pay attention to there's a section on those federal job postings that says who can apply. Um, so if you there are some times where you're not going to be eligible to apply. So, as an example, one might be a merit promotion. And the only people who can apply to this are people who have status. They are current competitive service or reinstatement eligible employees. Okay, veterans preference does not apply to merit promotion. And so if you see who can apply merit promotion only, that is not a role that's open to you unless you are a current employee of the federal government or someone who has maybe been riffed and is reinstatement eligible. Okay, the the next category are competitive examining, and this is when everybody can apply. Any US citizen can apply, and veteran preference applies to competitive examining. The other one is accepted service, and that is someone who is uh has that 30% plus disability compensation, someone who has Schedule A consideration or is like Peace Corps and AmeriCorps eligibility. And the last category is direct hire. So some agencies get authorized for certain positions to have a direct hire authority, but they must get OPM or hiring agency authority or approval before they do direct hire. So again, those are the four categories. The one that everybody can apply to is competitive examining. So you've got to read that job posting and make sure that first of all you're eligible to apply. Okay. Um, so some of the parts of the job posting you want to look at is the overview, the overview of the role, um, who the job is open to, the location. Oftentimes there will be multiple locations, and then look very carefully at the duties and qualifications. This is where you're gonna identify those keywords, the key skills that you want to talk about on your resume. Okay. Um, there are other parts of the posting, such as the education section. It'll tell you if they have a degree requirement or if they're willing to accept experience in lieu of education. There's also a section that may have additional information, which could be again just that's a place where they can put that additional information they want you to know. Um, some of their special instructions. And some agencies are starting to put those special instructions into their job postings, telling you exactly how they want you to proceed. Okay, they will tell you how you're going to be evaluated, what documents are required, how to apply, and then also on every federal job posting, they have an agency contact. And this is a pretty cool thing. They actually have a name and phone number on most federal job postings, and you can pick up the phone and call them. I more often than not have get somebody to answer, and if they don't answer, I leave a message and they're pretty good about calling back. And so if you have any questions on the process, um then I would definitely take advantage of that agency contact. And then don't forget to look at the closing date. Um, and you know, again, that the uh so that you make it into the application or excuse me, the candidate pool before the application closes. But again, I recommend that you get in there as soon as possible because there are going to be some agencies that will have a cutoff number. Okay. So now let's talk about the resume. So in the past, the federal resume has been as long as you need it to be. I I can say I've heard of people who've had 40-page, 50-page resumes. The longest one I personally as a resume writer have ever prepared was 15 pages long. Um, now in the last few years, many agencies have been moving toward the five-page maximum resume. But as of September 29th, 2025, according to a directive that was issued by the president and was also conveyed by the Office of Personnel Management, all federal resumes must be no more than two pages. Now, I'm not certain how they're going to make this happen, but they have changed USA jobs, and according to their what they say, that anything longer than two-page resumes will not be allowed to be kept in the USA job system. And so if you didn't get your resume out of there, I'd I had put a post out that said, hey, don't forget to go download your resume. If you didn't get your federal resume out of there, it's gone. And so you might need to be starting from scratch. Um, let's talk about why the federal resume was so long. The federal resume was very lengthy because it really served as a legal document. Your federal resume served in lieu of an application, and because it served as your application, it was considered a legal document, and it had to have a certain amount of information that the federal government required for their application. Unfortunately, the required information has not really lessened. The list hasn't gotten shorter, but they're giving us less place, less space, excuse me, to list that information. So we get two pages, but we still have to have a list of information. So I want to go through that list with you. And um, let's see. So first and foremost, we need a job title, we need the employer's name, we need at a minimum their city and state and of where they're located. Okay, it's very important that we have the starting and end dates, including the month and year of each job. This is important because oftentimes they have a designated amount of experience that you must have. And if you don't put months to your with your years, and maybe you just put 2024 to 2025, you will get credit for one month of experience because they are going to just assume it was December of 24 to January of 25 and give you credit for one month of experience. So your months and years on your federal resume is incredibly important. Okay, so always months and years for your start and end dates and also the federal resume, you must put how many hours you work a week. Now, even if you work 60 hours, you're only gonna get credit for 40 hours. But the reason this is important is again, if they require a year of experience, it is a year of experience at 40 hours a week. So if you worked 20 hours a week and they want a year of experience, then you're gonna need two years of experience to accommodate their requirement. Okay, so it is important to put that number of hours work per week. I also am still recommending you list your supervisor's name and contact information and uh give them permission to contact them. So it is still important, you know, they don't list it on the OPM website, but they're asking for references, and so we might as well just put them right into our work experience. So still, I recommend your supervisor name and phone number, okay? And then you need your series and grade if you are a current federal employee and if you are transitioning military, I recommend putting your rank. However, your salary is no longer required on that federal resume, okay. All of that is required before we even get to the actual description of what we did. Okay, but again, that's what we have to. We all of those things are required for every job that we list on our federal resume. And then we need to get into describing our experience that shows that you are qualified to perform the tasks that are listed in the job announcement. Okay, and that's really important. They're going to look for proof of your skills and experience as requested in that job posting. Now, typically, a typical federal role only asks for one, maybe sometimes two years of experience. And so we only get two pages. So I've always taught that a resume is a 10-year picture of your work history, but in this case, I really want you to just optimize at least the last five to six years and make sure you load that information up with like showcasing that you have the skills and experience and knowledge that that posting is looking for. If you can't, if you can get to 10 pages, I'm sorry, if you can get to 10 years of experience in two pages, great, that's fine. But let's just make sure at least you you're showing five to six years of experience and relating it back to the jobs for which you're applying. Okay, that's your work experience. Now let's talk about your education and training and certific certifications and licensures. Okay, so for your education, we need to have the degree that you've attained, the type of degree that you've attained, the major that you completed that degree in, the name of the school and institution, the month and year of completion, your GPA. I don't care how bad it is, right? You've got to list your GPA, and how many credit hours that education was. Okay. Um for trading, it should be the name of the training, the name of the institution that administered it, your month and year of completion, and how many hours that training was if you have access to that information. Okay. Same thing for certifications, the certification you received, who issued it, and the date it was issued, the month and year of the date that it was issued. Okay. So some things that we should leave out of that resume. Um, your social security number does not belong on your federal resume any longer. Okay. Photos of yourself do not belong on a federal resume. That'll actually disqualify you. And to that end, your LinkedIn URL that links to your LinkedIn profile that has a photo of you absolutely does not belong on your federal resume. So including that LinkedIn URL that links to a photo of you is grounds for disqualification in the federal government. Absolutely use it on your private sector resume, but with the federal government, that is not something you want to do. Okay. And then any kind of like personal information, age, sex, religious affiliation, all of that sort of thing. Okay. Now let's talk about formatting because it used to be they're very they were very strict about the margin size and the font size. And now what I'm going to tell you is you actually can get down to as low as a 10-point font, and margins can be as small as 0.5. And but they do recommend you use some kind of a sans serif font. And a sans serif font are the really clean fonts without the little for lack of a better word, feet on the bottoms of the font. Something like Calibri or Ariel. Um those in any of the aerial family, I recommend to you. Okay, so try to keep a sans serif font. And um, you know, don't ever go bigger than a 14-point font for things like heading or name, but you're gonna find that you're gonna run out of space very quickly. Um, so they do they do take PDFs or Word documents, dot DOC or docx files. Um they will take a PDF, but not a PDF portfolio file. Okay, and but the file for your resume that you upload to USA jobs must be no larger than um five megabytes. Okay, so um very important that we have a good small size of a file, so a lot of details that we have to worry about with this resume, okay. So how do we put it in there? So there you can upload and store up to five resumes in the USA Jobs system, and there's a USA Jobs resume builder for right now. I do not recommend using the USA Jobs resume builder because you have no control over the length of the document. And what they're saying is anything that goes beyond two pages, they will not accept. And so you can see if you have your own document, you've created in Microsoft Word, you've turned it into a PDF, you know how long that document is, and you know it's not going to get you disqualified. So for right now, I am not gonna recommend using that USA Jobs builder unless the agency specifies in their job posting, in that additional information, in that how to apply section that you have to use the builder. Okay. So as you're thinking about your resume, um, they they really want to know, like they want your credentials, your qualifications to really kind of jump off the page at them. Um, they want you to make sure that you've addressed all of the qualifications that are listed in the job announcement. And they want you to, again, same as the private sector, be free of grammatical errors. Okay, so that is kind of the gist of that resume. Keywords have become very important now in the federal government. I used to say that keywords weren't nearly as important as examples and accomplishments, but keywords are going to become more important in the federal government as they're moving to more of a hiring process and a resume review process that more closely aligns with the private sector. Okay. Um, as I said earlier, some agencies are going to use assessments. Um again, they they will come, those links will come to you after you've completed an application, and it must be completed within 24 hours of receipt of the link. Be sure to check your spam to make sure that there's no issue there. Okay. Now let's talk about the questions. All right, so I don't know if you've seen these questions yet, but there are four essay questions. And here's what they're saying the applicants are strongly encouraged to submit the essays, but they're not required. So they are saying that they will be reviewed by the hiring manager and the senior leadership team, but not by HR, who is scoring you as an applicant. So kind of like as I talk about cover letters, I always say to write a cover letter to your future boss. These essay questions are the same concept. So as you're writing them, I want you to think about the fact that you are talking not to HR, not to the person screening your resume, but to the person who you're going to work for. And the new wrinkle with these questions is that before you submit your application, you must certify that you did not use AI to prepare them or a consultant to prepare them. So this is an interesting thing. Um, because what exactly qualifies as a consultant, they haven't clarified that yet. And so my recommendation here is that if your voice and your communication style and your content is in those answers to those four questions, I think you can certify that it wasn't prepared for you. Okay. Um, and you know that my contention is I don't write resumes for people, I write resumes with people, and it's a very collaborative process. And so I feel very confident saying that like I didn't do it for you. Um, but again, you're this is your application, you've got to be comfortable with that. Okay, so let's get into the questions. The first question is here it is. I'm gonna read it to you. How has your commitment to the constitution and the founding principles? Of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government. Provide a concrete example from a professional, academic, or personal experience. Phew. By the way, I forgot to mention you only get 200 words to prepare that response. So it's gotta be a 200-word essay. Okay. So here's some things to think about as you're thinking about this question: your commitment to the constitution and the founding principles of the United States. So I might think about like what's a specific constitutional principle or founding ideal that really means something to you, right? It could be individual rights, it could be democratic governance, it could be separation of powers, like whatever it is. But think about why that is important to you, and then provide an example that demonstrates this principle that you've put into action, and then draw like a connection between the example and how it's prepared you for this role in the federal government. Okay. I always uh recommend like tying it back to the position and really thinking about like how are you committed to that part of the constitution and how will that guide your work? Okay, that's question one. Here's question two. In this role, how would you use your skills and experience to improve government efficiency and effectiveness? Provide specific examples where you improve processes, reduced cost, or improved outcomes. I feel like this one is a much easier one to prepare. It's not quite so uh, you know, for lack of a better word, like partisan, right? Um, this is something that we can all kind of get behind of like, how do we approach efficiency? Um, we can give examples with specific metrics like cost savings or time reduction or improved outcomes and really clearly connect those skills that we have used to this role that we're applying for in the federal government. Okay. Question number three. How would you help advance the president's executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you and explain how you would help implement them if hired. Now, I this has to be kind of taken with like we've got to take politics out of this. And I am not speaking to any kind of politics when I talk about this, but for some of you, that might be hard. Um, some of you may not really be on board, and so you've got to kind of be able to set that aside and really look at the the maybe pick a couple of executive orders or policy initiatives that you've seen that have been enacted, like use the actual titles or like the numbers of those those orders, um, and really clearly explain why those are meaningful to you and how you could utilize those types of uh ideals to and take steps to implement them into the role for which you're applying. Okay. And then the last question is how has a strong work ethic contributed to your professional, academic, or personal achievements? Provide one or two specific examples and explain how those qualities would enable you to serve effectively in this position. Okay, so I think you could just give us a brief definition of what work ethic means to you. You know, is it about persistence or accountability or striving for excellence? Give some examples and use some different contexts, your personal life, your professional life, your academic life, and really talk about how you've overcome challenges using your determination, your drive, your work ethic. Whenever possible, I would put some quantifiable results, some meaningful outcomes into this. And I would definitely um connect it again to um the job for which you're applying. Okay, so those are the questions. Again, it they are optional, but you are strongly encouraged to submit them. And remember that the person that's reading them is the one that's going to be your boss and the one who's going to make the hiring decision. So it's definitely worth taking the time to prepare those. Okay. So again, the whole process is still very similar to the way it used to be, where you use USA jobs to find the roles, to um verify your qualifications to the requirements, to upload your resume, to apply to the job, to attach all of your other documents, um, your veteran preference, you know, your the forms that you need to fill out, your um you still need to upload your transcripts from your education and your VA decision letter once that's all finished. All of that still goes into USA Jobs. USA Jobs is not really an ATS, it's oh it's more of a human resources information system where they track uh candidates and they store information. Um, but I believe from what I'm hearing, the federal government is going to move more toward using an ATS type of system to process those applications. But for now, it is still all being administered by human beings. Okay, so that was a lot of information. And if you are not even ready to put in a federal application yet, you might just want to bookmark this episode for you know when the federal hiring freeze does kind of open up um when our government gets back to work and is operating again. Um, but this it is a complicated process, but they really truly are trying to simplify it. I just think that uh, you know, if you think about like turning a cruise ship, right? It's not something that can make an immediate, you know, 90-degree turn. So this is a cruise ship that is trying to make a very sharp turn and it doesn't always work. And so I wanted to give you this knowledge so that you could be ready and not get yourself disqualified because your resume doesn't meet the standards of the current federal resume expectations. So please reach out to me if I can answer any questions for you on the federal process. I wish you all luck in navigating this system. And although this is kind of a pain, I do believe in the long run the shorter resume is going to be better. I don't know if it's always going to stick, that these are always gonna be the four questions, and that the federal resume is always gonna be two pages, but for now we need to get those federal resumes to no more than two pages so we don't get ourselves disqualified. So that's all for I have for you today. Have a great day and thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to today's episode. My goal is to give you actionable strategies to help you learn to market your military skills and smooth your transition to the next phase of your career. If you learned something valuable today, share it. Subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel, leave us a review, and write a post on social media about the lessons that helped you today from this episode.