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by Amin Huffington

Dreamfedjob - Turning unemployed into employed.

A question often asked by applicants is, “Why do I have to do KSA’s when I’ve already sent you a resume?”  When you read the answer, keep this in mind: a KSA is to a resume what a silver bullet is to a shotgun pellet.

In an effort to drive the Federal hiring process toward a universal application format, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) gathered together several agencies from around the government to create one resume format that would include all of the crucial data required for Federal application into one uniform resume format. The product that resulted was the USAJOBS Resume Builder.

The USAJOBS Resume Builder allows you to create one uniform resume that provides all of the information required by government agencies. Instead of creating multiple resumes in different formats, you can build your resume once and, “… be ready for all job opportunities.”  Even if you don’t use the USAJOBS resume builder resumes, in whatever form, are meant to describe your general background and experience.

KSA’s present you with the opportunity to highlight your knowledge, skills and abilities with regard to the specific job to be filled at the specific agency and specific office in which the position functions.  The electronic resume, while important, is meant to be a one-size-fits-all approach to the job application process.  And it does have the advantage of saving time, effort and energy which would be spent reinventing the wheel each time you see a job you are interested in.  That having been said, many resumes I’ve seen over the years are merely ‘data dumps’ from the applicant’s job descriptions.  We’ve all seen the stilted job description language that has been standardized and homogenized so that it looks like every person has done the same thing, regardless of agency or location.  And with word processing, electronic cutting and pasting from one document to the other is a breeze to fill up the space in a resume builder experience block - for you and for every other person with a passing interest in a job at a place they’d like to go someday.

On the other hand, the KSA asks, “…so what have you REALLY done?”  If written well, it identifies the challenges you’ve faced and the accomplishments you’ve made.  But not always.  A recent KSA response was, “What I learned about the subject, I read on the internet when I looked it up to answer this KSA.” 

A good way to start off any KSA is with a phrase like, “As a wildlife technician with the USFWS in Durango, Colorado…”  This accomplishes a number of positive things for you.  First, it provides an easy cross-reference with your resume.  Second, it identifies the level of authority and responsibility of the position when you performed the duties (e.g., clerk, technician, professional, supervisor, etc.)  Next, the knowledgeable reader of your KSA can quickly recognize that you performed work in a forested and mountainous region rather than at the beach.  Which of these two work environments might help you may depend on the location of the job you are applying for. 

A good way to continue is with a specific and detailed description of the work you accomplished.  An example might be, “I performed environmental analysis on 29 projects in my 4 years in the position.  I have conducted NEPA analysis and/or written 10 NEPA documents during that same time period.”  You can show you are knowledgeable about the requirements governing such work by citing the law, regulation or standard operating procedure that you followed to successfully complete a task or project.  The most effective way to express your experience is through action verbs.  An action verb is a word that conveys action/behaviors and reflects the type of performance that is to occur (i.e., purchase, design, write, supervise).  Action verbs reflect behaviors that are measurable, observable, verifiable, and reliable.  You can find some action verbs for KSAs and resumes at the end of this article. 

This is a good place to identify the equipment (e.g., operated a standard soil truck mounted with a soil probe and auger) or software program (e.g., Excel, ProTracts, ArcGIS) you used in accomplishing the work you performed.

Don’t forget training that you received that is relevant, but avoid providing a laundry list of titles that duplicates what’s already in your resume.  Highlight a few and describe how you applied what you learned to the job.  And be sure to showcase any course(s) that you taught in the specific area of the KSA.  (You can repeat teaching experience in a KSA such as “Ability to communicate orally and/or in writing.”)

Repeat this process for each position you held that provides experience/training relevant to the KSA and, ultimately, to the job you are applying for.

While your background may not have provided experience and training in every KSA, if all you have in the way of an answer is one like the websurfer I mentioned earlier, you might want to reconsider your decision to apply for the job.  True, it can’t hurt and who knows, even with low scores on the KSA’s you could make the referral list because you have little if any competition for a particular vacancy.  The only thing you have to lose is your time.  If you’re like me, and I know I am, you may want to conserve your ammunition by targeting your applications rather than just blasting away at everything that moves.