Job Seeker Tips from Two Recruiting Experts

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Anne Hull, President Hull Strategies, and Nancy Gober, Career Coach Key Development Solutions, discuss resume and interview tips for job seekers interested in working for government contracting firms.

Anne Hull comes to us with a broad background in working with federal agencies and with professional services firms on career development issues. She is going to talk to us first, using that background. Anne, can you give us two tips about people's focus when they're looking for a job? What are two smart things they could do to improve their chances?

Well, thank you Patra. I think one thing is true for people who are both looking for a new job, as well as people who are trying to further their positions within their own organizations, is knowing that they have mastered certain technical and functional skills of the position. Employers are also looking for some of those other competencies that they demonstrated that are important to the organization.

Some of these competencies might include things like problem solving that have sustainable solutions, and examples of those. Perhaps how they have managed resources, which includes not only money and budgets. People, time, cost, equipment. All those types of resources as well as their communication skills.

People's reputations are made or broken on their communication skills. So, how have they demonstrated having good communication skills? Not only with their colleagues but also, across departments. Across generations in many cases.

I think the other thing is how have they demonstrated their own character, their integrity and their ethics, which are so vitally important these days. The other thing particularly for job seekers is know what the organization does before you have a chat, before you interview or before you talk with people at a job fair. You can then tailor what you've done to match some of the things that their looking for in areas that I've just talked about, but also in their functional and technical areas. Know the organization's mission and goal and then tailor your needs to how that area supports those missions and goals.

In order to get a job with a government contracting firm, tip number one is find ways to relate to the government contracting firm. The people who are in the firm as well as the type of work. For instance, we know that the population of government contracting firms is largely systems driven. Populated largely by engineers. In your interview show a comfort level in interacting with those engineers. Process driven. Government contracting firms are process driven to accomplish an objective, not just for the process, but towards the objective. Therefore, in your resume relate to that firm. Show examples of processes that you may have used to a successful conclusion of a project or a program that you managed.

Another tip is understand and do not ignore the culture of government contracting firms. In other words, what they're like. These are conservative firms. Don't send your resume on pink paper in order to stand out. You will stand out, we'll have a good chuckle. But the problem for you the job seeker would be a clear indication that you don't understand our culture. It is a process driven organization and as such every thing adheres to a process. We don't short cut. Know as an interviewee that interviewing and hiring follows a process. You're going to need to follow all those steps. You can't jump across a couple of steps or shortcut that process.

And finally, these are contract driven firms. Don't be surprised if during an interview you are asked, can you handle living with the here-today-gone tomorrow nature of the contract-driven world?

And a bonus, tip three. When you hire into a government contracting firm, a star is not born. You are not there to become star. Your mission is to support your client and make them the star.

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