KSA's -- aarrgghh.

February 20, 2006 11:24 AM

I am faced with several dilemmas. The most urgent at this point being: KSAs. I'm aware that its fairly difficult to find a job position with the government but the KSA portion of the process is putting me over the edge! There are several positions that I see posted each day that I believe would be perfect for me, however, I simply cannot get past doing the KSA's. Does anyone here do or know of any good companies that specialize in writing KSA's for others? Perhaps a tutorial site which enables me to do it myself? I sure would appreciate any leads.

Also, how successful do you think I will be at actually getting a foot in, being that I have very limited experience?

posted by seeminglyshy to Work & Money (5 answers total)

KSAs are "knowledge, skills, and abilities" self-assessments relied on by U.S. federal government hiring bureaucrats to evaluate whether a candidate has relevant experience.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 11:32 AM on February 20, 2006

We're getting away from KSAs (say kay suh) at my agency. We use Resumix which is a sort of rudimentary AI that pulls key words from your resume and checks for matches. If you make the list, you then go on to the interview process. We're getting away from crazy multi-paragraph interview questions and moving into 'behavioral based interviewing.'

Are you using USAJobs? I'm not aware of any companies or tutorials, but I would say just keep writing and refining. At the risk of sounding really obvious, you need to relate you current knowledge, skills and abilities to the posted job. Use action words, managed, led, taught, built, researched, etc. If the positions are perfect for you you should be able to relate some experience, training or education to the job.
posted by fixedgear at 11:58 AM on February 20, 2006

Just think of the KSA's as what you'd put in a cover letter. They don't have to be long, just a paragraph or two saying, Oh, I know how to do this because I did this at my other job. Or I've never done this in particular, but I took a class on it. Or while I've never done this particular thing, I understand that the components of doing this are (attention to detail, keeping records, etc.) and I've done those things in this other capacity. Knowledge=I took some class Skills=I might not have done this before but I've got what it takes (the key here is to be able to break it down and relate it to other things you've done that use the same skills even if it's not quite the same thing) Experience=I did it before.
posted by dipolemoment at 2:15 PM on February 20, 2006

It's a pain but you have to respond to their requests in a way that will get you to the first interview.

Remember, the people who will pass you on to that interview often have no idea what skills are really important to the job. They are in the Human Resources department, not the office you're applying to. Therefore, you have to use the words and phrases that the application uses when describing your abilities.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 10:42 AM on February 21, 2006

Response by poster: Thank you for your imput bretherens.
posted by seeminglyshy at 2:13 PM on February 21, 2006