Re: KSAs

A resume is a brief synopsis of a person's entry level qualifications. It should not be used to assess a person's organizational "fit" and indepth knowledge, skills, and aptitude for the position. If a candiate does take the time and care to be clear, concise, and complete in statements in an application, or the statements are irrelevant, then you either discard the candidate or send the application back (not recommended).

Re: Today's article

I agree with the post, and would like to add, the difference between private sector and federal resumes.

With federal resumes you can address the KSA's within the resume. The problem is, will it get read by folks who are in the hiring process.

Re: KAS

I know what you mean! I recently left an Agency that did not use KSA's. They have many people at the GS-14 level who cannot even begin to perform at that level. It is such a wasteful environment. Instead of admitting that the system is flawed, they simply bring in contractors to do the "real work" while the civil servants sit around socializing all day collecting six figure salaries!

Re: KILL THOSE KSA'S AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Your experience must be limited to hiring attorneys. There are a lot of excellent reasons stated throughout these comments that support using KSAs. Most resumes are canned, one-pagers not tailored to the specific job being sought. What's wrong with having someone who wants to work for your organization put in a little effort into providing information to show HOW the experience in their brief resume fits your specific needs? It's too easy to just check "expert" to questions in an automated system. If agencies limited the number of KSAs and the length of the responses expected, they would get the information they needed to decide WHO they want to interview and who they don't, based on the quality and relevance of the responses. It's not antiquated, it's an essential part of a multiple-hurdle approach to candidate assessment. And what evidence is there that the private sector does such a good job staffing positions anyway?

Re: KILL THOSE KSA'S AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Because private sector does not have qualification standards to meet. Do not speak of which you do not know. All those outside HR do not really know how the hiring process is bound by rules, regulations and law. KSAs provide useful information to cull the wheat from the chaff, and also serves to provide the selecting official with the best qualified candidate. Isn't that what we all want? So, when the candidate complains that he/she was the best candidate and didn't get selected, HR can clearly articulate why they weren't.

Re: KILL THOSE KSA'S AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

I do believe Mr. Attorney that your logic is flawed. Eliminating the KSAs would make my job a lot easier. All I would have to do is refer the 100+ resumes to you, the selecting official, for you to interview and determine who to hire. The difference between the private sector and the public is that when the private sector finds out your are not qualified, they fire you. In the public, if you have one year of service and have met your probabtionary period it is a long and arduous process to terminate your employement. KSAs provide useful information as to an applicants experience and skills since the applicant has to provide examples of actually performing the duty or like duty; a resume doesn't. For ex: my resume states "prepares complex data in support of organization mission", what does that tell you? Did I compile data from across the organization or did I type it and put it in proper format. Both could be considered preparing. Mr. Attorney, use your brain power and decide.

Re: KILL THOSE KSA'S AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

So it looks like you HR staffing specialists still love those KSAs and I can understand why. You have been saddled with the duty of screening these candidates and you don't know how to do it other than creating these stupid KSAs that are nothing more than canned replys to what you are seeking for employment.

Don't you realize that KSAs are often written by the girlfirend or boyfriend of the applicant or some paid for service that gets money preparing those canned KSAs that get you through the minumum qualification process then onto the BQ process. If you didn't have these stupid hurdles to get through, then KSAs would not be needed. You have a one year probation period that will weed out those employees that are improperly hired and what about just checking the references for a change to find out if someone is any good rather than perpetuate an old system like the KSAs.

Re: KILL THOSE KSA'S AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Not so fast. KSA's remind me of high school & college term papers. How I hated them. I gave speeches whenever I could escape them. I worked in private industry HR for several years before I worked for Federal HR. There is definitely a different approach to hiring between them. Private sector was great when my lack of experience but obvious youthful attributes were revealed at an interview. Public sector is greater since my seasoned analytical attributes are revealed in a KSA document and I'm hired before I'm even seen. Mind over matter, really matters. I wrote a lot of crediting plans with managers over the years, at 11 different agency HRO's. There was a lot of work & thought put into them. There's so many ways to hire your buddies by legal noncompetitive means, that no selecting official is going to write KSA crediting plans unnecessarily. Federal job interviews can be nonexistent. I was hired 2X as a black female and 1X as a man. I'm neither, but I did great just as my KSA promised.