In a message dated Tue, 2 Nov 1999 12:08:06 PM Eastern Standard Time, Mary McCan <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> In fact the US Office of Personnel Management uses a contractor's services
> to fill government museum positions. (Presently the positions filled in
> this way seem to be limited to the Army museums.)  The contractor requires
> a resume that can be scanned, with what keywords one can only imagine.
>  Large school districts screen teachers this way also (Fairfax County, Va.
> and Montgomery County, Md. to mention two).  I would like to know more
> about this as a trend or policy.  How do you determine which keywords are
> likeliest to yield the best candidates?  Who determines the keywords?  Is
> it a fair process?

The contractor probably draws up a list of keywords and they are approved by OPM or they work with OPM to generate a list of keywords to search for.  In any case, the contractors are probably not museum specialists and don't really know what qualifies someone to work in a museum (then again, OPM really doesn't know either).  The job hunt becomes a game of "guess the keywords" rather than "show off your qualifications".

For technical positions that have easy job descriptions (database programmer, systems analyst, server admin, etc.) it's much easier to do resumes this way and is decently fair.  For positions that don't have hard and fast definitions, I think that it is unfair to the company and the applicants to do this.

I'd call OPM and ask them who their contractor is (which is probably public knowledge) and then call up the contractor saying that you are thinking about getting screening software for your office and ask them what their procedure is.  Museum work is really nebulous in terms of skill sets so it's hard to judge what they are looking for if you don't know what system they are using.  I took a seminar in writing SF-171s and learned that for government, more is better.  You get points for every little thing that qualifies you for the job and the more things you have, the better chance you have of getting points.  Since only like the top 3-5 people are granted interviews, it's better to play it safe and put more on your SF-171 than you need.  I know that the Smithsonian has their own OPM with an individual assigned to review each job posting (which is why it takes 6-8 weeks for anything to get processed).

Deb

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