PolyWogg’s (Completely Informal and Totally Unofficial) Guide to Competing for Jobs in the Canadian Federal Government

Once you are in government, people often move simply through deployment. Deployments are lateral moves exactly at level i.e. no promotion involved, and because of that, it is a lot less complex and formal than some of the other types of moves. You are already “appointed” at level, i.e. someone already ran a competition and appointed you at that level so the “proof” of you meriting that level has already been done…the only paperwork to do in a deployment is for the manager to say how you meet the criteria.

Of course, just to confuse things, you can find out about deployments either through a very formal process (such as it being advertised) or just generally through the grapevine. For example, you hear that a manager is looking for someone at your level. Or perhaps a former boss told you there was someone looking. Either way, you want the job.

Reaching out to them is a lot like the cold-call process, although you might use a bit of a hook if a friend or colleague or former boss is referring you to them. You’ll provide a copy of your resume, express your interest in the position or at least in having a conversation with them if they’re interested, and you’ll give them a short email to grab their interest. Preferably something like “I have 3 years working in a similar job and I’m looking for a change”, and then a few lines explaining the type of work you are doing that is similar to their opening.

Chances are that they are going to be interviewing several people, and I hesitate to even call them candidates because it is all informal. No rating guide prepared, no formal job description, no formal questions. Really, they’re just meeting people to see if there is a match of interest. If there is, they’ll check some references, maybe ask for a writing sample, etc., narrow it down a bit more. But they are only going to do that if there was a match, or to use the official parlance, a “right fit” between you and their opening.

The interview is going to be very informal, and will run one of two ways:

a. They’ll start by telling you what the job is, and then you’ll describe how some of your experience relates to it; or,

b. They’ll let you tell them something about yourself, and then they’ll tell you about the job.

I know, I know. You’re thinking the second option would be stupid. Except you are reaching out to them. They think you already know about the job, or you wouldn’t be interested. Ninety percent of the time, you’re going to start by asking them to tell you a bit about the job, and then you’ll be back in option (a). Which sounds normal, safe, logical. You may not want that option though, and I’ll explain later why.

First, let’s assume they describe the job. It’s going to look a lot like they’re writing Statement of Merit Criteria for a formal posting. They’re going to mention, for example, that you’ll have to do a lot of writing of different documents, maybe some briefings, lots of working as part of a team, etc. Which if they were writing a SOMC would be the essential experience requirement. But instead of writing a cover letter, you’re now going to tell them orally how you have experience that meets those requirements.

The position requires a lot of writing of different documents? You’ll outline the different types of writing that you have done and for whom. The position requires teamwork? Well, you’ll tell them about your experiences working as part of a team.

Seems straightforward, and on the surface it is. They ask you basic questions about your experience, and you answer them. No difficult questions or scenarios, it is all about your past experience. With a very open-ended question like, “Tell us about your experiences.” It will likely be that informal.

Under the surface, it is a bit more complicated. While you are talking, they are asking themselves three questions…first, of course they are seeing if you have the experiences they require. Second, they are asking themselves if you’re someone they want to work with in the future. Simple personality aspects. And third, are you a good fit for the team and the work?

Let me give you an example. I’ve been working in planning for awhile now, as well as lots of work in horizontal policy coordination. Lots of people with evaluation or research backgrounds often gravitate towards the area when they are looking for a change. Except the work environment is quite different. While an evaluator or a researcher might work on files with similar content, they often have one or two large projects and a six-month window (or longer) to deliver. The corporate policy and planning world is more dynamic. It has work schedules and file priorities changing rapidly and often. Which, to be honest, a lot of evaluators and researchers not only do not enjoy, but they also are often ill-suited to the work pace. It’s not their strength, experience or training. Some of them can do it, some of them can even do it well, but many are not happy doing it. Because it isn’t just a matter of “coping” with the high degree of uncertainty and change, as if it happens a couple of times a year, it is potentially several times a week.

So, when I am hiring, I often tell people that about the work we do. And see how they react. If they are stressed by the description, they will not be a good fit. If they tell me they can “cope” with it, I probe harder. I need to see some examples of where they have done it before and thus not only know what it’s like, but are still seeking to do it again.

For me, that’s a key “fit” variable. I need to know too that they will fit into the team, flexible, willing to share files, willing to cover for people if priorities shift. For my type of work, ownership of a file is frequently an illusion. For someone who likes having a project all to themselves, my team isn’t the right fit for them, and they are not the right fit for my team.

That isn’t cut and dried by any imagination of course. It’s more a feeling of whether they fit. Combined with the way they interact on an interpersonal level. How they describe their former jobs. What animates them in their descriptions, what they shy away from in other descriptions.

I absolutely need to know they can handle the job, sure, but I also need to know if I want them in the team at all. I’ll be even a bit more blunt. There are people who would be aces for the work content, but are absolute jerks to work with on a day-to-day basis. They’re borderline toxic. Why would I risk putting one of them on my team? It’s a lateral unadvertised deployment. We’re just having a conversation. I won’t pursue it, because I will see who else is out there.

Equally though, if you prefer solo projects and your potential future boss tells you the jobs is highly variable for work loads and file priorities are constantly changing, then that team is probably not right for you either. You’re also evaluating them…would I like the work? Would I like to work with this boss? Would I like to work with this team?

Now, as I said, the questions are almost going to be entirely about your past experiences. Which is a giant danger, because it can be rather dry and formal if you let it. You want this to be as close to a conversation as it can be. You want some back and forth. You want it to stay informal, because that’s how they’re going to see if you would work as part of the team.

Which brings me back to the reverse situation where they ask you to tell them about yourself before they tell you about the job. I mentioned you can invert that, put them back in the lead, and that works if you are risk-adverse.

Why might you leave it inverted? Because it is a highly-effective sales strategy to tell them about yourself and your interests before they tell you about the job. I call it the “reverse sell”, and I found it by accident.

About ten years ago, I was looking around for a change. I wasn’t a planner by trade, but I had done it in previous jobs, and I heard about a manager with an opening in another branch. I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me. I sent him an email, said I heard he was looking for a manager on the corporate side, and gave him a brief hook or two of things I had done, plus my resume. He suggested we meet, and it was right away. I agreed to meet, but I was taking a huge tactical risk — I knew very little about their exact work, or even their branch. I had some idea, but normally I would have done more research before going in to see him. With little time, I went in cold.

And he started with an inverted opening for me to tell him about myself. So I did. I talked about some of my previous experiences, and anticipating some of the type of work the jobs in his area would do, I mentioned things that I had enjoyed in previous jobs that were similar, without pointing it out. For example, I noted that I really liked the link between policy and programs. I had been doing high-end policy work for awhile and was looking for a change, something with more ties to programs, but I wasn’t looking to move into the “weeds” of running programs. All of this was true, I wasn’t lying, but I was selecting it because I knew that corporate planning often intersects with both policy and programs. And so I said I was looking for that and enjoyed it.

As he responded, he said that he too liked that aspect, and it was exactly what his division dealt with every day. He went on to explain the work they did, and how it related to what I said, and part of me was thinking, “Well, duh. That’s why I said it.” It was almost like I was applying to work at a carnival selling peanuts and I had said I liked selling things, particularly food, and the boss was explaining to me how that would be a good fit for me. Of course it would be, that’s why I said it.

Except a funny thing seemed to happen. While he was “selling me” on the job and how it fit my needs/desires, he was also selling himself on me. By inverting the order so I went first, the “selling” job was all his by going second and making the linkages for what the job was that he had to fill. He sold me, and he sold himself on how I would fit. It was the easiest interview I have ever had. I barely had to tailor any of my experiences to the job, other than presenting it well up front.

I have used the same technique in other situations, and it actually has some validation by classic “sales” techniques that are taught in business schools. But I just found it by accident, I wasn’t trying to game the interview. It just worked out really well.

So that’s it. You find out about a job opening at level, you see if they’ll meet with you, and you tell them about your experiences in as conversational a tone as possible. Maybe there’s a good fit, maybe there’s not. Or maybe someone else is a better fit.

If the fit happens, they can deploy you relatively quickly. Far faster than formal processes, which is why the option is so popular.

PolyWogg’s (Completely Informal and Totally Unofficial) Guide to Competing for Jobs in the Canadian Federal Government

Assuming you make it past the application stage, written exams are common for many competitions, and your preps can be divided into two tracks — what to write and how to write.

TRACK 1: What to write

I noted in the previous chapter that a statement of merit (i.e. the job poster) has multiple elements including eligibility (already addressed), experiences (already addressed), knowledge, abilities and personal suitability. For a written exam, the focus is on testing approximately 5% of your essential experiences, 85-90% of knowledge, and 10% of abilities. How does it do that?

Let’s focus on the largest component, which is knowledge. I’ll use an EC example as it is the simplest to understand. Generally speaking, there are likely to be three possible knowledge “elements” in the poster:

1. Knowledge of broad Government of Canada policies and priorities;
2. Knowledge of the Department’s specific mandate or its current policy or program priorities; or,
3. Knowledge of something specific to the policy area relevant to the position.

In practice, this might read like:

Knowledge:

K1. Knowledge of Government of Canada’s priorities;

K2. Knowledge of Canada’s labour market trends and issues;

K3. Knowledge of ESDC’s mandate, programs and priorities; and,

K4. Knowledge of the decision-making process in Government for policies and programs.

Assets:

AK1. Knowledge of process for policy consultations with stakeholders

Now, as you’ll recall from an earlier chapter, the competition process has a double-edge sword — the hiring manager has to test you on every element of the poster (for Knowledge, Abilities, and Personal Suitability) AND can only test you on those elements. Which means you know at some point in the process you are going to be asked about GoC priorities, labour market trends, ESDC’s mandate / programs / priorities, decision-making processes, and (potentially) policy consultation process. Preparations for this are a lot like preparing for a test in school — you study, you memorize, you spit it back on during the test.

While Knowledge can be tested at the interview stage, most EC competitions will test you through a written test. Partly for another reason — almost every EC position also will have a requirement in the Abilities section about the ability to “communicate in writing”, so they’ll test if you can communicate in writing i.e. give you a written test.

So let’s assume I wanted to give you a single question on the written exam to test K1-K3. How would I do that? How about:

Assume you have a new Director in your group. She has asked you to prepare a background memo for her to help get herself up to speed, and the current state of play of your files. Write a memo (aka Ability to communicate in writing) to her giving the current state of the labour market (aka K2), and how it relates to broad Government of Canada priorities (aka K1) and more specifically to ESDC’s current mandate, programs and priorities (K3). The maximum length for the memo is three pages and you have two hours to complete the exam.

If you were an AS applying for a finance-related position, the poster might say:

Knowledge:

K1. Knowledge of administrative procedures in ESDC related to financial approvals;

K2. Knowledge of broader GoC legislation and regulations related to finance;

In a written test, you might then see the following question:

Write a short email to your new Director outlining the procedures in the Department for obtaining approvals for at least three different types of financial expenditures (aka K1) and explain the relevant section of the Financial Administration Act that corresponds to the approval authority (aka K2).

Of course, the little clues (like aka K1, K2) wouldn’t be there, I just added them so you can see the links.

If you are not an EC and look at the first one, you might think “holy cow, that’s impossible!”. Except it’s the same thing ECs do every time they write a memo. Not quite so explicitly, but a lot of those elements are there every time.

Equally, if you’re not an AS dealing with finance, you might freak out with the reference to the Financial Administration Act, except anyone dealing with that type of file will know it’s a bit of coded language to say “tell me about s.32, s.33, and s.34 signoffs” (three standard signoff clauses for different types of expenditures).

Which is why I said above that the written test also partly informally tests your experience elements — if you haven’t done real finance before (i.e. you weren’t really a duck), you’re going to likely bomb that section pretty fast. If you are a duck, you’re going to simply say “quack, quack, quack” and swim merrily along.

How to prepare for a written exam

A lot of the jobs — AS, EC, PM — will have an element that basically says “knowledge of the Department” that is running the competition. Where are you going to find this information? The same place the hiring manager is going to find it.

Here’s the thing…if I’m running a test, I have to prepare that “rating guide” I mentioned way back in the early chapters about all the steps in the process. And in that rating guide, I will have a spot for “knowledge of the Department” and beside it, what I think a good answer will include. I have to write it down and share it with HR before I ever test anyone. Part of the whole transparency and accountability thing. Which means I, as the hiring manager, have to not only answer the question first myself, I have to have some pretty good sources that are defensible for a valid answer.

Let me explain that a little better. Suppose I ask you for the Departmental priorities, and I put down that I’m looking for the candidate to say A, B & C. Well, where did I get A, B, and C from? I got them from a document that says “The Departmental priorities are…”. I can’t just subjectively make them up. Is there a document or source that has that info?

Of course. Two of them in fact. The first is the Department’s website. The second is a corporate document that each Department has to send to Parliament each winter to say “Hey, Parliament, here are the Department’s proposed priorities for next year”. This document used to be called the “Report on Plans and Priorities”, but was recently renamed to be called the “Departmental Plan”. Every Department has one. And it’s publicly available.

Which means you KNOW in advance where the hiring manager is going to get his/her list of priorities from and can look at the same document. It’s almost like an open-book test. You know in the poster it said you would be tested on the Departmental priorities, and you know where they’re written down. Ergo, go read them. Study them. Memorize them somewhat. Cuz you’re going to be tested on them.

Similarly, if you want to know other info about the Department, the website will have sections on Vision, Mandate, etc. Easy to find, easy to see where the hiring manager will pull THEIR expected answer from for the test.

Special tip: One area that is rarely used by people preparing for exams is the speech section of a Departmental website. These are the formal speeches delivered by the Minister in recent weeks, months, etc. While some of them will be on very specialized topics, some of them are the equivalent of a standard “stump” speech where they talk about all the things that their Department is doing. Think of it like “Intro to my department”. Often, these are speeches given to general audiences like a Chamber of Commerce, for example. And in it, the Minister frequently will give a high-level description of all the priorities of the day. Crisp and clean, easy to read. So if you find a general one by the Minister, such as to a Chamber of Commerce, you’ll have a pretty good overview.

If you want to know the recent priorities of the Government of Canada, you’ll likely read the Budget announcements (each February or March), read the mandate letters from the Prime Minister to each Minister, or the Speech from the Throne by the Governor General (each fall). All three have the latest overarching priorities.

All of the above items are what I call “macro” documents…they are good for any high-level overview in any of the job categories. But what about more specific items? The “micro” documents?

For those, it’s impossible to tell you in detail what you need. If you’re going for an AS finance position, I can tell you that you’ll need to know the FAA. Or if you’re going to be working on Memorandum to Cabinet or TB submissions, you’ll need to know the decision-making processes of the Privy Council and Treasury Board (respectively). Or if you’re going to be a PM, you may need to know the latest approaches from the Centre of Expertise on managing Grants and Contributions (Gs&Cs).

If you’re qualified to apply, you’re qualified to figure that out for yourself. You know what the job needs, because you have experience in the area. You might add some info around finding out what the specific division does, i.e. it’s mandate or description, but that is usually a “nice to have”.

Just because you know a lot, it doesn’t mean you can pass the test

There is a huge incumbent trap for jobs. By incumbent I mean someone might be already acting in the job, or working in the same division, and they think, “Well, I don’t really need to study, I know this stuff, I do it every day.”

Except they don’t do it every day.

If you are working as an EC in the area, and someone says, “What’s the Departmental Mandate?”, you will go to the website and copy it over into the memo. You don’t have it memorized. You don’t need it for your job.

But you DO need it for the test. Most written tests do NOT have access to the internet or other source materials. So someone who doesn’t do it every day will study, and come up with short reusable modules to explain the priorities, or mandate, or a process, and they’ll pass the test. And the expert in the area who is already doing the job will bomb the exam because they didn’t study and they don’t have those short little modules / paragraphs memorized.

Under the old system where candidates had to rank first to get hired, 50% of incumbents did NOT rank first, and a hefty share of them didn’t even pass the exam. Someone from outside the group who didn’t know the job as well came in and wrote the exam, and explained the content better than the people in the division.

So, what is your goal?

Short reusable paragraphs or headings that you can throw into a memo or exam question to show you do know the priorities, or mandate, or process.

Even if you can memorize well, it doesn’t mean you’ll pass

Let’s go back to the EC example where the candidate has to write a three-page memo about priorities, etc. What’s the most important element? Most people will say “content” since they’re testing knowledge.

But they are not ONLY marking knowledge. A robot could regurgitate facts. Siri could find the departmental mandate. The test is whether or not you can feed it back in a useful, logical, clearly understandable memo. In other words, the marker has to understand what you wrote.

Which means the MOST important part is structure. Structure is King for written exams. A poorly constructed answer with great content will always get lower marks than a well-constructed answer with average content.

How do you ensure a good structure? You memorize those little modules that you need, and you figure out good headings to use when you feed it back out in the exam. In fact, the headings may get you most of your marks.

Every once in awhile, you’ll get a question in the written exam or the interview where you have no idea what to say. You might have a whole bunch of ideas bouncing around in your head, and you just can’t figure out how to structure a response. It happens.

But there’s a way out. If you prepare properly for the unexpected.

Expect the unexpected

I think it always a good idea for AS, PM, and EC candidates to have something in their back-pocket to use as a structure if they get a question where the appropriate structure to use is not evident. Essentially, you should have a generic structure to use in any situation. What is it?

• AS — Steps in a problem-solving cycle;
• PM — Steps in a project-management cycle; or,
• EC — Steps in a policy-development cycle.

Now, take a moment, stop reading, and go Google one of those three. Maybe even find an image instead of a web-page that shows the cycle. Now do it for the other two. Did you see the trick?

They’re basically all the same steps.

1. You start with problem definition / research / identifying the issue.
2. You do some research to make sure you understand it;
3. You analyse some options / instruments / policy choices;
4. You choose one;
5. You implement it;
6. You evaluate it and provide feedback back to the starting position again.

Six headings that you can use for just about ANY question where you get stuck. Which is often, as I said, most of your marks. A good structure.

Depending on the job, you also might want to research things like steps in creating teamwork, partnerships, consultations, etc. Again, they’re all about the same.

You ‘re ready to write, now what?

TRACK 2: How to write

Your second track for preparations is a bit more about the physical setup and the actual time period for the test.

Most written tests these days are going to be written on computers, it’s just easier to mark. The problem is that not all departments are well set-up with computer labs for you to come in, ten or twenty people at a time, and write an exam. Some departments decide instead to do a “take-home” test in that they’ll email it to you at a set time and you have a set amount of time to return it to them by email too. Or some will have you come into their office, but instead of giving you a computer, they have you write it out. By hand. Sometimes by pencil.

No, I’m completely serious. I was invited to an EX-01 exam where I thought I was going to be writing on a computer, and instead was handed a sheaf of pages and some pencils. It was BRUTAL.

So, you need to ask some basic questions if they don’t tell you right up front when they invite you to the written exam.

• Will it be take-home or will it be on-site?
• If it is on-site, will it be on computer? Will you have access to the internet during the test or not? That last question is a bit of a tricky one. If you know, for example, that you will have access to the internet, do you need to memorize the mandate? Or do you just memorize “where” it is on the website, and go to the website and copy and paste it? But what if they tell you yes and then you arrive and the internet isn’t working? Is it grounds to appeal? Probably not.
• How much time do you have to do the test?
• Which elements are being tested?

This last one is important. Almost every competition now will tell you in advance when you are invited, in this case, to a written exam that they are testing K1 to K3, Ability 4 (writing), Ability 6 (judgement) and Personal Suitability 2 (interpersonanal skills). However, not all competitions do. Sometimes you’re assuming it’s all the knowledge ones, but there’s a chance it could ask you something about the others.

But let’s focus a bit more on the actual writing and some basic tips.

1. If you are writing by hand, write EVERY OTHER LINE on the page. It will be more readable, and if you have to change something later, you can without turning the page into chicken scratch.
2. If you do have access to the internet, usually you are NOT allowed to simply copy and paste. Certain things, like the exact wording of the mandate, sure. An explanation from TBS about the steps in the policy development cycle? No, you’ll have to write that in your own words.
3. If you have a bunch of short modules memorized for different things, spend five minutes just “dumping” them out of your head in some sort of short notation form. It’ll stop you from worrying that you’ll forget them as you write, and when you need them, you can probably use the short notes as your headings anyway.
4. YOU NEED TO MANAGE YOUR TIME. If you do not finish the test, you are likely not going to pass. Part marks are possible, but not enough to pass. Even if a couple of elements are a bit “weak”, you need to finish completely. MANAGE YOUR TIME.
5. If you are writing detailed information, outline your answer as you go to make sure you answer EVERY question. If it says “make a recommendation”, your note has to make a recommendation.
6. If you are on a computer, SAVE OFTEN. If it crashes, and you lose stuff, there is no whining to the teacher to get an extension. This is the real world with real consequences. If you’re too stupid to save often, you’re too stupid to be given a job that pays $60-70K per year.
7. If you are writing a take-home test where they send it to you by mail, make sure you have a good infrastructure in place. You will need a reliable internet connection to send and receive your exam. If you don’t have a reliable internet connection, that is not their problem. You are just done. If you are writing in your office, make sure you have no interruptions. Put up a sign at work saying “WRITING TEST, DO NOT DISTURB” or better yet, book a quiet room or a Director’s office where you won’t be disturbed. Put up the sign on that door too. If you are writing at home, this is not the time to decide your kids should stay home that day. You are writing a TEST for a JOB. You cannot be distracted as if you’re running a daycare and writing the test.

YOU NEED TO TAKE THE TEST SERIOUSLY. Unless you don’t really care if you get it.

Then relax. Keep your notes you made when you were studying. The test is over, but some of the prep is still useful.

PolyWogg’s (Completely Informal and Totally Unofficial) Guide to Competing for Jobs in the Canadian Federal Government

Finding out about available jobs in the Federal Government

There used to be two separate sites for finding out about available jobs in the government — an external site for people who didn’t already work for the government and were looking to get in, and an internal site for those who already worked for government and who were looking for a change or promotion.

In 2015, the government merged the sites into one — Jobs.GC.CA. The “jobs” part is obvious, GC is short for “Government of Canada” and “CA” is the country code designation for Canada. While each of those may seem obvious, they are not obvious to everyone — this site is for jobs with the Canadian Federal GOVERNMENT, not any of the provinces. And it should not be confused with Job Bank, an online inventory of external jobs in the private and public sector that the Government runs to help employers and potential employees connect (http://www.jobbank.gc.ca).

When you go to http://jobs.gc.ca, here is a sample of what you should see (there may be some layout changes, etc., this was snapped on May 14, 2017):

(Image © Government of Canada, 2017)

The site is run by the Public Service Commission of Canada which regulates and aids in HR staffing across the government. The site has:

• info on the process, which is in slightly different form than what I wrote in the previous chapter, plus lots of details about applying online, accommodations if you have a disability, language requirements, different types of tests, etc.;
• special sections for Veterans and Canadian Armed Forces members, students, and recent graduates;
• some info for organizations or colleges and universities looking to partner with the government on recruitment issues; and,
• a nice big section called “inside government”.

All of this is what departments call “public facing” information. Useful as background, but none of it is what you are really looking for — the actual jobs that are available. To get to those, you have two options:

1. Click on “Search for jobs”, and this will list all the jobs available currently, with the search results shown in tabs. If you are from outside government, or not logged in, you will see one tab (jobs open to the public). If you are within government, and logged in, you will see five tabs:
   1. internal jobs i.e. those only open to those already in the public service;
   2. jobs open to the public;
   3. notices of consideration (kind of like a formal transparent pre-announcement of who they INTEND to appoint from an already-run competition in order to inform anyone who might have grounds for appeal);
   4. notices of appointment or proposal of appointment (the notice where they ACTUALLY say “okay, we’re appointing this person, let us know if anyone is appealing”); and,
   5. notices of acting appointments (people who are filling in temporarily for someone else at a higher level, i.e. a temporary promotion).
2. Click on one of the more targeted links like for “Canadian Armed Forces” or “Public Service Recruitment Programs” or perhaps one of the featured areas farther down the page.

Feel free to go to the site and browse around. I’ll wait.

Next step

Okay, you’re back? Good. Hopefully you saw some jobs that might interest you. If you didn’t, that should tell you something (kind of like in earlier chapters, maybe government isn’t the right fit for you). However, before I move on, I do want to flag something that may not be obvious. These are not actually ALL the jobs available.

As I explained before, there are two types of government departments — one group that is called “core public administration” and one group that is considered separate from the core. The first group, core, publishes ALL their notices on this site. It’s required. For the second group, it’s a bit hit and miss. Some post there too as they know that it is a huge advantage to have all government jobs posted on one site. However, some post ONLY on their individual agency website because they want to control branding, look and feel, etc. It’s a smaller and smaller percentage each year of agencies that only post on their own site, but if you know of an agency or department that really interests you and you don’t see any jobs posted with them, check out their own agency website directly. Chances are you will find links to job notices or recruitment information.

Now, for the main JOBS.GC.CA site, if you actually want to apply for any of the jobs that come up in the job search window, you need to create an account. That is done easily via that helpful little link over to the right, up at the the top, that says “Create an account”. This isn’t going to be rocket science…they’re going to ask you basic questions like your name, email address, etc. You do NOT want to be creative here with your name like you might on Facebook or a news commenting site — this is a professional site where you apply for jobs. Putting in your name as Johnny Appleseed might be cute, but it is a quick way to look like an idiot when you apply for a job. And the security on these sites is way beyond what you see on someone’s blog, so your info is relatively safe. In this case, you WANT them to know who you are, and they have jobs you want, so you want to fill out any box that applies to you.

I’ll even go one step further — for your email address, make it look professional. If you have had the same one since you were 14 when you thought “fluffy_bunny92” was cute, or “big_stud104” was catchy, get a new one. I confess that I use my ThePolyBlog@gmail.com in lots of situations that I probably shouldn’t, as it isn’t as professional as I would normally recommend, but it also isn’t completely egregious. If in any doubt, I use a separate one that has standard firstname.lastname@domain.com as the format, and I just auto-forward that email to my G-mail account so I don’t have to check it separately.

You don’t have to do this next part yet, but once you are up and running, you can configure your logged-in profile in a bunch of different ways:

1. Save generic searches so you can run them again quickly at any point (such as all jobs in Newfoundland, or all clerical positions in the National Capital Region or all PM-05 jobs within your own department);
2. Set up email alerts to tell you when jobs that match your criteria are posted; and,
3. Eventually, upload your resume and biographical information that will allow you to apply for jobs faster each time.

** One significant change for internal applicants is that the online system for internal jobs used to only be accessible from work computers. With the merger of the two sites, and the addition of logins and passwords, you can now login and check stuff from home, and even receive your job alerts at a non-work email address (note thate you have to set up your account first from a work computer so the network knows it is really you, but after that, you can login from home).

Once you create your account, and log in, you get a whole new set of menus:

• Job applications (in progress or previously submitted);
• Status of job applications (status of those you submitted to previously);
• View your saved searches (covered below);
• Edit email alerts (covered below);
• Personal information — name and identification, address, contact information, education, languages, and your resume;
• Account information (email, password, hint question and answer); and,
• System notifications.

They are also located under MY ACCOUNT across the top as well.

Why are these boxes important?

I know you might think, “Oh those are just a bunch of profile things, I don’t need to fill those out.” Yes, you do. Because a lot of the information they do when screening is based on those boxes. If the job is limited to those living in Montreal, you need that box filled out to say you live in Montreal. If you have to be internal only, you want your Personnel Record Identifier (PRI) number listed in the identification so they can verify that you are currently working for government. If you have to have a university degree, you want that info listed in the education section. These are all quick ways for the system to triage you when you’re applying, and if the info isn’t there, the SYSTEM CANNOT SCREEN YOU IN. That’s right, the computer will spit you out of a competition because you didn’t give it the right information. That’s your responsibility (I’ll cover that later), no one is going to chase after you to make sure you did it right.

SPECIAL TIP: Your resume can be added to a text box so that you can just “attach” it to your applications easily. This is a plain text box, no room for fancy formats, etc. If you are using Microsoft Word (or whatever word processing software you did your resume in), chances are good that there are little tiny hidden codes in your text that you can’t see. If you copy and paste directly from a program like Word, those codes will be embedded with your text. 90% of them will do nothing. Maybe even 98% of them are likely to be ignored by the system. But those other 2%? They do weird things like tell printers to do extra hard returns, or overwrite the previous line or go up three lines, etc. And suddenly your carefully written resume comes out looking like:

[&–;[&–;[&–;[&–;[&–;[&–;John Doe

[&–;[&–;[&–;[&–;[&–;[&–;255 Park Street

In other words, it looks like bad formatting, and more importantly, unprofessional. You can’t see the codes, you can’t tell they’re there, but when the computer spits out your resume for the hiring manager, it will look like gobbledy-gook. How do you get around this?

Copy it from your wordprocessing program and paste it into something like NOTEPAD (in Windows) or a simple Text Editor. Some people have really basic email software and sometime paste it there first instead. You can use any software that has minimal formatting (preferably one with none). Then copy and paste from the non-formatted area into the website. Saving it as text in Word is not the same, it doesn’t actually strip everything. Use NOTEPAD or the equivalent.

The system does it’s best to strip out that stuff, but it may not get everything, so just play it safe — paste simple unformatted text. This goes for cover letters too.

Job Search Options

As noted earlier, the real power for this tool is of course to search for jobs that you might be interested in applying for and hopefully getting. The job search screen looks like this:

(Image © Government of Canada, 2017)

If you’re already in government, you’ll notice five tabs across the top that I mentioned earlier and the two most important are:

• Internal jobs (open only to those already working in government); and,
• Jobs open to the public.

Some people from outside government or even internally immediately object to the separation, but there are two reasons for it. Let me digress for a minute, and explain some of the differences between those two types of jobs. If you want to just get to the search function, feel free to skip ahead to “narrowing your search”.

First, there are union issues. Almost all government employees are in one of several unions that cover the public service, and part of almost every union agreement in any sector is that their members will be considered first for promotions, etc. before you hire from outside. Pretty standard stuff for staffing in an organized labour environment, and whether or not you agree with the need or role for unions, it’s well-established labour law that they are legal to exist and that employees have to be members. So, management has to consider them first for lots of jobs.

Second, it’s also more efficient in some ways. Bear with me, I’m not blowing smoke at you on this one. The goal of any hiring manager in any sector is to hire someone who can do the job. They don’t often care who it is, they just want someone who can start and do the job immediately with minimal new training, hopefully. They also don’t want to interview 500 people in a long laborious process — they just want to interview enough people to give them some selection, i.e. some choice, and take the one who is the best fit for the job.

So to use a private sector example, suppose the manager is in retail, and wants to hire a senior customer service manager. Who are they likely to find who is the most qualified — someone who already works in the retail environment doing customer service, maybe even a junior manager? Or would it be a senior customer service manager from a completely different environment like government? Would you think, “Hey, that person who has been managing EI benefits delivery would be great at selling yoga pants”? Or would you think, if you’re being generous, “Sure, they have some transferable skills, interesting work experience, professional outlook, but I really wanted someone with experience in retail customer service”? Chances are you want the latter.

Managers in government are no different. They might be hiring a senior policy analyst and the most likely pool of candidates who are going to have the exact skills and experience they are looking for is going to be the junior policy analysts already working in government. “Promoting from within” is a potential strength (and I’ll deal with the weakness side in a moment), and it is highly efficient. As such, the positions that are listed under “internal jobs” tend to be more senior positions. Not all, but many. By contrast, the jobs open to the public are usually one of four types:

1. Entry level positions, a way to get “into” government, your foot in the door;
2. Highly-specialized positions that the government can’t fill internally, such as specialized medical positions (doctors, veterinarians, etc.) or highly competitive fields that the government has trouble attracting (like computer specialists);
3. Special recruitment programs designed to boost integration of specific groups like new graduates, veterans, students, newcomers, etc.; and,
4. Specific targeted jobs to promote renewal.

This last one is where I said above that the government needs to address that “promote from within” weakness. Obviously, if an organization only promotes from within, there’s a risk of narrowing your diversity of options over time.

There’s a classic example of “group think” in a sociology experiment that was conducted with monkeys. The experiment was that they put five monkeys in an enclosure and electrified the bars, floor and climbing structures. Along with other food options, the scientists also hung some bananas. If the monkeys ate the other food, nothing happened; if any monkey touched the bananas, they would all get a shock. The five monkeys learned pretty fast, “no bananas”. The scientists then replaced one monkey, and of course the new monkey went for the bananas. However, the other monkeys knew they would get zapped so they stopped the new monkey from getting to the bananas. Eventually, the new monkey learned not to touch them either. So the scientists replaced the other four one at a time. Eventually, they all learned the banana lesson well enough to stop any other monkey from doing it until all five monkeys in the cage knew not to touch the bananas — but none of the monkeys in the cage had ever actually experienced the shock. The shocks only went to the first five, and THOSE monkeys set up a culture of “don’t touch the bananas” that carried on after the original five were gone. “Why don’t they eat the bananas? Because nobody eats the bananas, it’s always been like that.” The new monkeys didn’t know why, they just knew they weren’t supposed to do it.

Now lots of people might say, “That’s bureaucracy for you”, but it’s not about bureaucracy. Group think exists in every sector that’s been in existence longer than about five years. In retail, somebody might suggest a new type of promotion or marketing, and someone will say, “nah, we tried that once, didn’t work.” It exists as a direct result of best practices and training on ways that work, as people start eliminating ways that either they don’t think will work or which are not open to them. And, yes, it can happen in government too.

Take for example a problem with educational attainment and options on how to address it. There are a number of constraints on what the Federal government can do about it. It can’t, for example, decide that elementary education is not going well and thus open a bunch of new elementary schools to combat the problem — education is within provincial control and the feds are barred from doing it by that pesky little thing called the Constitution. Over time, some departments and their analysts may view that area not only out of bounds legally, but also out of bounds for even analysis. Yet what if one of the provinces might be open to some sort of joint project, or discussions of the issues at least, that would help inform their approach? Analysts in the federal system may have started to think that “all of it is off the table”, since it was never on the table in the first place. Then along came someone at some point who said, “Hmm, we can’t do anything as the federal government, but what if we offered the provinces money to do more in that area?”. A disruption in approach called “federal spending power”. Spending doesn’t violate the Constitution, so lots of things came back on the table in some departments.

Alternatively, you could have people at senior levels who don’t have a very good grasp of digital technology, or social media, and if you were in the area of international affairs, most of them might not have had a really good grasp of options around what is now called “digital diplomacy”. Then some people came along who said, “what if?” and suddenly international affairs officers and Ambassadors started using Twitter as a policy tool.

In both cases, external recruitment can be a good way to get fresh insights or fresh ways of looking at things, partly to make sure you’re considering all the possible solutions and not just the ones that have been working recently. A way of bringing in people with fresh approaches to help disrupt the status quo.

In government, that sometimes happens at very senior levels with a particular government appointing a deputy minister from the private sector, for example. Those tend to be very unique posts though, not something that would show up on a website advertised to the public. At the regular employee level, there are some recruitment programs that have the same goal — the “Recruitment of Policy Leaders” program, for example.

The RPL program is aimed at students and young policy thinkers who have shown some success in various disciplines through winning large scholarships or awards, working in interesting fields on large projects, etc. and generally having advanced degrees — Masters or a Ph.D. Instead of hiring them at the bottom of the policy analyst ladder (EC-02), and risking their entrepreneurial / innovation spark being driven out by Group Think while they work their way up the ladder, these high-fliers are hired at the mid- to senior-policy levels (EC-05 and -06). Deputy Ministers are heavily engaged in the hiring, and often serve as mentors. Fresh blood, fresh ideas, high-level access to ensure both potential innovation and that we consider all the policy options, not just the ones we already have under consideration. Many of these programs come with bumps and bruises in implementation, since after all, they are indeed forces of disruption, but they can achieve some forms of renewal and are actively managed.

So, as I said, there are jobs open to the public and jobs open to government employees, with the majority of senior positions available internally and most entry-level or short-term positions available externally. Simple, right?

Narrowing the search

The left-hand sidebar, entitled Refine Search, has a whole list of options to help you narrow down the list. For example, on the day I pulled the image above, there were 283 internal jobs and 552 external jobs available — across the entire Government. Some people think that is amazing, others wonder why so low. Either way, truthfully, most of the jobs don’t apply to you and your interests. There are multiple different categories, locations, etc. And most of those jobs are only posted for 2-3 weeks at a time, so the list is constantly changing. So narrowing it down to the jobs that apply only to you is a challenge. You want the list to be manageable, but you also don’t want to miss out on some potential jobs because you accidentally narrowed the search too fine. Let’s walk through some of the ways you can refine your search, and in particular, what I consider the four biggest criteria:

That’s the basics of the Job Site. Time to look at the actual application process once you find a job you want.

PolyWogg’s Completely Informal and Totally Unofficial Guide to Competing for Jobs in the Canadian Federal Government

Before you start reading about how to prepare for individual parts of a competition, it is good to understand the whole process. I know what you’re thinking – what’s to understand? Somebody has a job, I need a job, let’s go! Not so fast…

The process has a lot of steps, some of which involve you and most of which don’t. Plus, it is very different from the private-sector advice you will find on most websites. Need a quick example? How about cover letters – lots of websites will tell you to keep them to a single page, which if you do for a government job, you’ll pretty much ensure that you get screened OUT (you’ll see why later).

So, the better you understand the whole process from beginning to end, the better chance you will have of succeeding. Don’t worry, this is just an introduction, most of the applied learning comes later, stage by stage.

Government competitions are governed by legislation

The biggest difference between the private-sector and the public sector is that most government competitions at any level are governed by legislation. This is true for the Canadian federal government, and the legislation is broad enough to encompass a whole host of human resources issues in the huge entity known as the Government of Canada. It also goes into detailed guidance on process, well beyond what a private-sector company has to do to comply with labour law legislation.

While many HR people can debate eloquently about the subtle differences between government staffing and private-sector staffing, there is one singular difference that changes the nature of the process from beginning to end:

While both the private-sector and the public sector argue that hiring is always based on merit, the Canadian government has legislation that defines precisely what merit means for all competitions. Which means a manager must be able to document and substantiate HOW that person demonstrates merit and WHY they are the right person.

Put differently, it is not enough to find the right someone to do the job (fact), but to be able to document the assessment criteria beforehand and to prove the person meets it (fact + perception). After all, that person is going to be paid by the taxpayer. And Parliamentarians, on behalf of taxpayers, want to know that merit is being demonstrated for all hiring.

Considering what merit means in layman’s terms

Before going further, stop and think about the merit requirement from a personal perspective. Suppose you went to university or college. You probably thought hard about which one to apply to, which area to study. How would you demonstrate to someone that you picked the “best” or “right” program for you? Or suppose you bought a house. Lots of variables, lots of options to consider. How would you demonstrate to someone that it was the “one right house”?

The short answer is that in both circumstances you probably can’t. Not definitively, at least.

Instead, you could demonstrate that you:

1. considered a broad range of options;
2. identified a few factors that were important to you; and,
3. impartially ranked a few universities or colleges or houses based on those factors.

But, in the end, you are not really demonstrating the “one right choice” so much as that you had a reasonable, logical approach to your decision. Instead of showing the right decision, you show that your “process” was sound and thus led to a “right” decision. This is basically how government processes prove merit too.

Merit prior to 2003

Up until 2003, the “proof” process was one of the biggest problems with government hiring. When the manager reached the end of a competition, there were numerous appeals where they had to demonstrate the “right” decision, or in some cases the “perfect” decision, and they couldn’t have anyone start the work until all the appeals were cleared. Managers felt constrained, employees felt it was too bureaucratic, and overall everything took forever. Let’s walk through a general example of how this worked prior to 2003, and then a specific example to make it more concrete (don’t fuss too much about the terminology at this point, I’ll come back to it later).

Managers ran competitions for positions. They set up a list of criteria, they tested everyone on those criteria, and when it was done, the scores were totaled up and a global score was assigned to each candidate. Then, each candidate was placed on an eligibility list in order of their global score (called a reverse order of merit, but that’s not usually important anymore). A cut-off score, established earlier, was used to determine who made the list and who didn’t – if you were above the cutoff score, you made it; if you were below the cutoff, you didn’t. Sometimes there were five people on a list, or a hundred, and other times, just one. This was called a “competition” or a “competitive process” to create an eligibility list. Once the list was established, and all appeals had been heard / addressed, a manager could hire off the list. But s/he had to do it in order – the person who ranked first got the first offer, the second person got the second offer, etc.

That’s a pretty straightforward process, and is familiar to most people as it looks a lot like academic testing. If you get the most right answers, you get the highest mark. And get the job. A typical process of testing “merit”.

Now suppose you are a manager needing to hire a computer support person and you test just three things – software knowledge, hardware knowledge and interpersonal skills:

• Person A gets 10/10 on software and 8/10 on hardware, but their interpersonal skills are terrible, and they only get a 5/10 on the last one. Overall score is 23/30.
• Meanwhile, Person B isn’t as strong on software (2/10), but aces hardware (10/10), and interpersonal (10/10). End result is 22/30.

So Person A beats Person B by one mark, and gets the job. Except the manager is worried – customer service is a key part of the job, as is hardware. So Person B who is great with people, and even better at hardware, might be a better fit for the team than someone whose strength is mainly software. Under the old system, the manager had no choice – whoever came first on the scoring was the one who got the offer.

Even if you ignore the above example, we all know people who are great at certain skills or areas but lousy at taking tests. Equally, we all know people who are great at taking tests, but you wouldn’t want to work with them on a daily basis. Having global scores doesn’t ensure that the person who gets the best score on a series of tests is necessarily the best person for doing the work or for fitting into an existing team.

As a result, under the old system, many managers were frustrated – they would have someone who would rank first on a competition, but be a potentially disastrous fit. Meanwhile, sitting at number 2 on the list was a stellar candidate who missed by one or two marks. In the above example, it was one or two marks out of 30, but a competition might have tested multiple areas with larger scores. For example, on one competition under this system, I was tested on 10 or 12 areas, and beat the second-place candidate by two marks out of five hundred. I got the job. Was there really any difference between her and I on the results, if I beat her by two marks out of five hundred? She could have easily done the job too, but the manager didn’t get to choose which of us was the “better fit”, because I had a higher score. The second-place candidate was offered a different job, so she still received an offer, but she would rather have had a chance at my position (she did regularly remind me that I got the better job because I beat her by only TWO MARKS…I guess she forgave me, she did one of the readings at my wedding).

Yet, as with the above example, a manager had no flexibility once the scores were tallied. Ideally, if the manager was planning properly, they would have weighted factors differently. So, in the computer support person example above, they would have assigned 50 marks to interpersonal skills, 30 marks to hardware knowledge, and only 10 marks for the software side. Which, for the above scores would have given person A 25+10+24 = 59/90 and Person B 50+30+2=82/90.

But often, during appeals, those differential weightings were hard to justify – why is the interpersonal “5x” the software weight? Why not only “2x”? Or equal? Equal weightings are always easy to justify, and many managers defaulted to it. In fact, many HR people advised them to do so because it was easy to manage and easy to defend.

There are numerous academic articles about how bad HR processes were in the government at that time, as well as a couple of official government reports. All of them came to the same conclusion – too bureaucratic, too slow, too inflexible, too “score-driven”.

Merit after 2003

The Canadian government listened to the complaints and passed new legislation to govern human resources management. Called the Public Service Modernization Act (PSMA), it was passed in 2003 and came into effect throughout 2003, 2004 and 2005. Under the PSMA, there are four new or amended acts that encompass the web of rules pertaining to human resources:

• The Public Service Employment Act (PSEA), which covers employment, staffing, and political activities;
• The Financial Administration Act (FAA), which covers accountability;
• The Canada School of Public Service Act (CSPSA), which covers development and learning; and,
• The Public Service Labour Relations Act, which covers collective bargaining, disputes and labour relations.

The first two are the main ones because they affect how competitions are created and who can compete in them. They also changed the way merit would be assessed. According to the PSEA, an appointment is deemed to be based on merit when:

1. The Public Service Commission (PSC) is satisfied the appointee meets all essential qualifications including language proficiency; and,
2. The Manager also takes into account, potentially, any extra qualifications that might be helpful (but not essential) or operational requirements or organizational needs.

In other words, if the resulting appointee meets all the qualifications, they can be appointed WITHOUT having to rank first in all the essential elements, and the manager may consider some additional skills, needs, requirements that a candidate might meet (like other related experiences, educational training, etc.).

As a result of this change in definition of merit, under the new system (i.e. after 2003), “competitions” have been replaced by “selection processes” and “eligibility lists” have been replaced by “pools”. The difference is twofold:

1. Each of the elements being tested must be passed individually. If you are strong in one area, but weak in another, you can’t compensate through a global score – each element is marked separately and a cutoff score assigned for each. Using the computer support person example from above, a manager might set the cutoff for “interpersonal skills” as a minimum of “6/10”, in which case Person A wouldn’t have passed even though their global score was the highest. Fail one element, and you are “out” – because you failed to demonstrate you are qualified for all of the elements. Oddly enough, this process actually means all elements are ranked equally (since you have to pass every element), but managers don’t have to choose whoever ranks “first” in raw score at the end.

2. When the process is over, instead of a ranked list of successful candidates, you have a “group” of people who are all considered “equally qualified”. In other words, they all have demonstrated that they meet the essential elements of each of the criteria being tested. Or, in even shorter words, they can do the job. They have the skills. But since they are all “qualified”, a manager can now choose whichever one of them is the “best fit” for the existing team. Suppose, for example, that you were the computer support manager mentioned above and you had four people already on your team with one vacancy. Perhaps, too, the four people are all really strong with software, but not as experienced in hardware trouble-shooting. After the pool is done, a manager can now look at the “pool” of candidates and may want to choose one that is strong in hardware to complement his existing team.

As a result, you now have “selection processes” to determine the qualified person(s), and “best fit” to choose which of the qualified people will meet your current needs the best. The goals of this change in legislation were increased flexibility for the manager, a more streamlined process for appeals (due to some other changes discussed later), and a shorter overall timeframe for the processes. While there is some evidence of the first two, timeframes have not shrunk significantly since before 2003. An average process still lasts approximately six months from job posting to the person starting the job, and there is wide variation in the range (from three months to two years).

** Note that while the formal HR system now refers to “selection processes”, the layman term of “competition” is still used by most employees. As such, I will still use the term competition throughout the book for simplicity’s sake. However, for all current processes, it is technically a “selection process”.

The four legislative acts come into play more when we get to specific areas of the HR process, and I’ll address them where they are relevant in future chapters rather than going into any additional depth here.

Understanding The Selection Process / Competition

In a full selection process, there are eight phases and the candidate will likely only participate in two of them. While many of them are “short”, and some of them may even be inapplicable in a situation, a variation on them happens in most competitions. Here is the full list:

1. Managers identify a “need”
2. Managers formally advertise their needs
3. Applicants apply and are screened in / out
4. Candidates are tested for essential (and potentially asset) qualifications
5. Managers select best fit candidate
6. Managers formally state intention to hire specific applicant(s)
7. Managers address appeals
8. Managers hire the successful candidate

Let’s look at those steps in a bit more detail and see why you might care about all eight phases, even though it looks like you only participate in two of them.

Phase 1: Managers identify a “need”

Often, the need has been identified because someone has left the division and they want to replace them; other times, the unit’s workload has been growing and they need another body; and still other times, they have a growing or new need for a specialized skill that they don’t already have on the team. But managers have choices in how they meet their needs:

• WORKLOAD: They could eliminate less “pressing” files;
• PRIORITIES: They could postpone this work until someone else can do it;
• TEMPORARY HELP: They can use temporary help to cover off on a short-term basis;
• CONTRACTS: They can engage professional contractors on a short- to medium-term basis to provide specific deliverables; or,
• COMPETITION: They can hire someone on an assignment (borrowing someone), determinate (specified period) or indeterminate (permanent) basis.

If it is a new position, and they are filling it through competition, the manager has to do a full job description and a list of duties to get a position “classified”. The classification process establishes two things – first, the stream of work (i.e. a Project Management Officer – PM or an Information Officer – IS or a Policy Analyst – EC) and the level of work (01, 02, 03, etc.). The stream generally matches what type of work you will be doing and affects which union you will join, while the level determines the size of your paycheque.

Classification is relatively easy if the manager is just replacing someone who left, as the position and its classification already exist; if not, and it is a “new position”, classification can take anywhere from 3 days to 24 months. (Note: That is not a joke – classification has to be done by the HR branch, as it must be consistently applied across government to ensure pay equity. Unfortunately, there is a significant government-wide shortage of classification experts. As such, some departments are faced with really long waits.) Given that possible delay, many managers will instead try to find existing positions that are sitting empty, and “re-purpose” them for a competition (i.e. borrow a Project Manager or Analyst position from another work unit that is sitting empty). Alternatively, some may use positions that exist but with the wrong classification (i.e. some managers, preferring expediency over form, have hired people into PM boxes knowing that they were going to move towards more EC work over time – and reclassified them afterwards). This is not a recommended practice for managers, and can be painful for the candidates too (by having them apply for positions that do not match their career goals, for example).

One “trick” that has sped up classification has been the development of “generic” job descriptions. For example, at ESDC, there are generic job descriptions for what a Policy Analyst, Level 4 (EC-04) generally does. On the positive side, a manager can create a new position, use the EC-04 generic job description, and classification is near-instantaneous. On the negative side, the job description is generic and may give little to no information to candidates about what they would actually be doing in that position once hired (Social policy? Labour market policy? Learning policy?).

There will also usually be some form of internal approval process whereby a manager will talk to their boss, and get approval (APPROVAL #1) to go ahead with staffing a position. This may be part of an overall HR planning process, or it could be a one-off approval. Either way, the manager will frequently draft a general list of duties that the new position would handle as part of explaining to the boss why the staff is required.

Why do you care about this “needs” phase if you are an applicant?

• Because if the manager is replacing someone who left, they may be looking for someone very similar to the person who left (i.e. a narrow-minded approach to staffing); however, if the manager is looking to cover new or expanding work, the manager may be more flexible on the profile of the successful candidate (i.e. open-minded). Knowing which is the case could tell you how much flexibility you have in how you tailor your application, resume and interview approach.

• Because it is good to know that there are other options for hiring besides a competition as it opens up other ways to work for government. Some people have very enjoyable careers doing “government work” without ever actually being a government employee i.e. being contractors/consultants/temps.

• Because candidates can and do ask for a copy of the “job description” that the manager had to develop during this stage of the process, but don’t be too surprised if it doesn’t completely specify exactly what the job looks like on a day-to-day basis (it’s extra information though, something most won’t ask about). The SMART candidate will also ask if there is a list of duties available too – HR and/or the manager may not share it, but sometimes they will. And you can then tailor your answers better in the interview towards the REAL job, not the generic job description! The closer you come to showing you can do the actual duties, the better off you are as a candidate.

• Because classifications tend to reflect the type of work you do and it is not always easy to move between classifications, particularly outside of the National Capital Region. Let’s suppose, for example, you want to be a policy analyst. While lots of private sector people will tell you to take any job to “get your foot in the door”, difficulty switching between job classifications means you may be better off sometimes waiting to get into the stream you want rather than risk getting stuck in another stream altogether.

Phase 2: Managers formally advertise their needs

The Manager starts by writing up a Statement of Merit Criteria (SOMC). This is what most people think of as the “job description”, as it is what is posted online to advertise the job. However, the SoMC (which most HR people will pronounce as SAHM-SEE) is not the job description but rather the list of skills / competencies on which the manager will test you.

Once the SOMC is written, the Manager submits it to HR to get approval (APPROVAL #2) to post the advertisement. Managers are not HR experts, nor am I. The true experts are the HR people who will review the SOMC and job description to ensure that everything is clear, and, to put it bluntly, to make sure the manager has valid, testable criteria that make sense for the job. No sense in posting analyst criteria for a project manager position. They also serve as gatekeepers to the Public Service Commission website for posting jobs.

Once HR approves, they’ll send the SoMC to the PSC for posting. Most departments don’t do the processing of applications themselves. Nor do they handle “advertising” it (except for large scale recruitments like post-secondary recruitments, for example). Instead, they use the Public Service Commission to administer the advertising process and receipt of advertisements.

When the PSC gets the SoMC, they look at the classification and level, and look in their internal database to identify “priority candidates”. In general terms, these are people who were laid off earlier by the government, or who relocated because their spouse moved, etc. The unions have negotiated with the federal government to give these former employees priority when positions become available at a similar group and level. So, if you post a PM-03 (project manager, level 03) job, the PSC will check to see if there are any PM-03s in your geographical area who are on a priority list for future PM-03 jobs. The list is a little more dynamic than that, but you get the general approach. The PSC can give managers a list of priorities at two different periods of time – now, when the manager is first asking to post, or later, when the competition is done and the manager is looking to staff someone. Managers have to assess the priority candidates to see if a competition has to be run at all.

There is one last step to all of this, and some HR professionals will quibble if it is a step at all. The PSC will post the notice. HR wants to quibble, as each department has access to the PSC websites and can “post” the notices themselves. However, before the notices go “live”, PSC personnel do review the post and approve it going on their site. As such, it is easier to think of it as the PSC posting the notice.

Why do you care about this “advertising” phase if you are an applicant?

• Because knowing this is the list of testable items makes you focus on what is important and avoid wasting time on things that won’t be tested.

• Because it is one of the first big “checks and balances” to ensure that the manager is going to run a fair and transparent process that makes sense.

• Because this helps you immensely in knowing where to look for jobs! Rather than having to look at every department separately to see if they have jobs available, you can (generally) do one-stop shopping at the PSC websites (one for internal competitions, one for external competitions). It also adds a high degree of consistency across application processes and streamlines the application process. It also presents some challenges, but those will be discussed later. In addition, the notice gives you two contact information points per competition (a general enquiries person and an HR contact). This can be enormously helpful when following up on an element in a poster, or even just tracking the progress of the process. NOTE: These are NOT people you want to annoy with a multitude of questions, nor call them every day. They are there to help when you have a real problem, not hold your hand…that’s what this guide is for!

• Because managers have to “assess” priority candidates against the SoMC to see if they have the requisite experience. If the candidates do, the selection process may stop here – the manager will offer them the job, and if they accept, you may never even see the notice. However, the lists are pretty broad and often the priority candidates aren’t an exact match to what the manager was looking for; in these cases, the manager may be open-minded and look to hire one of them anyway, or proceed with the original notice. This is not a simple “checkbox” to be ticked – the manager MUST assess each interested referral. Only when the manager has demonstrated they have assessed the priority candidates will the PSC give a clearance number to proceed with posting the notice.

Phase 3: Applicants apply and are screened in / out

Finally, the masses of interested people send in their cover letters and resumes!

Then the PSC and/or HR screens applicants for eligibility. The PSC will do a quick computer-based check of your information that you enter to make sure you’re eligible (some positions are restricted to internal candidates, or by geography, or to a single department, etc.) and HR often does an additional check on certain elements.

Once the HR gurus have done the basic tests, the manager (or a consultant) will screen applications for experience and education. This is the first big hurdle for you as an applicant. The relevant legislation that controls the process for all competitions / selection processes requires that YOU prove you meet the requirements. Administratively, this means you will show in your cover letter, with the resume as backup evidence, how you meet each of the experience and education requirements. It is NOT sufficient for you just to say you meet that element, you have to show how.

If a manager has 100 applicants for a position, it may be that they screen out a large number of them depending on how restrictive or open they are with the criteria. For those applicants who are screened out, they have the “right” to ask for an informal discussion. While I will discuss this in more detail later under “rights of appeal”, technically this isn’t an appeal. It’s a chance for a manager and an applicant to correct an administrative error. Suppose, for example, that the manager reads your cover letter, determines you didn’t explain how you met criteria 2, and screens you out. However, you request an informal and it is discovered that for some reason there was a second page to your cover letter that was missing from the printout. The manager can say, “oops”, reconsider your application and perhaps screen you in. This is NOT a way for you to say, “here’s more info I didn’t give you previously” – you can’t add anything to your cover letter or resume that wasn’t in your application. However, other times, it may be that the manager misunderstood part of your cover letter for differences in terminology and therefore screened you out. This is rare, as is missed information, but it does occasionally happen. To avoid the candidate appealing the competition later, this is a chance to quickly fix a possible simple error, and proceed with the rest of the competition.

Why do you care about this “application and screening” phase if you are an applicant?

• Because this is where you get to DO something – you know, apply!

• Because if you screw up your application and put in the wrong information, the HR people will screen you out, and the hiring manager will never even see your resume. Or, if you’re not eligible, don’t try to “fake” your way past it – all this info is verified, and once your application is found to be invalid, you’re out. All you’ll do is waste your time and theirs.

• Because if you are screened out, an informal can be a great way to get feedback on why! If you had limited budget experience, for example, and that was one of the requirements for a position, but you applied anyway (I’ll explain later why you might do that), then you know why you were screened out. However, if you did financial forecasting for a year, financial administration for 3 years, etc., and you were still screened out, it’s worth it to ask what they were looking for from candidates. Perhaps they’ll tell you the minimum was five years; or they may tell you that it was too “administrative” processing work and they were looking for more “strategic management” budgeting. Either way, you know either how to word it next time OR what experience you need to try and get in order to be screened in for these types of jobs in the future.

Phase 4: Candidates are tested for essential (and potentially asset) qualifications

Now that the real process is underway for you as an applicant, managers will now assess the candidates knowledge, abilities, and personal suitabilities. This is the phase where you will be tested on every element in the SOMC. If it said you had to have knowledge of the current trends and issues in reproductive health, they will ask you about the current trends and issues in reproductive health. The manager will use a variety of tools (discussed later) to assess knowledge, abilities and personal suitabilities. And if you fail an element, you’re screened out (and usually don’t proceed any further in the process). At that point, the manager will offer informal consultations to screened out candidates to explain where they went wrong. It is POSSIBLE (but not probable) that the scoring was done wrong, and you did pass an element. So, like with the application, an informal could correct an administrative error and allow you to reinsert yourself in the process. Officially, that is why the “informals” exist at these stages, but generally they are used for providing feedback (this will also be discussed in more detail in “rights of appeal”).

In addition to the knowledge / ability / personal suitability tests done by the manager, there will also be assessments by HR or the PSC of any special eligibility requirements like language proficiency. For most departments, the PSC is the organization responsible for assessing your ability in your second language. Each position will have a language profile requirement attached to it (specified in the original poster). Near the end of the process, you will be given an opportunity to be tested at the PSC to see if you meet the required levels (your results are good for five years, so if you already have a profile that meets the requirements on file, you won’t be retested; if you have no profile, or if your current profile is less than the requirements, you will be tested).

Why do you care about this “testing” phase if you are an applicant?

• Because if it is in the SoMC, they WILL ask you or your references about it. Somewhere, sometime, somehow. Guaranteed. And here’s the fun part – if it’s NOT in the SoMC, they won’t test you on it. They can’t – they have to test what is in the SoMC and ONLY what is in the SoMC. And, if you screw up somewhere, the informal is a great way to find out what you did wrong (spoke too fast, not enough content, drooled on the carpet, missed a question, too much content / not enough synthesis of your content, etc.).

• Because you can’t fake your way past any element. If you have no chance of making it i.e. you have little to no french but the requirement is full fluency (CCC), you’re going to go through a lot of work likely for nothing, only to be excluded at the end. There are some SMALL exceptions to this situation, and it will be discussed later, but caveat candidatus – let the candidate beware!

Phase 5: Managers select best fit candidate

Once all the testing is done, the manager selects the “best fit” candidate. This doesn’t mean that the candidate with the best smile or the best scores is the one chosen. Once all the “successful” candidates (i.e. all those who pass every element) are considered together, the manager will decide which one is the best fit for the job, work unit, team dynamics, etc. After all, you’re all deemed “qualified” at this point and thus “merit” is proven.

After choosing one, the manager may then get approval from their boss (Approval #3) to select the candidate. Once the manager has chosen someone, they will likely show your resume to their boss to say “this is the person I intend to hire.” They’ll explain how you did in the process, etc, but often they’ll circulate the resume as an intro to their boss. Some managers won’t bother with this step if it is a relatively junior position, but if you are applying for more senior positions that will regularly deal with senior people, the managers will generally show their boss something before formally selecting you. This is also an opportunity for the manager to confirm with the boss that the management situation is still the same as when they started, and to avoid suddenly being caught by surprise if the boss says, “Oops, our budget was reduced and we no longer have the money to hire someone.”

The manager also has to get approval (again) from the PSC to select the candidate (including assessing priority referrals, if necessary; Approval #4). Way back when the posting notice first went to the PSC, managers had to “clear priorities” (if any) before proceeding. Now that the manager is at the end of the process, they may have to clear priorities (again, or for the first time). Generally these are “new” candidates who were added to the priority list after the initial request, but not always.

Why do you care about this “best fit” phase if you are an applicant?

• Because it means that you can come first on just about every element, and not “win” the job. Why? The manager may be looking for someone who is a strong extrovert to balance out an introverted team, plus a strong oral communicator to give presentations, and someone with superior language skills. Or maybe she was also looking for judgement, interpersonal skills, written communication, initiative, etc., where you excelled, but another candidate has a strong background in making presentations in French as part of outreach programs and is an strong extrovert (as reflected in their communication ability and interpersonal skills). As such, the manager may select the one that “best fits” the job and team. It may be you, it may not be. But you need to know this before you start – it means you are NOT trying to convince the manager that you are the best candidate, but rather the best candidate for a specific job. The more you can find out about the team and the job, the better placed you are to show how you would fit in.

• Because while your first intro to the hiring manager was your cover letter – it’s what they used to screen you in or out – the first intro to their boss is likely to be your resume. Both have to be ready for prime time – no skimping on one or the other in your application process.

• Because if someone is appointed as a priority candidate, you have almost no right of appeal. They are not considered “part” of the process, and departments may “cancel” the competition and appoint the person from the priority list. It’s as if the competition never happened, because the priority candidates are “outside” the process. Put another way, the course of true love never runs smooth, and neither does HR. Things change, and it may suck to be “leading the pack” only to have a priority candidate seem to jump the queue. Foreign Affairs staff had a saying – “Don’t assume you have the job until you have been doing it for a week, and maybe not even then!”. Good advice to remember – it’s not over until you’re appointed, no matter how well things seem to be going.

Phase 6: Managers formally state intention to hire specific applicant(s)

Okay, the manager has selected someone. And they post a “notice of consideration” that says, “This is the person we intend to hire.” Once a week has passed (the duration is usually a week), a “notice of appointment” is posted – this is the formal notice that not only was the person “considered”, they are now being appointed to the position.

If you were the person, the hiring department will issue you a “letter of offer” that you and your boss have to sign, and you’re generally “good to go”. However, note that the appeals process mentioned earlier is not instantaneous. While the department will move ahead to appoint you and have you start, it is theoretically possible that an appeal could be launched, and if successful, your appointment revoked. This rarely happens, and usually would mean that the hiring manager really screwed something up in the process.

Why do you care about this “notice” phase if you are an applicant?

• Because of two reasons – if you aren’t the one chosen, this may be the first time you find out the process has ended and you aren’t the “winning” candidate. You should get a notice from HR earlier to say you were found qualified, but at that point, communication from the department may stop, leaving you scratching your head and wondering, “Now what?”. This tells you that for you, the answer is potentially “nothing.”

• Because these notices formalize the appeal process, if you are considering appealing. Alternatively, it is also the mechanism for formally announcing that you are the winning candidate if you are the one being selected

• Because the most important part for you as the winning candidate is not the appeals process, but the letter of offer. While this includes a whole host of language about values and ethics, etc., it also includes more immediate information for you – your title in the new position, which division you are assigned to (if it wasn’t clear previously, this could be exciting to learn), what your classification will be (this shouldn’t be a surprise, since you applied for a specific job), and what your level will be (which also equates to a specific pay scale!).

Phase 7: Managers address appeals

Most appeals don’t proceed very far in the formal appeal process for one of two reasons. First, if the appellant’s reasons are sound, and it appears the hiring manager was in error, the department will likely correct the problem themselves long before it gets to a tribunal stage. This may involve screening the appellant into the competition and assessing them from the stage where they were screened out, or giving them an opportunity to try a test that they missed for valid enough reasons to grant an extension.

Second, if the appellant is completely out to lunch, the union will advise them that they have no valid grounds to pursue, and possibly withdraw legal support. The person may complain, but they’ll likely let the matter drop once they get into a formal situation of filing briefs for a tribunal, responding to filings by the Department, etc. Some people view appeals as a waste of time – like buses, there will be another competition coming along any minute – and suggest that you just move on. However, sometimes there are grey areas where the appellant and the department do not agree on what was the right approach to take in a given situation (such as a person being tested for language early on in the process, rather than at the end, and getting screened out). In these rare cases, the appeal may go all the way to a tribunal who will decide first if the scope of the complaint is a valid grounds for complaining, and second if the appellant’s complaints prove the grounds of the complaint.

Why do you care about this “appeal” phase if you are an applicant?

• Because a whole separate volume could address why candidates should care about tribunal decisions, but at this point, note that tribunal decisions help constrain what is appropriate in future competitions and what is not. Knowing what to expect, and what is “out of bounds”, will help you focus on what really matters.
• Becaise it is also the way of protecting your rights. Managers are not free to do whatever they want, there are rules in place that have to be followed. So an appeal may overturn a bad process. However, note that a tribunal does not have the power to say “Jane was right, John shouldn’t have gotten the job, the process was flawed, give it to Jane”. Their only power is to revoke John’s appointment. So even if you win, you may not get anything out of it beyond the satisfaction that the process gets tossed.

Phase 8: Managers hire the successful candidate

This may seem like an almost anti-climactic step as you already received your letter of offer at this point. But going back to the beginning, this chapter isn’t about understanding the competition part, it is about understanding the entire HR process from beginning to end. Which includes you actually starting the job, being assigned a set of duties, developing a performance agreement, planning some training, meeting your coworkers, etc.

Why do you care about this “appeal” phase if you are an applicant?

• Because if you remember those two chapters about knowing yourself and knowing government, this is the stage that will tell you if you actually will enjoy the new job.

Now, having read all the above, you know the eight main phases of a competition for a manager. Let’s drill down on the parts that you do as a candidate.