If you’re reading this post, chances are that you are either affected or already declared surplus and into your opting stage. And instead of leaving through a voluntary departure program, potential ERI at some point, or WFA options, you want to stay.

First and foremost, kind of like Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, we give you love. Being affected or declared surplus are horrible experiences, and it doesn’t matter if it isn’t intended to be “personal”, it directly affects you personally. Intellectually, emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. It’s the work equivalent of someone kicking you in the genitals when you thought you were fighting Marquis of Queensbury rules in a fair fight. If you even knew you were in a fight to begin with.

Unfortunately, I have no great words of wisdom to impart that will lessen the blow. I can’t do much more than offer you condolences. It sucks, and what sucks even more is that you have to pick yourself up, put a big smile on your face, and try to win some other manager over to hire you so you can stay.

Secondly, let’s take you through the bare bones HR elements you need once you have enough energy to try.

So, do I need to read your whole guide? No!

Sure, you could. But you ain’t got time for that. You need to know what you need to know right away. Hence this post. Upfront, there are three extra types of processes that happen during WFA times that will likely have more influence on your job hunt than in a normal HR world. The table below shows the list of various things you would worry about in a normal full process; what’s mostly relevant in formal deployments (those are still happening); similar entries for alternation; and then what is the most relevant in a SERLO process.

	Full process	Deployments	Alternation	SERLO
Application (online)	✓	✓	~
Cover letters (email)			✓	~
Resume / CV	✓	✓	✓	✓
Written exam prep	✓			✓
Formal interview	✓			✓
Informal interview	✓	✓	✓
Reference checks	✓	✓	✓	✓
Security clearance	✓	~	~	~
Language profile	✓	~	~	~

Let’s go through the first three pieces in order. You’ll need to know about interviews and other stuff later, but for now, let’s just talk about applicatons, cover letters and resumes.

A. Online application

If you are applying for a full process, it is almost always an online application. Many of the departments that say they are “hiring” will ask you to answer certain questions, and may be in a fully online portal. If you use the government jobs portal, all full processes and deployments will require you to go through and answer each of the questions. This is not something you do quickly or at the last minute. These are important for screening, so take your time, and make sure your “standard” for answering them is: “If someone doesn’t know anything about (experience x), and they read my answer to that question, they would clearly see that I have that experience fully covered. Overwhelmingly yes, no chance of a no.” This is not “new”, this is the general standard for all formal HR processes. Both boxes are GREEN as you will definitely do it.

However, alternation will look VERY different. The TB portal is for people to register to alternate, NOT a job matching service to see if you’re qualified. If you find someone to alternate with, and you want to propose yourself as a potential candidate, you will have to write informally (see below) to the hiring manager/director and introduce yourself with a cover letter and resume. It is SIMILAR, but not identical. There will be no preset questions nor a portal to manage your application. You’ll do it yourself later by email. I coloured it orange as you MIGHT feel that using the TB portal is like an application, as you’re describing your background and skills, but it is not aimed at a manager, it is more aimed at other PS employees who want to alternate with someone. Hence why it is “ORANGE” instead of green.

Lastly, if you are in a SERLO process, you don’t do an “application”. You may do a cover letter, but that is below. Hence, GRAY for no.

B. Cover letters

For full processes and formal deployments through the jobs portal, you will not do formal cover letters. Instead, you’ll put all the info that would go in a cover letter and enter it into the portal. This is the way most HR works outside of WFA for the core-public-admin group, and so both are showing GRAY.

However, in an alternation world, you are going to have to write to the hiring manager of the person you want to alternate with (or they’ll present it to them) and say, “Hey, I understand Mary’s job is x, y and z. I have experience in X, y, and z, and we would like to propose an alternation. To help you review the alternation proposal, please find attached my cover letter and my CV.” (FYI, I believe there’s an form too, but I haven’t seen it.)

That is going to look like the formal cover letters of old with headings and experience, with again the same goal as a formal application, overwhelming evidence that you meet the criteria. The person you want to alternate with should say, “Hey, here’s the SOMC with 8 elements.” And you, knowing that the manager is going to consider you against all 8 of those criteria, are going to help them conduct that review by writing your cover letter accordingly:

Dear (hiring manager),
(insert context here of your situation as per paragraph 2 back…you’ll include your current substantive level, language profile, etc.)

Tell them you believe you meet the 8 main criteria and then go one by one:

Criteria 1: Overwhelming example of how you meet it, preferably through multiple examples over several years, not just “once”;
Criteria 2: Overwhelming example of how you meet it, preferably through multiple examples over several years, not just “once”;
Criteria 3: Overwhelming example of how you meet it, preferably through multiple examples over several years, not just “once”;
…
Criteria 8: Overwhelming example of how you meet it, preferably through multiple examples over several years, not just “once”;

If you have proof of your language levels and security clearance, include them.

Now, here’s the kicker that a lot of people are going to ignore, both here and in the resumes. This is not a simple “Hey, that job might be neat” application — this is you trying to avoid unemployment. It’s got gravitas; it’s significant. You are not going to half-ass the letter, you are going to spend time on it, you are going to ask others to read it. You are NOT going to use the same letter for multiple jobs and think it is “close enough”. You WILL tailor it to each job to give yourself the best chance of making it. It is WORK, yes. It takes EFFORT. And TIME and ENERGY, when you don’t feel like doing ANY of it. I know, I get it. But if you want to give yourself the best chance of staying, you want to do the work in advance to make it as easy as possible for someone to say, “Yes, they DO look qualified, let’s meet.”

For a SERLO? A cover letter MAY or MAY NOT be required. During DRAP, usage was about 40%. Part of the challenge for doing a cover letter in a SERLO situation is that many of the people in the same unit will all have the same experience, so it doesn’t do much to help you screen in any way. Some managers thought it would be helpful; most didn’t find it so. So for this year’s alternation world? I don’t know. If you’re asked for one, use the above model.

A second kicker that a lot of people miss is that the private sector advice to keep it under a page is NOT the advice for the public sector. These are not mere “intro screening” tools, these are the PRIMARY screening tools. If you do a basic version, you’ll get screened out. A professional cover letter in this category covering at least 4 or more headings should be at least 2 pages, and 3-4 are NOT unknown. Yes, it’s painful. But you are PROVING you are qualified. In effect, it’s like they asked you the question in an interview, and now you have to demonstrate your experience. It isn’t enough to simply say “I’ve done it”.

The normal standard for how you write these things is three levels of granularity:

1. I have done this function (x) at job (y). (LEVEL 1, insufficient)
2. I have done this function (x) at job (y) while working for Ministry (Z) from period A to period B (Level 2, insufficient)
3. I have done this function (x) at job (y) while working for Ministry (Z) from period A to period B. This included sub-function x1, step x2, action x3, project x4 involving partners 1,2,3,4, step x5, which produced results C, D, E, F. (Level 3, sufficient — basically, anyone reading the evidence, even if they don’t know what function X or job Y are, they will understand what you did, what it involved, and whether you meet the experience requirement.

C. Resumes and CVs.

In my HR guide, I tell a white lie. Or a half-truth disguised as a rule. I basically say that resumes should have the following format for the experiences section:

TITLE, ORGANIZATION (TIME PERIOD)
Duties/Responsibilities:
* asldkjf;asldkjf;a asldkjfa;slkdjf a sld;kjfa;sldkjf a sd;lkfja;sldfkj a; d;aslkfja;sldfjk a;sldkjfa;sdljfk
* a;sldkjf a;lsdkjf asldkjfa; as;ldkjfa;l a;lsd kfjla;sdkj asldkfj a;sldkjf asdlasldkjf;lw9iwoeirua;lskd
* alsdjkf;alsjkdf a sd;lfjkas;ldfkj asldkjf;lasdkjfl;kj a dsl;jkfa;dlskjf

For each of those bullets, they are master examples with both the richness of what you did and the results you achieved. Maybe you have 8 bullets, maybe you have 4. Maybe they are ongoing duties, maybe they are key projects you led with sub-examples under each, just as you did with your cover letter down to level 3 (see above).

It is a very conservative format designed for a very specific purpose. In formal processes, resumes are used to validate what is in your application. As such, the format above helps the screeners match it to the application prose and say, “Yep, they did that.” In a formal process, you get NO POINTS for having a great list of skills or a mission statement or a goal or interesting hobbies. If it ain’t tied to the SOMC, screeners don’t care. And when you eventually get to an interview, if you make it that far, the format above works just fine — the board can look over your resume, see what you’ve done in 30 seconds flat and they’re good to go. Cute statements of how you’re a team player, strategic thinker, professional-level Magic the Gathering player don’t get you extra points, and probably won’t be seen. So the above format works just fine.

So why isn’t it true ALL the time? Because if you look above at the table, you’ll see that resumes are ALSO used for deployments, alternations and SERLOs.

If you use the above format for a deployment, it’s a good fit.

If you use it for a SERLO, it’s also a good fit. Tightly tied to the duties you have performed. And in all likelihood, the board already knows you.

But when it comes to an alternation, there’s a small asterisk that gets bigger. If you send a detailed letter to a prospective hiring manager under alternation, they aren’t going to read it first. Screeners do for formal processes, SERLOs and formal deployments, but alternation circumstances dictate that the person is likely to skip the letter, go straight to the resume and see what it says to get a feel for the person before they read the main document.

As such, a bunch of things that are a waste of time for a formal resume and take up space that could be more usefully used, they are all good inclusions now to see if you can catch their eye. A bit like fishing…what types of bait can you put on the front page of your resume?

It is hard to tell you WHAT exactly to write as it would be different for everyone. The best process you could use is to ask yourself, “What are the top 10 things about me that make me a good catch as an employee?”.

Do you have experience in multiple types of finances?

Do you know HR, finance and correspondence?

Do you have a financial certification?

Have you worked in Gs&Cs and direct service delivery?

Have you worked in planning and policy and operations, oh my?

Maybe it’s the types of projects. Files. Groups. Management. IT. IM.

I don’t know what it is for you, but I bet YOU know. The only thing to avoid is going too granular. Punctuality is not a strength, it’s an assumed basic requirement. Reliability CAN be a strength if you have examples of how you took on more responsibility, etc.

Try to start with 10, and then whittle it down to 5.

Do you have interesting hobbies? List them at the end. Particularly if they don’t look like they would interfere with work or could give you insights or new skills.

Most people write, umm, well, stupid “goals”. Like, “My goal is to work in (division x)” when applying to (division x).” Yeah, that’s why you applied here. On the other hand, if division x works in field Y and you say “My goal is to work in field Y and eventually move to field Z” then it tells them that this isn’t just a lark, you have a vision for yourself that leads through their work area.

Sooooo…

You want page 1 of a resume for alternation to tell the hiring manager just about everything they need to know about you — language profile, security clearance, basic strengths, and hopefully the best description of a job you did that is the closest related to the one they have.

Except, as you do this, you can’t skimp too much on the details. It doesn’t need to be as long as a resume for the other three areas, but it does need enough bait to hook the manager’s interest.

And now for the really bad news. You need to tailor your resume for each and every job to which you apply. This isn’t the “I’ll give it a whirl” scenario of applying for jobs that MIGHT interest you. This is trying to avoid unemployment. You need to give yourself the best chance to do that, and it means tailoring your resume to match your cover letter and both to the job.

I know, it sucks. It’s a lot of work. And you CAN reuse some stuff across different jobs. But the first couple will take a lot of time and effort.

You know I had to say something about AI, right?

One of the hottest trends right now is for people to use AI to jazz up their resume. Suddenly, they no longer “coordinate correspondence”, they “strategically align their communications activities to corporate priorities!”. Please, for the love of comprehension, don’t do it to one of these scenarios. You need the hiring managers or screeners to know exactly what you did. You won’t impress them with an AI buzzword resume or your creative vocabulary. You have good experience, that’s what you’re selling; YOU are the sizzle, and you’re enough. Don’t let AI gaslight you into believing they know you or your job better than you do.

Good luck. Sorry, it sucks even more doing this when it already sucks canal water.