What’s a geodesist to do? The Greeks figured out that the earth isn’t flat a few thousand years ago, so where can a first class Geodetic Engineer find a job? Turns out that the federal government is a good option.
There are many technical administration level jobs in the government sector. Geodesists or Geodetic Engineers are the folks that measure the size and shape of the earth, along with other interesting phenomena like the force of gravity, magnetic fields, and the revolutions of Martian moons. Geodetics is esoteric and practical stuff (think maps), and positions are currently open at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a couple of other agencies with similar government administrative jobs.
The geodetics series of positions are just a few of several hundred white collar positions that can be found in the agencies and departments of the U.S. government. With the Classification Act of 1949, Congress codified the General Schedule (GS), a set of standards for agencies to use to place positions in logical classes and grades of difficulty and responsibility. Even if you’re not a government employee, the GS levels (1 – 15) are probably familiar, but the standards also define occupational groups within the General Schedule, government administrative jobs that are similar and sub-classified into job series.
If you’re interested and want to dig into the hundreds of federal white collar jobs available, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) publishes a Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families that will provide you very detailed descriptions of each occupational series and position available in the federal government. Geodetics jobs fall into the Physical Sciences Group (1300), and specifically fit in Series 1372 for professional positions and 1374 for technical positions.
The first half of the handbook describes jobs that are defined by the OPM as “white collar.” As you’d expect, there’s a government definition for the term:
A position is considered white collar, even if it requires physical work, if its primary duty requires knowledge or experience of an administrative, clerical, scientific, artistic, or technical nature not related to trade, craft, or manual-labor work. 1
White collar jobs are subdivided into categories – Professional, Administrative, Technical, Clerical, and Other. In terms of employment, professional and administrative positions comprise the over half of the available jobs in the federal government sector. The pay’s not bad either, with the median salary for professional positions in the U.S. at $104,515, according to OPM’s Fedscope database.
OPM also publishes a list of the top 20 white collar jobs in the federal government. Medical, IT, and HR positions are plentiful. The chart below also provides some indication of areas of government employment that are growing (or shrinking). Medical Support Assistance positions grew 9.34 percent between 2016 and 2017. On the decline, there are 5.85 percent fewer contact representatives in the federal government over the same period. 2 Take a look at our recent post Federal Jobs Available for more information on hot federal careers.
Finding a great federal white collar job is a lot easier than geodetics or rocket science or even a strange combination of the two that tries to prove that the earth is flat (see the video). A quick look at the Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families can help you match your qualifications with government administrative job descriptions. Then, a simple search by series number at USAJobs will identify positions in the series that are open right now.
Sorry, there’s no group or series for flat earth theorists, but 5 jobs are open for Geodetic Engineers, including a GS-14 listing for a Cartographer at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, paying up to $148,967 per year.
Using this technique to tightly match job descriptions and requirements with your qualifications is a good strategy that will increase your chance of selection as best qualified and your likelihood of landing a great federal job. CareerPro Global’s certified federal resume writers can help you focus in on the position you select with a finely tuned USAJobs resume that tightly matches your skills, experience, and capabilities with the specific requirements of the job description. We’ll work with you to create a resume that is keyword rich and emphasizes the competencies and experience that makes you the best candidate.
The world is still round and there are plenty of great white collar federal jobs available. If you’re ready to explore a new (or your first) federal government position, we hope you’ll get in touch with CareerPro certified federal resume writers for a free career consultation.
Sources:
1 Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, May 2009, p.4.
2 The Twenty Largest White-Collar Occupations, U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Image Credits: Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons