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As a federal employee, writing about what you do at work is very difficult.

Government jobs are hard to describe. They are complex and involve a huge array of services, products and programs.

Federal work includes writing and implementing policies and regulations that affect large groups of people; managing national or regional operations; recruiting and hiring employees; purchasing services and products; producing reports for many sources; keeping up-to-date with computers; using information technology the best way possible; writing and managing budgets and grants; representing your agency at task forces, committees, Congress and public meetings; training and developing high-performing employees; being responsive to customers; and introducing new programs. The list could go on.

No wonder it's not easy for federal managers to write clear, concise, insightful and interesting resumes. Most federal managers do most of that list above, and much more.

Even though writing a plain English resume is difficult, you have to do it. What hiring manager or personnel officer has time to decipher an SF-171 or a gobbledygook resume? Vice President Al Gore has been urging federal employees to write regulations and official documents in plain English. Take that advice for your resume, too.

There is help from the Plain Language Action Network's Web site at www.plainlanguage.gov. This site includes an outstanding list of instructions about how to write a plain English document. The list was not written specifically for resume writing, but I use many of the tips in writing resumes, cover letters and Knowledge, Skills and Abilities statements:

• Use active voice
• Use short sentences
• Identify your audience (the hiring manager or panel)
• Engage your readers
• Write in a visually appealing style
• Place words carefully
• Use lots of informative headings
• Divide your material into short sections
• Use pronouns
• Limit each paragraph to one topic
• Use lots of lists

Here's a good example of the use of plain language in a resume. In this excerpt from a resume for an Immigration and Naturalization Service supervisory inspector position, the applicant highlights his accomplishments with at least six of the above plain language techniques: engaging, clear writing; short sentences; one topic per paragraph, writing in the form of a list, and use of active voice. The applicant was a leader during major changes at the Guam International Airport:

Special Project:

• Led negotiations and completed the first ever agreement between U.S. Immigration and an International Airport to establish operations in Guam for the first European Style Airport in the United States.
• Member of the team that wrote the security guidelines for the first European Style Airport in the United States.
• Facilitated communications between the airport authority, INS and major airlines servicing the first European Style Airport in the United States.
• This project set the standard for European Style Airports in the United States.

Here are some quick tips for turning your SF-171 into a plain English resume:

• Start over! Don't try to edit your current job descriptions from the SF-171. The information is probably not accurate or up to date. If you depend solely on your SF-171 job description, you will leave out important current responsibilities and accomplishments.
• Write a description of your job from memory or from a recent supervisory evaluation.
• You can go back to the SF-171 description to make sure you included all of your old responsibilities.

Next week, we'll talk more about writing federal resumes in plain English. I'll share more examples of how to write well about what you do.

Meanwhile, you can get great tips on writing your resume's work experience section from my new book, The Federal Resume Guidebook.

If you have a great example of a before-and-after SF-171 and resume, I would love to see it. Annetta Cheek at the Plain Language Action Network might post it in the network's example library. You can write Annetta at annetta.cheek@npr.gov or you can write me at resume@ari.net.

Kathryn Kraemer Troutman has been the president of The Resume Place, Inc. for 27 years. Kathryn helps people get promoted and change jobs. She is the pioneer designer of the new "federal resume." She wrote and published the first book on federal resume writing and is a popular resume writing workshop leader in government.

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