GovernmentExecutive.com

resume@resume-place.com

This week expert Senior Executive Service writer Ned Lynch writes about what the Office of Personnel Management is looking for in your SES Executive Core Qualifications statements (ECQs).

As a quick review, the federal SES package includes a federal-style resume, ECQs, technical and managerial factors statements, and a cover letter. There are five required ECQs: Leading Change, Leading People, Results-Driven, Business Acumen, and Building Coalitions/Communications. You must address each one in one to one-and-a-half pages. ECQs are the most challenging components of the SES application.

A frequently asked question is: How do I write about what I have accomplished in these five executive areas?

When the Office of Personnel Management revised the Executive Core Qualifications that serve as its critical filter into the Senior Executive Service, it provided guidance about the format in which it expected to see responses.

Applicants might develop more satisfying methods of expressing their qualifications (and I have seen other formats gain approval), but following the markers is usually the easiest way to proceed along the road to an SES position. OPM would prefer to see each of the ECQs explained in terms of the Challenge that the applicant faced, the Context in which that challenge occurred, the Action that the applicant took to resolve the challenge, and a description of the Result achieved by those actions. Thus, "CCAR" is the favored format for ECQ responses.

Let's start with the easy dimension of this CCAR route to the SES.

What kind of Challenge does OPM want to see? The ECQs are intended to assess the applicant's executive potential, so applicants must describe their achievements at senior levels of government. Ideally, the challenge would involve working with the head of an agency, require at least multi-program - but preferably interagency - responses, demonstrate an ability to conceptualize a problem in terms of its legal, political, operational, and other administrative factors, have some national (governmentwide) or at least regional impact, and describe some successful dimension of the project. The challenge ought to be out of the ordinary. It should require unusual effort, but the effort is not what is important to communicate. Some congressional committee might have called a hearing with only three days to prepare testimony. The challenge is not the three days without sleep devoted to getting the testimony done. Instead, the challenge should be stated in terms of the quality of testimony required and produced.

Similarly, the Context of the ECQ factor should involve a setting in which a variety of conflicting principles and organizational interests presented some doubt about the result of the challenge that faced the SES applicant. No one opposes, for example, achieving unqualified certification of annual audit statements. Some programs, or constituencies, however, might have a vested interest in protecting old ways in which data have been collected, or fear the consequences of accurate numbers becoming known. In establishing the context of an executive-level activity, the successful applicant will rarely provide a situation without competing interests and agency objectives. In establishing this context, the successful applicant should write in terms of what the agency head needed, rather than from any programmatic perspective. Fortunately, a situation where Congress and the President frequently seek different results from agencies provides no shortage of controversial contexts. It should go without saying that Congress does not hire members of the SES.

Similarly, the Action undertaken by the SES applicant should work comprehensively. To be effective, a strong statement of the action will encompass the agency head's objectives, require the coordination of multiple program and interagency activities, and require resolution of policy and/or operational issues of national scope. This is one ECQ factor where it can help to establish a long-term course of action, because most members of Executive Resources Boards know that the negotiation and implementation of an interagency memorandum of understanding can be more complicated than a treaty negotiation. They also recognize that years of meetings and planning can be undone by an Office of Management and Budget reviewer who asks, "How does this comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act? For at least two of the five ECQs, include vignettes of your career that reflect long-term accomplishments rather than furious feats of responsiveness.

Finally, no matter how much you profited from the lessons learned by the setbacks in your career, they should not provide the Results that you describe in your ECQs. Agency heads are usually seeking successful people for leadership positions, and the most effective method of conveying success is to describe a project where everything went according to plan. These accomplishments should be attentive to the requirements of positions for which you are likely to apply. Developing effective budget justifications that enabled the National Park Service to win a major increase at the Office of Management and Budget after the Interior Department had rejected the project could provide a sterling example of your ability to understand criteria for a position at OMB. The Interior's budget director is likely to be less appreciative of your feat.

In writing your ECQs, you will want to rely upon different examples, to the extent possible, for each of the five factors. If you are in circumstances where a single career feat stands out above all other achievements, brief references to it in each of the factors might be tolerated by OPM, but it will require support by other examples - undoubtedly of lesser magnitude - to secure approval. Such a career-dominating feat would probably best be highlighted in the "Leading Change" factor, and simply must be a project requiring many years to plan and implement.

Although successful ECQs should be limited to no more than a page and a half, the presentations of each factor need to be focused on the critical element involved. Description of recruitment of personnel should be within the "Leading People" element, supported by financial and information technology resource acquisition in other factors. Among other factors, the ECQs will sort out your ability to write effective summaries of complex documents for executive briefings. Reviewing officials make critical decisions about the ECQs in the first few seconds that they read them, much like they will with your resume. Burying them in detail is likely to leave your application buried in a pile of "qualified" people who don't quite make the "well-qualified" cut. In the coming weeks, we will address each of the specific ECQs, including some helpful guidance about orienting each of the responses.

Kathryn Kraemer 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.

Post a Comment

To post a comment, you must provide a name and a valid e-mail address. Messages must be limited to 400 words. By using this Service you agree not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable. Although Government Executive does not monitor comments posted to this site (and has no obligation to), it reserves the right to delete, edit, or move any material that it deems to be in violation of this rule.