Interviewing for federal positions

Last updated

21st February 2024

Table of contents

Getting started

When you apply for a private sector job, you may encounter creative interview questions and on-the-spot problem-solving scenarios or skill demonstrations. There may be multiple meetings with different staff members, who may try to impress you to convince you to work with them. There’s often some free flow of dialogue and opportunities to showcase yourself as a whole person, perhaps even some flexibility to redefine the role to suit your particular strengths.

Your experience will look and feel different when interviewing for most federal government positions in the executive branch (which itself is different from congressional interviews). The federal hiring process prioritizes fairness and impartiality and attempts to limit bias. In practice, this means highly standardized interviews and little emotional expression or spontaneity from the hiring manager or panel. This standardization can help you prepare since applicants typically have a clear understanding of the qualifications required for the job they’re applying to and the questions they’re likely to receive in an interview.

When you’re contacted to schedule an interview, it’s best to:

Make it as easy as possible and avoid delay if possible. Respond as quickly as you’re able to. If you’re provided multiple times for an interview, mention all the times you can be available.
Keep in mind that the person contacting you may or may not be the hiring manager, and therefore may not have substantive information about the position.
If you must travel for the interview, ensure you have all the information you need to arrive as directed and get into the building and through security. Do not assume you will have another chance to ask questions.
Attempt to secure a method of contact in case of an emergency.
And, if your plans change and you no longer want the job, have the courtesy to communicate that information. You never know when you might come across someone again in another context.

Preparation

Understanding the vacancy and scoring system

To prepare for an interview, examine closely the vacancy announcement to which you applied. These typically follow a specific structure:

Its top parts describe the job duties and responsibilities.
What follows are the assessment factors that the hiring manager will use to evaluate candidates.
There may also be a separate set of highly desired factors used to differentiate between candidates with similar qualifications.

The hiring panel will likely use a scoring system of 0-1-3-5 to evaluate the candidate against each factor. At the low end, a candidate has no or limited demonstrated experience; at the high end, the candidate is an expert and may even lead others in that activity.

Note the term, “demonstrated experience.” Because most federal hiring procedures are designed to avoid the impression of favoritism, they typically only allow your evaluator to assign a high score if you provided detailed, concrete evidence to justify it. When speaking to your interviewer(s), you should therefore remember that your goal is not (only) to leave a good overall impression. Instead, you also need to provide them with the detailed evidence they’ll need to grade you highly. This sometimes requires spelling out details that you’d leave implicit in a typical private sector or nonprofit interview; in federal hiring, the “burden of proof” to demonstrate you’re qualified is higher.

Strategies for effective interview preparation

Since the hiring manager and panel must score each candidate against the assessment factors, your interview questions will likely be directly related to those factors. Behavioral questions are common as they allow candidates to straightforwardly speak about their experiences. The most successful candidates will—through their resume and their interview answers—demonstrate proficiency in those factors in the context of the job duties. It’s essential to provide direct and succinct examples of times when you have performed relevant tasks or duties. So, if the job is policy analysis and the factor is about teamwork, the best answers will discuss specific times when the candidate has worked with and perhaps led a team in policy analysis/research.

When put on the spot, most people find it difficult to recall all of their work experiences, select the most compelling instance when they demonstrated a particular skill, and communicate that story effectively. This means that preparation and practice are usually critical for doing well on this type of question.

As part of your preparation, develop some vignettes or talking points based on your experience to address each of the assessment and highly desired factors. You can write these down and bring them with you to the interview, though it’s best to have them largely committed to memory. When developing these points, consider using the STAR (Situation-Task-Action-Result) model, which helps you outline the challenge you faced, how you handled it, and the outcome of your work. These examples also allow you to highlight skills or attributes you want a hiring manager to know, but that aren’t part of the formal assessment process. If you’re interviewing for a more senior position, sketch out how you’ll approach your leadership positions in the job.

Consider creating a few sample questions based on the assessment factors and asking a friend or colleague to conduct a mock interview. Time your responses and practice presenting your vignettes until you can use them flexibly while speaking naturally.¹ Ask for concrete feedback from your mock interviewer on your pacing, volume, and filler words, and iterate your answers as necessary. Consider whether supplemental materials would improve your application, such as past performance appraisals, published works, or an action plan for the role. If they would, then you can highlight these during your interview.

The hiring manager conducting the interview is often but not always the person you will work for in the job. It’s often helpful to research that person and their roles and responsibilities in preparation for the interview.

Avoiding common mistakes

Thorough preparation can mitigate some common mistakes that candidates make during interviews, such as:

Making declarative statements about your qualifications without backing them up with examples. Candidates are frequently imprecise or vague about their specific actions and contributions, particularly in the context of group work. If the hiring manager can’t distinguish between your work and that of other employees, it creates doubt about your specific contributions.
Using the same example repeatedly, missing opportunities to showcase breadth of experience. If possible, you want to show that you have already (and recently) performed the job duties and would need minimal additional training. Knowledge from books or education is helpful but not as compelling as direct, on-the-job experience. But it’s equally important to showcase that the experience is genuinely yours and not embellished. If you’re applying for an entry-level job, the hiring manager will expect to provide training and mentoring and is looking for job fit and potential in successful candidates.
Name-dropping or appearing overly confident about receiving a job offer. Don’t be afraid to tell the hiring manager or panel that you (really) want the job, but don’t use more than a sentence or two.
Being overly informal with the hiring manager or seeking to build rapport to convince them to hire you. That behavior typically wastes valuable interview time and isn’t relevant to how you will be evaluated. Also, if you already know the hiring manager, it can lead to a perception that you’re attempting to use that connection—rather than your qualifications—to secure the job.
Poor time management during the interview. Not answering all the questions, spending disproportionate amounts of time on some questions, and not taking advantage of the time provided to fully answer questions can all sow doubt about your depth of experience and ability to communicate clearly.

What to expect

There are different types of interviews for federal jobs, including one-on-one interviews, panel interviews, phone interviews, and video interviews.

Interviews may be in-person or virtual. Many hiring managers value face-to-face interaction, even if it’s virtual (rather than phone interviews). Plan to arrive on time and have the correct technology available as needed. Dress and demeanor are not directly assessed as part of the interview—still, the hiring manager or panel will consider whether they want to work with you and how you present yourself.

Succeeding in panel interviews

Federal hiring panels will generally have at least three people, including at least one woman, one man, and someone from a minority background. It’s common for the hiring manager to invite someone from outside their work unit for an impartial perspective on candidates.

The panel will be the same for all interviews and all candidates should receive the same questions. All candidates will have the same amount of time for the interview, which is often 30 minutes. You should manage your own time and not expect the panel to give additional time or tell you when time is running short.

Opportunity to ask questions

At the end of an interview, the hiring manager or panel will typically ask if you have questions. They may or may not have factored time for questions into the overall interview time. Don’t be surprised if they need to move on to their next meeting.

The question about whether you have questions is typically not scored and is not an opportunity for you to insert more information. It’s a good idea to prepare a few thoughtful questions in advance, but avoid questions that imply you have a poor understanding of the duties of the position. While federal jobs are increasingly flexible on hours and location, it’s better to save conversations about these topics for after you have been offered the position. Appropriate questions can be related to the future direction or autonomy of the position and the team with whom you will work.

Next steps

After an interview, you’re welcome to thank the hiring manager or panel for the opportunity to meet with them. But don’t seek additional information, and know that your correspondence doesn’t factor into the selection process.

It can take weeks or longer to be notified of results. The hiring manager might determine that multiple candidates would be suitable for the position, rank them, and then offer the job in the rank order. So, if the first candidate refuses the offer, the second candidate is contacted, and so on. If you’re selected, you can then ask about next steps and a start date. Some job offers will be contingent on the positive resolution of a background investigation, which can involve a security clearance.

The hiring manager or panel will prepare feedback about each candidate. If you’re not selected, you can ask if any feedback is available and can be shared with you. It might well be succinct, but it should give some insight into your qualifications relative to the selected candidate. Take the feedback and overall experience as an opportunity to learn. Remember that if you made it to an interview, you already made it through an intensive screening process and came close to landing the job. Take lessons from the process to improve your future applications.

Additional resources

This article was written in collaboration with the National Security Career and Leadership Institute.

Footnotes

The ideal length of an answer depends on the context. It may be worth going more in-depth on some answers and an applicant may have less experience to highlight in others. ↩︎

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