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How to Apply: Canada.ca

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Hiring Delays

Hiring is not an event, it's a marathon.

We know several people who’ve encountered delays of longer than a year before being hired by the federal government.

Other shenanigans include jobs being offered and then retracted.

Expect significant paperwork (security clearance, confidentiality agreements, etc). In fact, expect the unexpected.

Using delays to one's advantage

Because hiring delays are so frequent in the federal public service, managers will hire from pools much more readily than from raw external candidates. Thus, apply to any job for which one is qualified, even if one isn't interested.

Being added to the pool is a quick ticket to being hired, because managers can skip many of the hiring delays and effort.

One stays in a pool for three years.

One applies to a specific job, for instance AS-02, which will have a multi-step payscale published on the Federal Treasury Website, published under appendix 1.

Moving up to the next level (in this case, AS-03) requires applying for a different job with more responsibilities. Level 04-05 tends to be for people with graduate degrees or equivalent experience.

There are over 150 or 200 classifications that include nurses, mechanics, lab scientists, policy advisors and they’re all different

Although Quebec and the city of Montreal have larger job categories (e.g. professional, technician), this doesn’t seem to be the case for the federal government.

Another job type to note is “casual,” “term,” and “indeterminate.” Casual means a contract of less than 90 days. A term appointment or contract is temporary but longer, whereas an indeterminate contract is a permanent position (i.e. hard to fire). The Quebec government refers to these as occasionnel (term) and permanent (avec droit de rappel)..

Being hired for the federal public service often requires answering a number of essay questions. One piece of advice is to write these essays in a separate document, have them checked by friends, before submitting. They are too involved to write in the webpage. When answering these questions, use the STAR method.