In a recent Chief, they interviewed Lisette Camilo, the departing commissioner of DCAS. They reviewed many of the improvements that DCAS has made over the years, including the scoring of Education and Experience (E&E) exams. In one of the discussions, she told the reporter “It’s easier to score an Education and Experience exam—that used to be a manual endeavor and now that’s been automated. The amount of time it takes to score an E&E exam has been significantly reduced…”
And this, my friends, is exactly where some people run into trouble.
Not with the automation, I think that’s a good thing. It reduces the time to review and cuts out some human error. Your interest is in how this automation reviews and processes your application and information.
In my post on how to handle an appeal regarding being rejected or low-scored on a E&E exam, we reviewed some of the methods that may help the review process. In particular, it was important to recognize that the reviewer, either human or machine, may not know the details of a particular discipline. But they do know to look for keywords in the resumes and applications.
Automated resume scoring devices are generally known in the world as “Applicant Tracking Systems” or ATS’s. These ATS products, whether in the city or in the private sector, will read and filter resumes. It will look at your basic qualifications, such as years of experience, do you have a high school diploma or college, if required. It will also look for keywords that are related to the job or are in the job posting.
Let’s take apart one example from a Notice of Examination (NOE) – Computer Specialist (Software) . This title was supposed to be a sit down exam at one time, but with the advancements in technology, keeping up with questions or specialties made it difficult to test for. And some agencies needed specific talent. If you’re an agency in need of a Red Hat Linux Admin, someone that is an Oracle DBA may not be the best fit for the job.
So first, you would be assessed on your basic education and experience. Basically, it would sort: do you have a Bachelor Degree and two years of experience or High School and six years of experience (plus some other specifics but just keeping it short here). This would eliminate the people with no experience or didn’t complete high school.
Working down the NOE, it looks for details on the education – did you work as a project leader; are you familiar with databases, mainframes; have you taken any continuing education courses, etc.
Later in the NOE, do you have any experience in certain technologies for selective certification?
You’re doing a lot of the pre-sorting before it even goes into the machine…
Other exams, like Qualified Incumbent Exams (QIE’s) might even fall more into a resume-type review. Take Industrial Hygienist. If you have a bachelor’s (baccalaureate) degree from an accredited college or university you also need 28 semester credits in industrial hygiene, environmental health science, occupational health science and/or safety engineering… If you describe your work, like “measures and identifies exposures” that may not get picked up as “one year of satisfactory, fulltime work experience in the identification, evaluation and control of health and safety hazards”. You’d be better off following the keywords from the NOE. You can get into the details with your potential manager or supervisor at the interview. The goal is to get in the door.
Bottom line – don’t waste your time and money applying for exams where you don’t meet the basic qualifications. When you get into the details, try to align your work experience and education with the wording and descriptions used in the job posting and/or NOE. This will give you the best chance to get through the machine and onto a list.
Comments and Questions Welcomed Here
