Tuesday, April 30, 2013

State and USAID Google+ Hangout

If you are attending or did attend the Google+ Hangout conducted by the PMF Advisory Council at State and USAID, you are welcome to post your thoughts in this thread.

During the event, this page will hopefully have the hangout embedded, but since I've never tried it before, it may not work as expected. If it doesn't, check out the original post for the event information.

[Just a note that the viewer window has been removed as per the request of the hangout organizers. Refer to the original posting on this topic for more information. Please feel free to discuss the event.]

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

2013 PMF: Virtual Job Fair Open Thread

[Update 4/30/2013: The PMF Program Office has updated its Job Fair page with new information, including preparation details for the Virtual Job Fair: http://www.pmf.gov/become-a-pmf/find-a-job/job-fair.aspx]

Because this year's PMF job fair is virtual, I hadn't felt any urgency in posting about it. Given some of the confusion surrounding it, though, perhaps it's time for some discussion.

I was going to refer you to the PMF Program Office's Job Fair page, but as of this posting, it contains mostly information for the 2012 class. This is not relevant to you, obviously, but I can understand how it might cause some confusion.

Unfortunately, I don't see any good documentation on what to expect from the job fair this year. All we know is that it's virtual and that additional details are forthcoming. The following from the page does pertain to you:

NOTE: The content on this webpage will be updated once additional details become available for the 2013 Job Fair event. All Class of 2013 Finalists will receive an email containing login properties for this event within the next few days.

The PMF Program hosts a Job Fair event for all current class Finalists and participating agencies. This event is by invitation only to 2013 Finalists and participating agencies. Most PMF appointments are a result of the Job Fair.

I am sure the rest of this community would be interested to know when this page changes. If you notice new information before I do, please point it out in the comments.

In the mean time, feel free to discuss your hopes and plans for the virtual job fair.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Interested in State and/or USAID?

The PMF Advisory Council at the State Department and USAID is hosting a Google+ Hangout for 2013 PMF finalists on Monday, Apr 29, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM EST.

You can see the event listing and RSVP here: http://bit.ly/2013PMFGoogleHangout

From the G+ event listing:

Calling all 2013 PMF Finalists interested in State and USAID!

The Presidential Management Fellows Advisory Council (PMFAC) at State and USAID will host a Google+ Hangout for Class of 2013 PMF Finalists interested in learning more about State and USAID. This "virtual panel" will include a diverse group of past and present State/USAID PMFs to provide Finalists with perspectives on common questions about getting a job at State, life as a PMF at State, etc.

Submit any questions you have for panelists and vote for other questions by 12 PM EST on April 29, 2013 here: http://goo.gl/mod/vTlK

View the panel live Path to PMF (www.PathtoPMF.org) or PMF Info (pmfellow.blogspot.com). The session will not be recorded.

Disclaimer: Current and former PMFs participating in the Google+ Hangout are speaking in their personal capacity and not on behalf of the Department of State or USAID or the PMF Programs at State and USAID. We are not hiring managers and cannot make job offers to PMFs. Participation in this Google+ Hangout session is an opportunity offered by PMFs for PMFs for information only, and has no bearing on your ability to secure a job offer from the State Department.

I think this is a fantastic idea. If you have even a slight interest in these agencies, you should attend.

I plan to embed the hangout in a new post so you can see it here, but GovLoop will also have it, and of course you can always go to the original event page. (Note: Since the hangout is not being recorded, there will not be an archived video after the event is over. If you have any interest whatsoever in State or USAID, please attend this! Doing so will encourage other agencies to do similar things in the future.)

Agencies: If you have specific events similar in nature to this, I'm sure the community here would love to hear about them.

PMFs (finalists, current, former): If you are aware of other such events, pass the word along.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Exploring 2013 PMF Finalist Data

Just for fun, I've been playing with the finalist data. Here are some ways of visualizing it, using Google Fusion Tables, which seems to have gained some features and lost others since I began playing with it a couple years ago.

If you don't see anything below, it might be your browser. Based on what I've seen in my Google Analytics stats for the site, though, most of you should be fine.

First let's look at top 10 degrees:



Second, top 10 Universities:



One of the newer features is one where we can explore the links between data elements. This one is for the link between University and Degree:



Next up, we can map out the locations of the schools, in case anyone wants to explore that way.



And last, but not least, your breakdown of Veterans' Preference.



Anything else you'd like to see?

2013 PMF: Congratulations

663 of you were selected as finalists.  Congratulations, and good luck securing an appointment!

About 1/3 of you have veterans' preference, which is higher than I've seen in the past.  While it's not a guarantee of a job, it does give you an advantage.

In the past, some of your enterprising fellow PMFs have started and maintained a community spreadsheet for listing positions and such.  If you happen to do the same, let me know and I will make sure it's linked somewhere.

Also in the past, I had operated some polls to get a sense of the usefulness of the job fair.  In light of this year's virtual job fair, I'd be interested to compare with other years.  I'm also especially interested in how the sequester and ongoing budget issues affect you all, so I will take suggestions on how best to conduct that survey as well, if all of you are interested.

Finally, I have to say I am incredibly pleased about the way the PMF site is displaying the 2013 finalists list.  I was able to copy it and paste it into a spreadsheet, which means I don't have to spend gobs of time cleaning up the data.  However, I don't have the applicant and semifinalist data in the same state.  Would anyone like to do this?  For now, I don't care about normalizing the school names (for instance, Harvard University versus Harvard Law School; both are Harvard), just getting them into my database.  In fact, I probably have data from other years that I just haven't had the time to clean up, if anyone is interested.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

2013 PMF: Awaiting Results, Continued

This is a post to help you continue the discussion.  It seems 200+ comments begins to get burdensome on this theme.  Once this is over, I might try something else or do some investigation on how to streamline the comments.