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.

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.

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.

2013 PMF: Awaiting Results

It seems there hasn't been a great deal of information coming out of the PMF Program Office recently, but I guess everyone is waiting for the results to be posted.  I figure you might want a thread to discuss it.  Be sure to let us know if you hear anything, good or bad.

2013 PMF: Post-Application Thread

Now that the application period for the 2013 PMF program has closed, it's time to talk details.  I wanted to keep discussions of assessment details to a minimum during the application period to preserve the integrity of the assessment itself.  There's no guarantee that any of the materials used this year will be used again, but the principles should be roughly the same.  So here's your opportunity to talk about your experiences with the assessment.  How do you think you did?  What kinds of questions were asked, and how effective do you think they are in determining sutiability for federal employment?  What was your experience with the online assessment?  How many people do you think applied?  New for this year: given that most applicants are on the East Coast, how did the hurricane impact your ability to complete the assessment?  And, are you sweating the impending fiscal cliff at all?

From my perspective, I have to say I am very pleased with the communication coming out of the PMF Program Office for this application cycle.  They have taken to Facebook pretty well and seem to be communicating better than at any time I remember.  For those who don't know, that's one of the reasons I started this blog, because there wasn't any real communication.  Even so, though, I hope people who find their way here still find use for this blog as a means of expression outside the official channels.

2013 PMF Program Application: Open Thread

The 2013 PMF program is officially accepting applications as of today.  Let us know if you are/have submitted your assessment, but please don't discuss the contents of the assessment.  Fair warning: I will delete any comments that include substantive information about the assessment.  There will be a separate open thread after the application deadline for you to discuss that portion.

Application and on-line assessment are in the same step this year, so keep that in mind as you submit your materials.  The PMF Program Office has also released an updated preparation guide to get you started.  The deadline for application submission is 19 November.  Good luck, everyone!