Your steps to apply
Healthcare Engineer
Veterans Health Administration · Grand Island, Nebraska · Closes in 3 days
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1 Check you can apply You are here
Who can apply: Internal to an agency, The public.
You must be a U.S. citizen. The job is open to current permanent VA employees, current permanent federal employees of other agencies, and all U.S. citizens.
Experience: For GS-7, no extra experience is needed beyond the basic education requirement. For GS-9, you need 1 year of experience equivalent to GS-7. For GS-11, you need 1 year equivalent to GS-9. For GS-12, you need 1 year equivalent to GS-11. Direct healthcare experience is not required, but you should explain how your engineering skills apply to healthcare.
Education: You can qualify with a bachelor's degree or higher in engineering or architecture from a program accredited by ABET's Engineering Accreditation Commission or the NCARB, such as Electrical, Mechanical, Biomedical, Civil, or Architecture. You can also qualify with a bachelor's degree plus passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam (shown by an Engineer in Training certificate or an NCEES passing score), or with a current Professional Engineer or Architect license. Master's or doctoral degrees in engineering or architecture can also count toward the higher grade levels.
Licenses and certifications:
- Contracting Officer Representative (COR) certification, which you must maintain
- VA Facility Engineering/Construction (FE-C) certification, which you must maintain
Experience can be paid or unpaid, volunteer work included: if it matches the duties, it counts. The full rules are in the announcement.
2 Resume and documents
Write a federal resume for this job. For each job you held, give the month and year you started and ended, your hours per week and what you did, using the words of the experience the announcement asks for. Many announcements accept resumes of up to 2 pages: check this one.
3 Apply on USAJOBS
Closes in 3 days (November 6, until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time).
You sign in to USAJOBS with a Login.gov account, answer the questionnaire and upload your documents, then you submit. Answer the questionnaire honestly: your resume must show what you claim.
How they rate you: You are rated on how well you meet the qualifications, based on the online occupational questionnaire and your documents. Eligible applications are referred in this order: current permanent VA employees of the facility, other VA employees, current permanent federal employees of other agencies, then all other applicants in unranked order. Missing required information may result in an ineligible rating or a lower score.
4 After you apply
In USAJOBS, under Applications, you can see where your application stands: received, reviewed, referred to the hiring manager or not, then selected or not. It can take a few weeks.
For the interview, prepare three examples with the STAR method: the Situation, the Task, what you did (Action) and the Result.
If they choose you: a tentative offer, then a background check, a security clearance (Other), then the final offer with your start date.
Tips for this job:
- Your long-form resume or CV must be clear and specific about your engineering work, since the VA will verify your experience.
- Write a separate KSA document, which is highly recommended, addressing the knowledge, skills, and abilities listed under the grade requirements.
- Send your transcript with your application, since it is required even if you use experience instead of education, and add the DD-214 or SF-50 if they apply to you.
Kandidatu is an independent website: only the official posting counts. Read it before you apply.