Your steps to apply
Registered Nurse – Infection Preventionist
Veterans Health Administration · Chicago, Illinois · Closes in 6 days
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1 Check you can apply You are here
Who can apply: Internal to an agency, The public.
Open to the public, but you must be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or owe allegiance to the U.S. Current permanent employees of the VA can also apply under the internal consideration area.
Experience: Experience sets your grade level, and the announcement lists different experience for Nurse I, II, and III levels. For example, a Nurse I Level II needs 1 year of specialized nursing experience after an associate degree. Preferred: at least 2 years as an infection prevention and control nurse, and 5 years of RN experience in an inpatient hospital.
Education: You must have graduated from a professional nursing school accredited by ACEN or CCNE. An associate degree or diploma can qualify at the entry level, while a BSN or MSN can qualify for higher grades. A BSN or MSN is highly preferred. Foreign degrees need a formal equivalency validation to count above associate degree level.
Licenses and certifications:
- Current, full, active, and unrestricted registration as a graduate professional nurse (RN) in a U.S. state, territory, Puerto Rico, or DC
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 6 days (November 9, 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 your online questionnaire. VA checks your experience for quality across five nursing areas: Practice, Veteran/Patient Driven Care, Leadership, Professional Development, and Evidence-Based Practice/Research. Missing required information or errors can lower your rating or make you ineligible.
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:
- Describe your nursing experience clearly and specifically, since VA will not assume anything about your work.
- Include a transcript with your application if you want your education to count toward qualifying.
- Claim veterans' preference in the questionnaire and attach DD-214 or SF-15 if it applies to you.
Kandidatu is an independent website: only the official posting counts. Read it before you apply.