Your steps to apply
Staff Psychologist
Veterans Health Administration · Newtown Square, Pennsylvania · Closes in 13 days
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1 Check you can apply You are here
Who can apply: Federal employees - Competitive service, The public, Internal to an agency, Federal employees - Excepted service.
This job is open to the public. You must be a U.S. citizen, national, or someone who owes allegiance to the U.S.; non-citizens may be hired only when qualified citizens cannot be recruited. Applicants are considered in this order: facility employees first, then agency employees, then all other applicants.
Experience: For the GS-11 level, no experience is needed beyond the basic requirements. For GS-12, you need at least 1 year of experience as a professional psychologist at the GS-11 level, and for GS-13 you need at least 2 years as a professional psychologist, including 1 year at the GS-12 level.
Education: You need a doctoral degree in psychology from a program accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA), the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS), or the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA), with a specialty that matches the job. You also need to have completed a psychology internship accredited by APA or CPA that matches the job, with several exceptions listed in the announcement. Other paths include a doctoral degree plus an approved re-specialization program, or a doctoral degree from 1951 to 1978 with a mainly psychological dissertation.
Licenses and certifications:
- Full, current, and unrestricted license to practice psychology at the doctoral level in a U.S. state, territory, or the District of Columbia.
- Exception: unlicensed applicants may be given a temporary graduate psychologist appointment at GS-11 or GS-12 for up to 2 years, under supervision.
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 13 days (November 17, 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 will be rated on how well you meet the listed qualifications, based on your online questionnaire and application documents. The agency verifies your information and may check references, and errors or missing information may lead to 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, then the final offer with your start date.
Tips for this job:
- Describe your psychology work clearly and specifically, with dates and hours, because the agency will not assume your experience.
- If you use education to qualify, check that your program and internship were APA or CPA accredited when completed, and include your transcript.
- Submit the full application package, including the online questionnaire and your resume, before the closing date shown on the announcement.
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