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    Managing the Maze: Your Senior Executive Service Application
    Managing the Maze: Your Senior Executive Service Application
    Managing the Maze: Your Senior Executive Service Application
    Ebook140 pages1 hour

    Managing the Maze: Your Senior Executive Service Application

    By Susan Custard

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Managing the Maze – Your Senior Executive Service Application” is the first book by an exciting author – Susan Custard. Susan brings her 30+ years of Federal human resources experience “to the table” to help candidates develop an outstanding and competitive application for government executive positions.
    Susan has written over 500 government executive applications – and has taught many workshops. She now brings this expertise to this book – an opportunity for applicants, whether within or external to the government, to easily access expertise – at a remarkable price!
    Join Susan in a thorough and easy-to-read discussion of the Federal government’s executive selection process, and understand the value of the executive resume, the Executive Core Qualifications and the Technical Qualifications in each part of the process! Using project planning and career coaching techniques, Susan brings her expertise and ability to translate the process to the lay person – all the while gently encouraging you, the reader, through the various steps required for comprehensive application development!
    A worthwhile investment – with the opportunity to ask direct questions to the author through her website!
    “Comprehensive and easy to read” – Pat A – HR Specialist!
    “Thorough – and wonderfully helpful throughout the application development process” – Marilyn C – current SES.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlue Dragon Publishing, LLC
    Release dateDec 29, 2013
    ISBN9780983245438
    Managing the Maze: Your Senior Executive Service Application
    Author

    Susan Custard

    With 30 years of Federal human resources experience, working for several executive agencies (Navy, Interior, Energy), Susan has developed an outstanding reputation for her knowledge and expertise in executive level staffing and selection. As both a Federal Employment Manager and HR Director for several Federal agencies, Susan directly managed agency level SES selection processes, including coordinating with the Office of Personnel Management to satisfy their requirements on SES selections. Susan uses her knowledge and insight of the SES selection process to design successful and focused job search strategies and competitive application materials for each client.Susan specializes in offering customized services to clients that can include either SES ECQ consulting or SES coaching. Susan's services in SES ECQ consulting include comprehensive application development, content strategies, content analysis, discussion and brainstorming on leadership examples, competency analysis and decision-making, writing and focusing strategies. Other clients can benefit from Susan's approach to SES coaching, which includes strategic career planning and counseling, leadership task and training development focused on entering SES and CDP programs for future SES applicants. Susan excels in developing effective partnerships to coach clients to develop a comprehensive package that includes superb written application materials and interview preparation.

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      Book preview

      Managing the Maze - Susan Custard

      Senior Executive Service Project Plan

      As we noted earlier, what you write down is more likely to get accomplished. To move through the maze effectively and efficiently, you must have a strategy. Taking on the maze by running hither and yon isn’t effective. People who are successful in moving through any maze or puzzle do so with a developed strategy.

      Use this table as a sample. As you work through this process, you’ll be creating a customized project plan specific to your maze strategy. If you’d like a Word version that you can adapt, please see our website at www.custardconsulting.com.

      Table 1 – SES Project Plan Sample

      Your Maze Strategy

      As you’ve seen in the sample project plan above, managing the maze requires consideration of a variety of issues. Most important is creating your own definition of leadership. This is critical to your success in achieving your career goals. If your definition of leadership doesn’t match those around you, you won’t make any progress. Or, if you are selected and your leadership definition and values don’t match that of the agency and your direct supervisor, this gap can create huge challenges. As you create your leadership definition, you’ll want to reflect on those leaders you’ve worked for, those who have inspired you, and what made them good (or bad) leaders. Was it the context, resources, lack of management skills? Talk to some of the better leaders in the SES. Was the SES different than originally thought? What would they do differently?

      There have been 10,000+ books written on leadership – just Google it. Many of today’s business leaders have expressed their leadership ideologies and successes in written form. It is not the intent of this book to articulate the challenges of leadership, but to simply ensure that you consider those challenges appropriately as you think about this career change. However, you may want to review some other leadership books prior to beginning Leadership Activity 1 below.

      To achieve this guide’s benefits, we’ve included several thought exercises regarding leadership. You can do them as they occur throughout the chapters or come back to them. These exercises facilitate your self-knowledge about leadership, your leadership skills, and gaps. Here’s the first one.

      Keep your definition from the above exercise in mind. As we work through the maze, your commitment and knowledge of your leadership, as well as leadership concepts and principles, will be important in making decisions about the maze and creating a competitive SES application package.

      With our first exercise completed and tucked away for later use, we’ll now begin to discuss how to manage the maze.

      Into the Maze

      Creating a maze strategy calls for you to determine if you want to get into the maze. In other words, do you want an SES position? Positions in the SES are significantly different from even a GS-15 manager in the government. SES positions require a different mindset where you are strategic in nature, not focused on tactics, and are happy putting in lots of hours. These positions are often political in nature. In other words, managing the politics can be a huge part of the job and something that you need to consider as you develop a career management strategy.

      As part of your maze management, and as highlighted in the sample project plan, you are going to gather a significant amount of information to evaluate your decision to seek an SES position. There are conversations to be had. You need to obtain feedback from peers, your current manager, your family, mentors, coaches and others. This feedback should be designed to get a reaction to your consideration of an SES position. This information is fairly subjective, but should also make you aware of any perceived barriers to your success in making this change. To get you started, here are a few questions to ask:

      - Do you see me as a leader?

      - What are my leadership strengths/weaknesses?

      - Are there specific areas I should focus on to grow as a leader?

      - How will a leadership position impact me, my family, and my work-life balance?

      - As a senior leader, what would you do differently?

      - As a senior leader, how have you changed? Do you like the change?

      - Do you feel like you are making a difference or adding value as a leader?

      This isn’t an all-inclusive list but you can Google leadership questions if you need more hints or suggestions.

      You may also want to consider taking a leadership assessment and leveraging that feedback as part of your maze management. There are many leadership assessment tools, so you need to decide which tool will add the most value. Taking more than one can be confusing and muddy the maze – especially if you already have a clear idea of your leadership strengths and weaknesses. If some time has passed since your last leadership assessment, you might want to take a new assessment to confirm your own ideas, and to identify any new gaps, strengths or weaknesses. You’ll want to know what these are so you can continually work to address them, whether you are currently seeking an SES position or considering future

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