Second Time Around Club

[pm]

Very good points oldjag. Every time I see a post like the one from justbob, I marvel at how good OPM was at identifying the good, the bad and the ugly.

[justbob]

Unfortunately, the entire process was so opaque as to prevent any of us from clearly establishing whether it was done well or not.

My personal suspicion is that they figured just about everyone who applied met the minimum quals, but they did not want to go through 1500+ applications - so they just took whatever steps to reduce it to a number they thought more manageable. Maybe I am way off base, but given their secrecy, there is no way for anyone to prove me wrong.

Heck, maybe I just needed to go through the process the first time to be reminded of how great my current job is, and how little I need the job of ALJ. But you've gotta buy a ticket if you want any chance to win the lottery. If my number comes up, I'll decide what I want to do then.

And I never said I walked on water. But I simply reject the idea that my 20+ year career did not qualify me to even complete the application/interview process. That is my complaint - not that I was not hired. And I'm not suggesting that any of the several folk I know who were recently hired as ALJs were not at least minimally qualified. All I'm saying is that I believe I was at least minimally qualified as well such that I should have been allowed to interview and test. And further that the process absolutely sucked to not provide any explanation of why I was not, and no meaningful appeal.

Of course, I'm not going to tell you my resume, so you really won't have any basis for saying I'm wrong. ;D

[barkley]

I agree it was a bit hard to swallow that my career was worth "zero" points. Somehow, a notice that I had scored a 43 and the cut off for proceeding was a 45 might have been easier to take, but that, as they say, is water under the bridge.

In the meantime, my fortune cookie said "Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently."

May it be so.