Government jobs have a lot of potentional for Evergreen students. They can include work in National Parks, Museums, libraries, education, manual labor, communications, information technologies, or practically anything else one can think of! Even interior designers can be federal employees!

Government Jobs have a lot of benefits for college graduates. They include jobs in locations all over the world, anywhere a government agency our military base might be found including all 50 states, Canada, Italy, Portugal, India, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and many more. Benefits also can include health and life insurance, retirement programs, paid holidays, sick leave, and vacation time, flexible hours, paid education and training, possible student loan repayment, competitive salaries, and annual pay increases with locality pay adjustments, and the the thrift savings plan.

The first step in finding a government job is to go to the Career Interest Center for USAJOBS. Here you can browse jobs in any sector and in locations local and worldwide. And if you aren't interested in working for the federal government, you can look for jobs in the private sector that are similar to government jobs.

Your next step in looking for a government job is to understand the lingo. These systems are hard to understand, so we will help break it down for you. Government jobs are classified by General Schedule (GS) system. Jobs are GS, then Grade, then Step. For example, you could be a GS-12-04, (GS 12, step 4), you would make $61,932 a year. The best jobs to apply for are ones that promote by class instead of step. In other words, a GS 7 promotable to GS 9 is much better than a GS 7 step promotable. There are only 10 steps, but there are 15 classes. It is far better to be promoted to a GS 11, making $47,000 a year than to be a GS-7-step 10 making $40,000 a year. Keep this in mind when looking for a federal job.

The GS system also keeps in mind the cost of living for certain areas, GS employees in the Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia area make even more than listed above than average federal employees.

Find a job that appeals to you! While it may not be available to apply to at this time, you can see what types of jobs are available in the federal sector. Jobs are broken down by White Collar and Trades, Labor and Crafts. The White Collar section has jobs that included everything from legal aides to clothing and interior designers with jobs in mostly every field in between.

Click on a field that interests you and open the PDF. From here you can see what the qualifications are and what you would be doing in the job. In each listing there is an explanation of the GS position you could be qualified for, the higher the GS position, the better the pay and opportunity for advancement.