I recently received a request for information from a job seeker with a Masters in English and a Bachelors in Political Science. This job seeker was having a hard time finding a position in the Northern Virginia (NOVA) area. Either she was told she had too much or not enough experience for many of the positions – most significantly related to government or defense contracting in NOVA. She is in a ‘rock-and-a-hard-place’ position in her career for getting into the defense or government contracting field.

I used to go to job fairs as a defense industry recruiter. Many job seekers would be looking for positions in defense companies – so they could obtain a clearance – to start making really good money because of their clearance. It’s a ‘chicken-or-the-egg’ issue. You can’t get hired without a clearance, but you can’t get a clearance unless you work for the government or came out of the military services with one already in place.

One piece of advice – look for a position in the federal government as a contracts specialist. Those positions require a college degree and going into the position, you start from the bottom and work your way up from entry level). Those positions are numerous and the government desperately needs hundreds of those seats filled. If you have any experience in writing contracts, writing proposals for contracts, etc. – that also would be some leverage for companies who contract for the government. If not, sign up for classes on military, defense, and/or government acquisition and contracting – there will be dozens of available training classes in the NOVA area.

Otherwise – look for a job (ANY job) in ANY defense or government contracting company – regardless of job skills or job requirements. You may have to bite the bullet and get an entry-level position. Look for work within the company that will eventually require a clearance – even if Secret or Confidential levels – and then look for more work within the company that requires higher clearances. This is including program and project management, contracts and proposal research, or project supervisors.

Contracting companies seem to be always desperate for Proposals and Contract Writers. These jobs are difficult, mind-wearying, work hard and long hours (sometimes requiring overnighters to finish a package), and require a mind for reading and interpreting seemingly ambiguous details. Get some experience – even if you have to volunteer as an ‘intern’ in one of those positions. Those pay massive salaries to those whom are able to successfully write winning contracts to the government.

You are in the same boat as hundreds of others – too little or too over-qualified. For those positions that you are over-qualified for – be up front – tell the hiring managers, in a cover letter, you are purposefully seeking this experience in XYZ company because you are missing that unique experience in your resume, you are trying to broaden your experience into more skills areas to more versatile and knowledgeable. Here’s where your current experience can be paralleled and useful to the company in that open advertised position, as well as partnering with staff other departments to assist them in accomplishing their tasks faster or easier.

Take advantage of LinkedIn – do some industrial spying lite. Review all the employees of companies you are targeting, see what those folks do, and contact them through LinkedIn or directly. Ask if their employer has any referral bonuses for hiring new employees (money is a great incentive to pushing a resume forward in these economic hard times). Develop a relationship – ask them what skills sets they feel their company is looking for at this time. Determine if the company is having any shortage of KSAs in any one department – regardless of whether the company has posted any help wanted positions or not. Ask for the name of the manager of the department, write them a letter, explaining that you believe they might be having a shortage of your skills in their department and can solve some problems, here is your resume, you’d be delighted to have a coffee or lunch with them to discuss how you can solve their company, department concerns. (Be tactful, don’t say Bobby is complaining the dolts in the contracts department are idiots and can’t do their jobs. Explain you heard through a casual, private, but strictly confidential conversation, the department might be short-handed for folks with XYZ experience.)

Also – don’t overlook the possibility of part-time positions – they quickly lead to full-time!

The government Central Contract Registry and the SBA has a database of thousands of government contractors – I have a file on how-to search for full information contacts and info about the company on my LinkedIn profile – located in the Box.net file with the word CCR in the file name. Download and use the instructions to pull up names of companies. In my SlideShare app – look for the list of hundreds of recruiting websites for companies – private, public, commercial, and government contracting companies list in which you can search for target companies. Your job as a job seeker is to get your resume into as many resume databases as possible. For those whom are unemployed – my suggested target is 20 daily uploads. You’ll be surprised at how much more calls you’ll get.

If you need a resume rewrite – I do that! Look at my biz website catalog of products and services and prices: https://DBoyerConsulting.com. It IS worth it to have a fresh set of eyes looking at your resume and rewriting it based on extensive experience in government contracting industry.