Federal Resume Example: Two Pages for USAJOBS
A GS-11 budget analyst in Kansas City applying for a GS-12 budget analyst job through USAJOBS. The page follows OPM's two-page limit and lists what its guidance asks for on every job: series and grade, start and end month and year, and hours per week. It uses a sans-serif font, as OPM recommends.
A fictional resume written by our team. The person, the private employers and the numbers are invented. The agency, its financial system, the certification and the school are real, so the format matches what federal reviewers see.
Why it works
- 1
“Budget analyst (GS-0560-11) with five years of federal budget formulation and execution and four years of private-sector budgeting. Certified Government Financial Manager.”
Two lines and no more. On a two-page federal resume the space is better spent on bullets that match the announcement, so the summary only states the series, grade and years a reviewer checks first.
- 2
“Budget Analyst, GS-0560-11, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kansas City, MO | 07/2022 - Present | 40 hours per week | Permanent, full-time”
Each job carries the details OPM's guidance asks for: title, employer, series and grade for a federal job, start and end dates as month and year, and hours per week. Reviewers use them to confirm the experience the grade requires, so cutting them to save a line can cost the job.
- 3
“Formulate and execute an $84 million annual operating budget for a 1,100-employee program office, including quarterly spend plans for 9 divisions”
The bullets are written against the specialized experience statement in the target announcement, which for a budget analyst names work like budget formulation and execution. A reviewer checks the resume against that statement, so its words appear where the work did.
- 4
“Built a Power BI dashboard of obligations by division that replaced 9 monthly Excel reports”
Each bullet is one task at the level of the job applied for, with a number where there is one. The duty paragraphs of the old long-form federal resume are gone; this is what fits in their place.
- 5
“Budget Analyst, GS-0560-09, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kansas City, MO | 07/2021 - 06/2022 | 40 hours per week | Permanent, full-time”
The promotion from GS-09 to GS-11 at the same agency gets its own entry and its own dates, so the time spent at each grade is easy to count.
- 6
“Financial Analyst, Midland Health Partners, Overland Park, KS | 03/2017 - 06/2021 | 40 hours per week”
Private-sector jobs get the same details except series and grade. The dates and hours still matter, because reviewers credit qualifying experience from them whoever the employer was.
- 7
“Accounts Payable Clerk, Prairie Fields Cooperative, Manhattan, KS | 09/2013 - 05/2016 | 20 hours per week, part-time while in school”
Part-time work is listed with its real hours. Federal reviewers credit part-time experience in proportion to the hours worked, so it is worth stating accurately instead of rounding up or leaving out.
How it scored
We ran this example through the same free roast you can use, three times, and kept the middle result. The roast ranks a resume against a typical applicant pile and grades hard, so a resume with little work history can be a good example of its kind and still not score high.
Copy the text
Use it as a skeleton, then replace every line with your own work. A copied bullet with someone else's numbers is the fastest way to fail an interview question.
Kerry Fairbanks Budget Analyst, GS-0560-11 Kansas City, MO | kerry.fairbanks@example.com SUMMARY Budget analyst (GS-0560-11) with five years of federal budget formulation and execution and four years of private-sector budgeting. Certified Government Financial Manager. EXPERIENCE Budget Analyst, GS-0560-11, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kansas City, MO | 07/2022 - Present 40 hours per week | Permanent, full-time - Formulate and execute an $84 million annual operating budget for a 1,100-employee program office, including quarterly spend plans for 9 divisions - Track obligations against the spend plan weekly in FMMI and flag variances over 5% to division chiefs; year-end lapse fell from 3.1% to 0.8% over two fiscal years - Wrote the budget justification narratives for the FY 2025 and FY 2026 requests, including answers to 14 questions from OMB and the department - Prepared spending plans under 3 continuing resolutions, keeping all 9 divisions funded with no Antideficiency Act violations - Review about 60 reprogramming and funds transfer requests a year and draft the recommendation to the budget officer - Built a Power BI dashboard of obligations by division that replaced 9 monthly Excel reports Budget Analyst, GS-0560-09, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kansas City, MO | 07/2021 - 06/2022 40 hours per week | Permanent, full-time - Reconciled monthly obligations for 4 divisions in FMMI and cleared 210 unliquidated obligations more than two years old - Managed the office's $3.2 million travel and training budget and wrote the monthly variance report - Answered about 30 department data calls a year on spending, staffing and travel Financial Analyst, Midland Health Partners, Overland Park, KS | 03/2017 - 06/2021 40 hours per week - Built the annual operating budget for 6 outpatient clinics with $58 million in combined revenue - Produced monthly budget-to-actual reports for clinic directors and explained every variance over 5% - Automated the monthly close package with Excel Power Query, saving about 2 working days a month Accounts Payable Clerk, Prairie Fields Cooperative, Manhattan, KS | 09/2013 - 05/2016 20 hours per week, part-time while in school - Processed about 250 vendor invoices a month and reconciled the payables subledger to the general ledger EDUCATION AND CREDENTIALS B.S. Accounting, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 05/2016, cumulative GPA 3.42 Certified Government Financial Manager (CGFM), AGA, 2023 SKILLS Budget formulation and execution, Apportionment and continuing resolutions, OMB Circular A-11, FMMI (SAP), Power BI, Excel (Power Query, pivot tables) TRAINING Federal Appropriations Law, Graduate School USA, 32 hours, 2023 Budget Execution, Graduate School USA, 24 hours, 2021 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION U.S. citizen Current federal employee: Budget Analyst, GS-0560-11, career tenure Highest grade held: GS-11, since 07/2022
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