As in any private company, job vacancies in the Government of Canada are filled based on need. This usually occurs in the following situations:
1) Change of political party or government’s priorities
2) Departure of an individual in which a suitable replacement was not found through an internal competition
3) Decision to have a department-wide recruitment strategy
That being said, it is advantageous to be prepared for any of the above situations because they lead to job vacancies that are open to the public. In certain situations, job positions that have been open for 24 hours have been known to receive more than 5,000 job applications.
While department-wide or government-wide recruitment strategies advertise job vacancies for a longer period of time, this is not the case for the other situations.
Here are 5 tips to ensure that you are always informed and prepared for job vacancies
1) Resume – Have your resume (in text format) updated and ready at all times. For the large majority of job openings, only electronic
applications
and resumes are accepted. If you are unsure of what type of information should be on a Government resume click here.
2) Physical website scans – You should make an effort to scan the websites of departments and agencies in the Government of
Canada where you are interested in working at least once a week for job vacancies.
3) Job alerts – To ensure that you are informed of job vacancies when you cannot scan websites for yourself, signup for the
Government of Canada’s job alerts here.
4) Visit other websites- Not all Government jobs are covered under the Public Service Employment Act. This list is located here.
Note that some announce job vacancies on the www.jobs.gc.ca website and direct you to their website, but they are not obliged to.
Even in these cases, these job vacancies sometimes take longer to show up on the www.jobs.gc.ca website, taking away precious
days that one needs to prepare his/her application.
5) Informal networking – You should try to build a network of people informing you of job vacancies. For more information on
networking in the Government click here.
6) Patience – Sometimes it takes a while before a good opportunity appears. Be patient the perfect job vacancy will appear.