>>2744639You might still get veteran preference points but I don’t think it’s right to use those to win jobs you otherwise wouldn’t be the successful applicant for. Better to get hired on merit alone.
Yes volunteer experience looks great on an application, because they know you’re serious. For trails, play up any landscaping, carpentry or machine use you have experience with.
Before a human gets to see your application, a robot will compare your resume to the hiring questionnaire (which you fill out after you’ve uploaded your resume) and the computer will assign you a numerical score based on how many matching keywords there are. The correct approach is as follows:
1: view job posting on USAjobs
2: ctrl +F “questionnaire” and click “preview questionnaire”
3: copy and paste key terms from the questionnaire into your resume, for example if your resume says “chainsaw use”, but the sample questionnaire says “use of chainsaw and crosscut for bucking, felling and slashing” that’s 5 keywords you can steal to boost your resume’s score.
As for exaggerating your skills on the questionnaire (they will ask you to rate your level of experience with stuff on a scale of 1 to 5) some parks have a human fact-check your claims on the questionnaire against your resume, some parks don’t bother. My advice is before you click the option that says “I am an experienced Sawyer and am regularly consulted by journeypersons”, have some verbiage in your resume that will at least make the statement look semi-justified.
If I’ve explained all that poorly, look up USAjobs tips on YouTube.
