Search Job Postings  Begin your search by going to the U.S. Postal Service website at usps.com. Click the “Careers” link at the bottom left corner of their homepage, click the “Career Opportunities” link when you land on the next page, and finally click the “Search Jobs” link on the third page you reach. (Note: Postal website changes may result in these links being revised over time. If so, go to usps.com and look for a careers or jobs link and proceed from there.)

This brings us to the point of having to discuss the actual job search function, but it is difficult to decide where to begin because the job search has so very many problems. We will start by looking at an illustration of the job search page.

Per this illustration, you are supposed to be able to search by text, location, and functional area. But there is a big difference between what you are supposed to be able to do and what you actually can do. None of these search functions really work as intended. As we look into the job search, we will discuss the search functions individually, all their problems, and finally how to get around these problems.

Full Text Search

You would think that doing a text search would be simple way to find postings. Perhaps you could enter a job title, a job function like “delivery”, a city name where you hope to find a job, or any relevant word and find applicable postings. But if you think this, you would be very wrong. Following are details on why text searches do not really work.

Job Title Text Search Issues

Human error and inconsistent postings by over 30,000 Postmasters nationwide cause many search problems. This is particularly true with text searches. There are obviously no specifics for how a job is to be posted because the same job might be posted many different ways. And there are obviously no pre-formatted selections. The bottom line is that, with no specific posting criteria and over 30,000 individuals posting different ways, no single text search can cover all these possibilities. For example, here are a few ways that a Rural Carrier Associate job might be posted. An accurate posting would look like this:

RURAL CARRIER ASSOCIATE - HOUSTON TX NC58632107

This sample has a proper job title (spelled correctly), the city and state, and a posting number. Postings may include additional information relevant to that particular job, but an accurate posting should have at least these items. If you did a text search for “RURAL CARRIER ASSOCIATE”, this posting should be reported. But if the job was posted improperly in any way … if the posting did not exactly match your search terms … it may not be reported. How many ways can this posting be convoluted? Following are just a few of the actual variations we have been observed.

RCA - HOUSTON TX NC58632107

The job title is abbreviated as “RCA”, which occurs frequently, so this posting would not be reported if you searched for “Rural Carrier Associate”.

URAL CARRIER ASSOCIATE - HOUSTON TX NC58632107

The word “Rural” is misspelled. This particular mistake where the “R” is dropped from “Rural” seems to happen often, probably due to a faulty copy & paste attempt. It could be any of the words, however, that are misspelled or posted incorrectly. For instance, the word “Carrier” is often misspelled or abbreviated to something like “Carr”, the word “Associate” is often misspelled or abbreviated to something like “Assoc”, etc.

NC58632107

Everything was left out except the posting number without any other information. Any other items could just as easily be left out.

And these are only a few possible variations. There is no way to guess or search for all the different improper posting variations. So, if you do a text search for the job title “Rural Carrier Associate”, you will have some postings reported, but you will absolutely not see 100% of the postings. How many did you miss? There is no way to know. And the very job and/or location you prefer could well be one of the postings that did not report because it was entered improperly.

Job Description Text Search Issues

If you are interested in a mail delivery job, why not just do a text search for the term “delivery”? Because there are literally hundreds of delivery jobs posted at any given time, and the search function will attempt to report all of them for you. The first problem with this is that only a handful of postings will be of interest to you, and they will be lost among all the irrelevant listings. Even then, only 100 postings

will be given to you because that is the maximum number of results that the search can report. This means that the postings you really want to see may never be reported because the search maxed out at 100.

To complicate matters, the results are not numbered, so the only way to tell if your search maxed out at 100 is to count the postings reported. And you must count very carefully. If you make a mistake when counting … if you missed a couple of postings and came up with 98 when there were really 100 … you will incorrectly think that all possible jobs were reported. Such a simple mistake can be tragic if it causes you to miss out on the perfect job in your hometown.

And do not forget the problem of misspelled or abbreviated postings. It is likely that some delivery jobs will be posted with the abbreviation “Delv” rather than the full word “Delivery”. If you search for “Delivery”, postings with “Delv” will not be reported.

City Name Text Search Issues

If you enter a city name in the text search function, all kinds of strange results will be reported. The below issues would occur, for instance, if you enter the city name “Jackson”.

• There are quite a number of cities named Jackson in various states across the

U.S., and jobs in all those locations would be reported.

• The district office for the state of MS is located in Jackson, MS, so all jobs

within that district … all jobs in the state of MS … would be reported.

• There are numerous Post Offices across the U.S. with addresses on streets

named Jackson, and jobs at all of these locations would be reported.

• The name of and contact info for the Postmaster or manager at the facility

where the job is located will usually be included in a posting. If the name of

that individual is Jackson, the job will be reported.

• If “Jackson” is included in a posting or is related to a posting in any way, that

job will be reported.

• All this leads us back to the maximum number of 100 results. With the search

function trying to report all postings associated with the term “Jackson”, it will

almost certainly max out and fail to give you all the results. State Name Text Search Issues

What happens if you enter a state name in the text search … like CO, for instance? The following would happen, by the way, whether you enter the full name of “Colorado” or the abbreviation “CO”. The search function views them as the same.

• Every job in the state of CO will be reported.

• Every job in the state of WY will be reported as well because the district office

in Denver, CO covers the states of CO and WY.

• Every job at a Post Office with an address on a street named Colorado

anywhere in the U.S. will be reported.

• If “CO” or “Colorado” is included in a posting or is related to a posting in any way, that job will be reported.

• And again, it is probable that not all of these jobs will actually be reported due

to the maximum of 100 results.

City & State Name Text Search Issues

What if you search a city name and a state name together, like “Jackson, MS”? All the problems described above for both city names and state names will occur simultaneously.

Text Search Summary

So if you cannot trust the text search, what do you do? Use the text search function only per the suggestions given at the end of this job search section.

Location Search

To use the location search, choose a state or U.S. territory by highlighting it. You can choose multiple locations by holding down the “Control” key while making selections. Locations are listed alphabetically, but only five choices are displayed at a time, so you must scroll up or down to see all of them. The very first selection, a blank field, is the default choice that indicates you want to see job postings for all locations because you did not select a specific location.

This function tries to work properly, but failure is assured in many cases due to the maximum of 100 results that can be reported. Larger and/or heavily populated states often have more than 100 jobs posted at any given time. And attempting to search multiple states at once virtually guarantees the results will max out. If this happens to you, what postings failed to report because the search maxed out? It is possible that the very job you really wanted in your own hometown was not displayed, so you will never know that it was even available?

Functional Area Search

Here you are “supposed” to be able to search for postings by functional area, which simply means by job category. Similar to the location search, you choose a functional area by highlighting it, and you can choose multiple functional areas by holding down the “Control” key while making selections. Only five choices are displayed at a time, so you must scroll up or down to see all of them. The first selection, a blank field, is the default choice that indicates you want to see job postings for all functional areas because you did not select a specific functional area. Listed below are the 25 functional area choices available for your search.

Administrative Support Communications Consumer Affairs Corporate / Government Affairs Delivery / Customer Service EngineeringEnterprise AnalysisFacilitiesFinance & AccountingGlobal BusinessHuman Resources / Labor Relations Information Technology / SecurityLaw Enforcement / Inspection Service

Legal / General CounselMarketingNetwork Operations & Support Plant OperationsPricingProperty/Asset Management Retail OperationsRetail Support SalesSupply Management / Procurement & PurchasingTrades and TechnicalTransportation / Logistics

The Functional Area search suffers from some of the same problems as the text search - human error and inconsistent postings. As mentioned earlier, there are obviously no guidelines or preformatted selections for job postings. Also as discussed earlier, postings are entered by local Postmasters … which means that there are over 30,000 individuals posting jobs … and none of them seem to post the same job in the same way or under the same functional area.

To put it simply, you just cannot trust the Functional Area search. Postings are often placed under the wrong categories. If you cannot fully trust the Functional Area search, what do you do? You use it per the following suggestions.

How to Trick the Job Search into Working To get the search function to really work for you, go with a filtered approach primarily using the Location and Functional Area searches. First choose the state where you want to work in the Location box and select the first default blank option in the Functional Area box. What you just asked for is all postings in that state regardless of which functional areas they fall under. Since jobs are so often posted under incorrect functional areas, you must search all functional areas to assure all opportunities are seen. Following are the likely results.

• The search function will attempt to report all job postings in that state limited

only by the quantity restriction of 100 results.

• If less than 100 postings are reported, you are literally looking at every current open job in that state. It may be time consuming, but you need to dig through

all the postings to find the ones that meet your criteria.

• If exactly 100 results are reported, you are not seeing all the postings. It maxed

out at 100 and could not report any more. If your search maxed out at 100, try the below plan.

The approach to use if you get exactly 100 results calls for a series of searches. For each of these searches, choose a state in the Location box. Then choose one Functional Area for each search. Start with “Administrative Support”, then “Communications”, then “Consumer Affairs”, and so on down the list until you have searched every functional area. Since jobs are often posted under incorrect functional areas, this is the only way that you can be sure that you truly saw each and every current posting in that state. If you want to look for postings in another state, repeat the process for the other state.

This leaves us with one possible issue. What if you do a search for all postings in your state under a particular functional area, say “Delivery / Customer Service”, and 100 postings are reported? Per previous discussions, this means that you are not seeing all the available jobs. It tried to report all postings in that state under “Delivery / Customer Service”, but the quantity limit stopped it cold at number 100. If this happens to you, how do you get to see the rest of the postings? While still having your state and the functional area selected, use the text search to look for postings in cities where you would like to work by entering the city names into the text search box. Do a separate search for each city while retaining your state and functional area selections.

We have already discovered that doing text searches for city names is problematic. But if you come up against the problem described in the above paragraph, you must try something. Since doing a text search for

a city name will report some irrelevant postings, you must go through the results carefully to identify the legitimate results.

Search Tips 1. After selecting your search criteria and clicking “Start”, jobs that meet your criteria are reported in a table on a new page. If there are no open jobs to report, the new page will say “This table does not contain any data”. If there are open jobs to report, they will be listed in the table with a maximum of 15 results displayed at any given time per the below illustration. Since there will almost certainly be more than 15 postings, you must scroll down to see all the results.

2. Always scroll all the way back up to the top of a job postings table before beginning another search. If you had scrolled half way down through the job listings on a table and left the table in that position when beginning another search, the new table from the new search will be given to you in that same exact condition … already scrolled half way down. You will have missed the first half of the jobs that meet your new search criteria but never know it. The listings are not numbered, so you do not know if you are looking at jobs 1 - 15 or 86 - 100. (Remember, only 15 job postings can be displayed at a time.) The only

way to assure you start with job #1 on a results table and really see all the available jobs is to scroll all the way back up to the top before beginning another search.

3. Search often and consistently if you do not find a preferred job at first. New postings can appear randomly at any time as job openings occur. Jobs are posted for a limited period of time. Some postings are up for a few weeks, but others are only there for a few days. And you can only find jobs and apply for them during the brief period of time they are posted. This means that you need to search at least twice a week to assure that you do not miss any opportunities. Look at it this way … If you did a search today and did not search again for two or three weeks, many postings may have come and gone during that period of time, and you never even saw them. The ideal job that you really wanted may have gone up and come down in between your searches, and you missed out entirely because you did not search often enough.

4. It is not unusual to see several postings for the same city that look almost identical. For instance, you may see seven City Carrier Assistant postings for Houston, TX. But, if you look closely, you will see that the posting number for each is different. What this means is that they have a total of seven openings in Houston for City Carrier Assistant jobs. These jobs may be at different Post Offices in Houston, or they may all be at the same Post Office. Each posting will identify its location. The bottom line is they intend to hire a total of seven people in Houston. If you are interested in a City Carrier Assistant job in Houston, apply for all of these jobs that you are willing to accept. The only difference would be the location, so the only objection you may have should be travel time to and from work if one or more of the locations are distant from you. By applying for most or all of these positions, you greatly multiply your chances for getting a job. If you do not get job #1, you are still in the running for job #2 … if you do not get job #2, you are still in the running for job #3 … and so on. There is no limit on the

number of applications you can submit or the number of jobs you can apply for.

5. When submitting an application, you are usually applying for one job at one location. If you want to apply for additional jobs, you must apply for each separately. Some postings, however, may be for multiple openings for one particular type job at one or more locations. This is most often true for Casual and Holiday job postings. (See Chapter 1 for info on Casual and Holiday jobs.) Such a posting will say something like this:

“Openings are for Post Offices within the 123 zip code area which includes but are not limited to the following Postal facilities:”

Following this statement will be a list of cities, perhaps only several cities or as many as a few dozen, that are located in the specified zip code area. After the list of cities will be a statement similar to this:

“Positions will be filled as vacancies occur.”

This obviously means that they have some job openings now, and they expect more to open up in the near future. So, they are collecting applications for use in filling the immediate jobs and to keep on file for filling the future jobs. If you do not get contacted about a job right away, bear in mind that there is always a possibility that they will call you for another job that opens up later.