This position is designed as a SES, Career-Reserved. USDA structures its SES positions into position levels. This is a position level two with a salary range of *$189,354 to $200,728 per year. Exceptions to the salary cap may be considered in certain circumstances. SES employees are also eligible to receive bonuses and performance-based awards. Visit http://www.opm.gov/ses/ for additional information and benefits for SES employees. *Subject to change in the event of an Executive Order.

Duties

The incumbent serves as Director of the Methodology Division, with responsibility for overall coordination of the agricultural statistics program carried out within the various organizational units in NASS. The duties and responsibilities of this position include, but are not limited to: Shares fully the responsibility for formulating and establishing within broad boundaries, long-range and current policies and programs to carry out the various and complex functions and activities of NASS. Shares responsibility for advising other high level USDA officials on broad, complex, and varied matters that affect or relate to programs and activities of the NASS in connection with new or modified basic agricultural policies and programs. Prepares, publish, and sign-off of highly market-sensitive Principal Federal Economic Indicator reports that provide important information to agricultural markets around the world. Responsible for ensuring the environment and controls necessary to protect these data from early release or inappropriate manipulation. Reviews sensitive geospatial information as part of the preparation of these key reports. Provides executive and managerial direction to the following program activities: Agricultural Estimating, Forecasting, and Census Programs; Agricultural Statistics Board (ASB); and Special Surveys.

Requirements

• Veterans Preference is not applicable in the Senior Executive Service.
• Initial appointments are required to serve a 1-year probationary period
• Narrative Statements for the ECQs must not exceed 10 pages
• Background Investigation and Top-Secret security clearance required.

Qualifications

YOU MUST UPLOAD YOUR RESPONSES TO THE EXECUTIVE CORE QUALIFICATIONS (ECQs) AND TECHNICAL QUALIFICATIONS (TQs). As a basic requirement for entry into the SES, applicants must provide evidence of progressively responsible executive leadership and supervisory experience that is indicative of senior executive level management capability and directly related to the skills and abilities outlined under Executive Core Qualifications and Technical Qualifications listed below. Typically, experience of this nature will have been gained at or above the GS-14/15 grade level in the federal service or its equivalent in the private sector. As such, your resume should demonstrate that you have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully fulfill responsibilities inherent in most SES positions such as: - Directing the work of an organizational unit; - Ensuring the success of one or more specific major programs or projects; - Monitoring progress toward strategic organizational goals, evaluating organizational performance and taking action to improve performance; and - Supervising the work of employees; and exercising important policy-making, policy determining, or other executive functions. Failure to meet the basic qualification requirement and address all Mandatory Technical and Executive Core Qualification factors in the order described below will result in your application being disqualified. EXECUTIVE CORE QUALIFICATIONS (ECQs): The ECQs were designed to assess executive experience and potential not technical expertise. They measure whether an individual has the broad executive skills needed to succeed in a variety of SES positions. All applicants must submit a written narrative to address the ECQs. Your narrative must address each ECQ separately and should contain at least two examples per ECQ describing your experiences and accomplishments/results. The narrative should be clear, concise, and emphasize your level of responsibilities, scope and complexity of programs managed, program accomplishments, policy Initiatives undertaken and the results of your actions. Applicants should not enter "Refer to Resume" to explain your answer. The narrative must not exceed 10 pages. NOTE: Current career SES members, former career SES members with reinstatement eligibility, and SES Candidate Development Program graduates who have been certified by OPM do NOT need to address the ECQs. 1. Leading Change: This core qualification involves the ability to bring about strategic change, both within and outside the organization, to meet organizational goals. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to establish an organizational vision and to implement it in a continuously changing environment. (Competencies: creativity and innovation, external awareness, flexibility, resilience, strategic thinking, vision) 2. Leading People: This core qualification involves the ability to lead people toward meeting the organizations vision, mission, and goals. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to provide an inclusive workplace that fosters the development of others, facilitates cooperation and teamwork, and supports constructive resolution of conflicts. (Competencies: conflict management, leveraging diversity, developing others, team building) 3. Results Driven: This core qualification involves the ability to meet organizational goals and customer expectations. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to make decisions that produce high quality results by applying technical knowledge, analyzing problems, and calculating risks. (Competencies: accountability, customer service, decisiveness, entrepreneurship, problem solving, technical credibility) 4. Business Acumen: This core qualification involves the ability to manage human, financial, and information resources strategically. (Competencies: financial management, human capital management, technology management) 5. Building Coalitions: This core qualification involves the ability to build coalitions internally and with other Federal agencies, State and local governments, nonprofit and private sector organizations, foreign governments, or international organizations to achieve common goals. (Competencies: partnering, political savvy, influencing/negotiating) Fundamental Competencies: These competencies are the foundation for success in each of the Executive Core Qualifications: Interpersonal Skills, Oral Communication, Continual Learning, Written Communication, Integrity/Honesty, Public Service Motivation. The Fundamental Competencies are crosscutting; and should be addressed over the course of each ECQ narratives. It is not necessary for you to address the Fundamental Competencies directly as long as the narrative, in its totality, shows mastery of these competencies on the whole. Applicants are strongly encouraged to follow the Challenge, Context, Action and Result (C-C-A-R) model outlined in the guide. Challenge - Describe a specific problem or goal. Context - Describe the individuals and groups you worked with, and/or the environment in which you worked, to address a particular challenge (e.g., clients, co-workers, members of Congress, shrinking budget, low morale). Action - Discuss the specific actions you took to address a challenge. Result - Give specific examples of measures/outcomes that had some impact on the organization. These accomplishments demonstrate the quality and effectiveness of your leadership skills. Additional information about the SES and Executive Core Qualifications can be found on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) SES Website. You are strongly encouraged to review OPMs Guide to SES Qualifications, GUIDE (opm.gov) for specific examples and guidance on writing effective ECQ narrative statements. MANDATORY TECHNICAL QUALIFICATIONS (TQ): All applicants must submit a written narrative response to the following TQ. The TQ narrative must not exceed two (2) pages. Please give examples and explain the complexity of the knowledge possessed and the sensitivity of the issued you handled. Describe your demonstrated experience and in-depth knowledge of agriculture, data collection, survey methods, and the establishment of estimates of agricultural commodities and other statistics important to American agriculture that support a broad range of data users including government policy makers, federal agencies, state, local and tribal governments, and non-federal data users.

Education

This position requires:

1. Degree: that included 15 semester hours in statistics (or in mathematics and statistics, provided at least 6 semester hours were in statistics), and 9 additional semester hours in one or more of the following: physical or biological sciences, medicine, education, or engineering; or in the social sciences including demography, history, economics, social welfare, geography, international relations, social or cultural anthropology, health sociology, political science, public administration, psychology, etc. Credit toward meeting statistical course requirements should be given for courses in which 50 percent of the course content appears to be statistical methods, e.g., courses that included studies in research methods in psychology or economics such as tests and measurements or business cycles, or courses in methods of processing mass statistical data such as tabulating methods or electronic data processing.

   or

2. Combination of education and experience -- courses as shown in A above, plus appropriate experience or additional education. The experience should have included a full range of professional statistical work such as (a) sampling, (b) collecting, computing, and analyzing statistical data, and (c) applying statistical techniques such as measurement of central tendency, dispersion, skewness, sampling error, simple and multiple correlation, analysis of variance, and tests of significance.

Applications must upload transcripts. Failure to upload transcripts may result in disqualification.

Contacts

• Address National Agricultural Statistics Service 1400 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 20250 US
• Name: Rhonda Pratt
• Phone: 202-260-8724
• Email: [email protected]