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[quote=Anonymous]Yes, agencies are still hiring.

But, for a number of reasons, you may not have a great chance of landing any particular listing:

1.  There are tons of applicants (my agency received 4,000 applications for its two entry level slots);

2.  Government agencies are required to post job listings even for jobs where they have a dream candidate in mind. So some postings border on fake. Agencies are not always great about making this obvious from the posting. For example, I saw a recent DOJ listing that was essentially earmarked for a particular Supreme Court clerk that read "Federal clerkship helpful." They could have been a lot less subtle in that listing to waste fewer people's time.

3.  Agencies also put up the listing because they badly need someone but don't yet have funding approval. So some listings never get filled. Or they open and close months before they are filled.

4.  A corollary to #3 is that sometimes you can apply for a job months or years before you get an interview, so its possible you're still under consideration for some of the jobs you haven't been interviewed for.

All of these factors are annoying and mean you can apply for a number of jobs without any success. But the jobs do exist and the only way to get them is to submit a (lengthy) application.[/quote]

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