Person preparing for the NYC Sanitation Exam

5 Steps To Landing an NYC Federal Job

Are you applying for the upcoming NYC Sanitation Exam? Or perhaps you want to take the FDNY exam and join the New York’s Bravest. The recruitment process for most federal departments is pretty much the same. Here’s your complete step-by-step guide to successfully landing a federal job.

Step 1: Find Out If You’re Eligible

Before applying, you need to ensure you’re eligible for the exam and the position. It’s pretty confusing, but the requirements to take the entrance exam aren’t the same as the requirements to land a position in a federal department.

For the Suffolk Police Exam, you can be at least 19 years old to appear. You must also be younger than 35 at the exam date. For the NYC Firefighter Exam, you must be at least 17 and half years old on the exam day. You must also be younger than 29. The FDNY makes an exception to this for people on the Firefighter Exam Military List. You need to be younger than 35 in this case.

For the NYC Sanitation Exam, you need to be at least 17 and a half years old when the application period ends. So, to be eligible for the upcoming DCAS Sanitation Exam 2060, you have to have turned 17 years and six months old by June 28th.

These are the requirements to take the exam. To get appointed, you need to be at least 21 years of age. You won’t be called for a position before you reach that age. Other requirements at the time of recruitment for your federal department may include:

  • A high school diploma (or equivalent)
  • A driver’s license from the state of New York
  • US citizenship
  • Residence in NYC or Nassau County

Step 2: Apply For An Entrance Exam

Before every DCAS exam, there’s a filing period during which you can apply for the exam. Exams for most departments are held after every four to six years. These filing periods are short and usually don’t last more than a month. This ensures that only the most interested candidates apply for the exam while less serious ones get immediately eliminated.

The filing period for the DCAS Sanitation Exam 2060 began on June 8th and will end on June 28th, 2022. Keep an eye out for the filing period of your department, so you don’t miss this small window of opportunity.

Step 3: Prepare And Take the Entrance Exam

This is the most important step, the one that has the most say in whether you get recruited. The DCAS arranges the entrance exam for all federal departments. These computer-based tests consist of multiple-choice questions that must be attempted in a given time.

The DCAS exams never ask you anything technical. You don’t need to know the job details you’re applying for to succeed in the exam. This exam only tests your inner mental abilities such as reasoning, arithmetics, observation, and spatial orientation.

You don’t have to read any preparation books for these exams. The only way to train these abilities is by working on each of these skills with your instructor in preparation classes.

Step 4: Be Ready For An Interview

Some departments will invite you for an interview right after your written exam. Other departments might wait to interview you when you move to the next stage of the recruitment process. In any case, you have to prepare yourself for the interview.

The interview is taken to study your character and evaluate your competency for the role you’re applying for. However, the one thing these interviews always look for is your motivation. The interviewer may or may not ask you directly why you want to join the department, but they will be looking for your motive.

The easiest way to improve yourself as a candidate is to figure out what attracts you to that particular federal job. Saying you want to join the NYPD because of job satisfaction isn’t a wrong answer. However, wanting to become a police officer to lower the crime rate and improve life in the city is a far more noble motive.

A parked NYPD vehicleStep 5: Proceed to the Recruitment

After receiving a passing grade in the DCAS exam, federal departments create a list of all the candidates who passed. Called the hiring list, this list ranks all the candidates in terms of their grades. Whenever a position opens up in the department, they call a candidate starting from the top of the list. When it’s your turn, you’ll be invited to proceed to the next stage of recruitment: the physical exam.

The difficulty of the physical exam depends on your department. If you’re joining the FDNY, you better be prepared to exceed all your limits. For the physical NYC Sanitation Exam, regular aerobic exercise will suffice.

The physical is followed by a medical exam. This exam looks for degenerative diseases and long-term conditions that may limit your ability to do the job in the future. The medical exam for the FDNY is particularly thorough. Lastly, they conduct drug tests and alcohol screening. If you pass everything, you can join the department and begin your training.

And there you have it. There are many other nooks and crannies of the recruitment processes of federal departments in NYC that only professionals can guide you with. The entrance exam may look easy on paper, but that’s where most candidates fail. Here’s the solution:

Take Preparation Classes From Industry Experts

At Civil Service Success, we have been helping candidates successfully land federal jobs for more than forty-five years. We host preparation classes taught by professionals who have led successful careers in federal departments, including the FDNY and the NYPD. We prepare candidates for the FDNY Exam, Nassau Police Exam, NYC Sanitation Exam, and various other civil service exams in NYC.

Need help acing every step of the recruitment process? Register for classes now!

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