On several forums, I see the topic of being referred is a hot one. Most people experience one of three scenarios:
1.They don’t get referred.
2.They get referred but don’t hear anything for awhile.
3.Their status never updates past received.
Here is the explanation of common situations for each of these to help ease some anxiety. Before I go into the three scenarios, I should explain what being referred actually means. Being referred simply means that your application was forwarded to the hiring manager for review and possible interview.
The first scenario, not being referred, could be for a few different reasons. The first, and most common, reason is because of Veterans preference. When an announcement is open to “All US Citizens” or “The Public” then Veteran’s preference applies. This means all qualified Veterans must be referred ahead of non-Veterans. There is one exception, which is the Direct Hire Authority, which is explained in the video below.
Another reason someone might be found qualified but not referred is because they did not rank high enough to be in the highly qualified category. The ranking comes from the score you receive when you answer the rating questions in the assessment or online questionnaire. The rating questions are the ones that have you rank yourself from having no experience to being an expert in a particular situation.
What many applicants do is answer they are an expert on every question, whether they really are or not. I would recommend anyone do this also, but with an additional step. Take the duties from the question and have it reflected in your resume. When you answer you are an expert, you will need to have the experience in your resume to support your claim. Having the experience in your resume will keep the human resources specialist from lowering your score.
An applicant’s score is adjusted down if the experience is not found in their resume to support their answers to the rating questions. I can honestly say I have never seen or heard of a score being adjusted higher though. So, it is better to score yourself high and let human resources decide if you are an expert or not.
A third reason to be qualified but not referred is based on the area of consideration. If an announcement is open to several hiring paths chances are one of those hiring paths will be to current employees of the facility with the vacancy. Based on the Union Master Agreement, current facility employees should be referred before other candidates. If the hiring manager wants to request certificates for other hiring paths they can at any time. It is not like Veteran’s preference when they have to select a Veteran, or in this case a facility employee. The requirement is just that facility employees get first consideration.
Now let’s say you were referred, and you are wondering what is next. After being referred the hiring manager will review all the qualified candidates that were referred and decide who they want to interview. If you’ve been referred the video below will help you prepare for the interview.
To determine who will be interviewed the hiring manager will often score the applicants based on criteria they draw up. This is known as best qualified criteria. The hiring manager will create a list of desirable qualifications that are in excess of the minimum qualifications and give the candidates a score based on the criteria they meet. The criteria could be anything, such as: length of experience, experience with a specific program or process, advanced degree, license, etc.
The scoring could be a simple 1 for yes and 0 for no. When the scoring is done the applicants will be ranked. Then the hiring manager will look for the natural break in the scoring and everyone above the natural break will be interviewed. The natural break will look something like the following example. If the total score is out of 20 and the scores go as follows: 20, 20, 20, 19, 17, 14, 13, 13, etc. The natural break is between 14 and 17. Everyone with a 17 or higher will be interviewed. The natural break is the first largest gap in the scores.
This process takes time to sort out so it is not uncommon for applicants who are going to be interviewed to hear nothing for 2 or more weeks. Then out of the blue they will be called for an interview. The entire interview process is supposed to be completed in 2 weeks or less but this rarely happens. So, if it has only been 2 weeks since you received your referral notice, there is nothing to worry about. It could be that best qualified scoring is still being completed.
If your timeline is getting out to 4 or more weeks, there is a good possibility that you were not selected for an interview. Unfortunately, after the referral notice the next notice you receive is the disposition. The disposition is often really delayed or forgotten all together.
The extreme delay on sending the disposition notice explains why you status never updates. Also explained in the article mentioned above is that the status on USAjobs is updated based on the notifications sent by human resources. If HR does not send out a particular touchpoint notice, then the status will be stuck for what seems like forever. It can take months sometimes before the disposition notice is sent out.
Even with other notices like the referral it can seem to take forever. Sometime the HR specialist will get busy and forget to send the notices after they’ve reviewed all the candidates. It happens all the time where a candidate will be called for an interview without ever receiving their notice of results or referral notifications.
Being referred can be one of the most stressful steps in the process. Its the point where you know you were found qualified and sent for interview and now you are having to wait. If at any time you need to check the status of your application to find out what is going on behind the scenes, call the HR contact at the bottom of the announcement.
If you are having trouble being found eligible and referred it could be your resume. Your resume needs to be tailored to each job you apply to. For details on how to tailor your resume to any job watch the video below.
8 Responses
Hello, do you happen to know how being referred and what happens next can be different for non-competitive appointment eligibles? Thank you.
So being referred just means sent to the hiring manager for consideration. If it’s for an announcement you will be with a group and they may not interview everyone. If you are referred non-competitively it can be outside of an announcement and the hiring manager can decide to interview or not with no justification needed.
What if you got interviewed and just now got a tentatively eligible and referred to hiring manager? This was an Interview from September 2023. Is now January 2024.
This just means HR was late sending out notices. You should have received your notice of results and referral before being interviewed.
Is there anything an applicant should/can do once they have been referred? I.e. send an email with thanks for consideration, etc.
There really isn’t. Being referred just means you were on the list of candidates for possible interview. The hiring manager will work on scheduling interviews. After the interview you can send the thank you email though if you like.
Does being referred guarantee an interview or do Hiring Managers go through their own process of selecting candidates to be interviewed from the referred stack?
Referred doesn’t guarantee an interview. Sometimes there are hundreds of people referred so the hiring manager does additional screening to shorten the list.