Federal public service
Payscale
One applies to a specific job, for instance AS-02, which will have a five step payscale published on the Treasury Website, published under appendix 1.
For the given job type, the payscale will come in 4 steps; the most one can make is the highest step.
Moving up to the next level (in this case, AS-03) requires applying for a different job with more responsibilities. Level 04-05 tends to be for people with graduate degrees or equivalent experience.
However each ministry seems to be slightly different. As an example with some classifications like Administrative Services (AS) it only goes up to like a 6, then one would apply for EX after to get an executive assistant job.
There is also CR which seems to be administrative in others ministries but we haven’t learned enough to go much further into understanding the system or where to find the info.
Level 04 tends to be Team Lead, 05 the coordinator who the leads would report to but their boss has a different classification. Despite PM going up higher, the big boss has financial budgeting of a very large amount. But smaller departments or projects could have a totally different setup.
There are over 150 or 200 classifications that include nurses, mechanics, lab scientists, policy advisors and they’re all different
Pay raise
The salary goes up by about $5,000 per level. But within each level there are multiple steps. After a year of work you automatically get a pay raise of around $3,000, up to 4 years I think. At the 5th year, only more vacation time.
Advantages
Although the municipal government pays better overall, the Federal government offers more flexibility in terms of where one can work within Canada, and more opportunities to work abroad as well.
Many work environments in city governments are notoriously toxic as well.
The federal government has more advantageous pay for professionals early in their career. A recent graduate for instance can make ~72,000$. However, as mentioned above, there are only four pay raises of a few thousands dollars. The provincial government starts lower but ends higher, rewarding longevity in the position.
Job types
Although Quebec and the city of Montreal have larger job categories (e.g. professional, technician), this doesn’t seem to be the case for the federal government.
Another job type to note is “casual,” “term,” and “indeterminate.” Casual means a contract of less than 90 days. A term appointment or contract is temporary but longer, whereas an indeterminate contract is a permanent position (i.e. hard to fire). The Quebec government refers to these as occasionnel (term) and permanent (avec droit de rappel).
Mobility
Another major advantage of the federal government is mobility. Not only is mobility possible within this vast public service, it is even encouraged, in order to gain workers with broad experience. Possibilities range from trying another department for a year, accepting a new position only to move back to one’s old department.
Education
The authors have heard of federal public servants being paid to study full time.
Hiring delays
One factor to consider is hiring delays. The group writing this knows several people who’ve encountered delays of longer than a year before being hired by the federal government, not to mention jobs being offered and then retracted, paperwork (security clearance, confidentiality agreements, etc). Expect the unexpected.
Using delays to one’s advantage
Because hiring delays are so frequent in the federal public service, managers will hire from pools much more readily than from raw external candidates. From which emerges the following principle: apply to any job for which one is qualified, even if one isn’t interested. Being added to the pool is a quick ticket to being hired, because managers can skip many of the hiring delays and effort. One stays in a pool for three years.
Essays
Being hired for the federal public service often involves answering a number of essay questions regarding one’s experience. One piece of advice is to write these essays in a separate document, have them checked by friends, before submitting. They are too involved to write in the webpage. When answering these questions, use the STAR method, being sure to incorporate examples that have the Specific situation, Task, Action, and Result.