The Federal Government is the largest employer in the United States, employing over 2.1 million people in over 430 sub-agencies, bureaus, independent agencies, commissions, boards, committees, and quasi-official agencies. Below are the seals of the 15 Executive Departments under the Federal Government. There are careers in the Federal Government that span across industries from the arts, to science and healthcare, to social work and everything in between, but how do you know where to start?!

A good place to start is taking this Quiz to “Find the right federal agency for you”. The quiz takes less than 5 minutes, and asks questions about the sector or industry you’re interested in, (mine was Education), the level of education you have, if you prefer to work at a large institution, etc. etc. Then, the quiz will match you with a sample of federal agencies. The results share an overview of each agency, top locations where they are hiring and workplace satisfaction scores. The agency that was most interesting to me was The Department of Veteran’s Affairs, which makes complete sense and something I had never considered before! Pretty cool!

This quiz is part of the work of The Partnership for Public Service , which is a non-profit organization that was founded to modernize the Federal recruiting process. Their website, GoGovernment.org, has some amazing tools and “how-tos” on finding and securing federal employment, and most importantly, how to navigate USAJobs, where the majority of Federal jobs are posted.