I’ve sat on over 100 panel interviews for the state and one thing I will tell you is that interview panels have no real way to fact check what you tell us. If one of the questions is “Tell us about a time” and you say you can’t think of one, we can’t rate you on the factors that question was designed to evaluate (and they are all tied to a specific factor like technology skills, problem solving, customer service, interpersonal skills, etc).

If you can’t think of something, make it up. Make up a simple and believable story that shows you at least understand the theory of what we’re asking for. Tell us how you used technology to solve a problem by identifying a duplicated process that could be eliminated by a shared excel spreadsheet. Or how you dealt with a difficult customer and used your interpersonal skills to empathize and under their actual deeper problem and redirected the conversation to what you COULD do to help them and they left satisfied with the interaction.

And similar to what another commenter said, take advantage of the pension plan. Don’t just do the 401k. Also jump onto the supplemental 457b deferred compensation plan. Start small, maybe $20 each pay. And then every time you get a raise, increase the amount by at least 25% of what your raise was. In no time at all, you’ll be saving an additional several thousand a year for retirement. You’ll never miss it if you never see it, and it really adds up. I wish I was more aggressive with adding to mine when I first started.