Civil Service - is it ever possible to get feedback on a job application?

[wudpidgen]

I applied for a Grade 7 Civil Service position. My skills and experience exactly matched the requirements for the role, and I wrote the personal statement carefully to make this clear. I expected to get an interview but I didn't. My best guess explanation is that my current salary is already towards the top of their scale, but this reflects my age (I'm 51) and experience. I would like some personalised feedback, but they say they don't provide it, and there is no direct email address. Has anyone managed to get personalised feedback from the CS? How can I be sure I haven't been discriminated against because of my age? 😕

Do they normally tell external candidates their scores? I didn't get any information about any scores. Is it something I could get through a subject access request?

Long time ago but I have experience of civil service recruitment for a very popular specialism.
We'd have a lot of applicants and would have more getting through the sift than spaces to interview.
Those successful at sift would be carefully scored and ranked with the highest moving to the next stage.
It's perfectly reasonable that your application met the criteria only to be out ranked for an interview place.
I'd get a someone qualified to review your examples and then keep applying.

I think you're coming across a bit arrogant here if I'm honest. You may have matched against the criteria but CS recruitment is very different and it's almost coming across as though you thought you were guaranteed an interview.

You're now thinking about a subject access review, but why? What does your score (on its own) tell you other than that you didn't score high enough for an interview?

They are on the CS portal. When you go into the application it has a link for feedback where it gives scores. You do have to go and look for them, they aren't sent out with the main letter.
Advise from above is correct, its all blind and any personal information is removed for the initial sift. I've never seen the request for salary in my department but each CS department runs their recruitment slightly differently.

No i didnt. You said " if all the criteria are met by large number of applicants and they have to sift based on unlisted criteria it inevitably raises questions." And I'm saying, it wont be unlisted criteria. It will all have been explained in the pack. As someone else has also explained to you!

But im stepping away from this thread because you are arguing with people who have actual experience of recruiting in the CS and are trying to help you. Wish i hadn't bothered because you certainly aren't coming across as someone i would want in my team.

Due to the number of applicants it's just not possible to provide feedback. Without exaggerating there may have been 100 other people who also met all the criteria. The last post my dept advertised had approx 700 applicants.

Sorry, the point of saying this is there was probably nothing you did wrong. It's a numbers game

Woah 700! I wonder why it is, we used to struggle a bit for applicants (I'm not CS anymore though so going back a few years) as the pay wasn't competitive. I guess perhaps the flexibility, stability and the working from home continuing in most departments at least a few days a week has made it more desirable?

What department was it? Did you apply via CSJ site? If so, check if there is a green feedback button for your application scores.

And yes if there is no button try a SAR, it should be in scope (May just be scores, depends what records are kept on short listing).

You could have been an ideal applicant but if there were 20 ideal applicants you can't guarantee an interview. Also, the CV section should have had instructions telling you to remove institution names and dates from your CV.

OP it would really help if you could share what the advert says you were being assessed on in the sift eg behaviours, experience and/or technical skills.

I work in a role that attracts a market supplement and I also sometimes hire people. We want to shortlist people! But some candidates make this difficult. Sometimes this is due to a lack of specific examples as I mentioned but you’ve said you included those. Another issue is people not explaining how and why their experience translates into the role they are applying for.

I’m guessing you may be applying for a DDaT role. These are hard to hire for! If you didn’t get an interview then either your experience wasn’t as close a match as you think, or your application didn’t explain it well enough.

And we don’t sift on unlisted criteria. That’s not a thing that happens. We do raise the pass mark if a lot of people score highly (other than for people applying under the guaranteed interview scheme).

Log in to the civil service site. Go to applications. Go to unsuccessful applications. Click on latest update. There will be a big Green feedback button, which will tell you what you scored. It’s unusual for them to not ask for behaviour statements, but it does happen. You will have been scored, potentially just on your personal statement. You may not have written the statement in the way that gets good marks for the civil service. Keep applying, read loads on how to write CS applications. Your scores will go up and you will get interviews.

the scorer probably didn’t even see the part of your application that might make your age apparent, they just focus on scoring the statements.

If the scoring is the same as my department then you would get a score from 1-7 for each criteria that they are sifting against. You could score 4 for each and essentially pass the minimum requirement but if everyone else has higher scores then you may still not get an interview.

We don’t ask for behaviour statements for roles on my team (a digital service team) which are things like software developer and agile delivery manager. We hire based on experience and technical skills, and we ask for a personal statement and CV. The mention of a market supplement suggests this might be a similar kind of role.

The score is often meaningless at sift. At interview it’s more useful because you will have a score of normally 2-7 for each question and 4 or 5 is a pass.

At sift you will just see a score such as 14 or 9 with no written feedback and no clue what components made up that score . It might vary be dept but when I’ve asked before they’ve told me it’s policy not to give feedback unless you made it to interview

@Tarantullah Yes I think it's a lot to do with that. Those are the main reasons I moved to CS in the first place because I knew I wanted that in place before I had children.

Your complaint isn’t making a lot of sense to me. The vast majority of criteria are not yes/no, they’re on a scale. So one might be “degree in xyz”, but most will be “extensive experience in…”, “minimum 5 years in…”. The latter two - you might have them but other people may have more experience, longer experience, give better examples or more specifically connected ones, and thus though you meet the minimum you don’t end up with the interview. That doesn’t mean they’ve used “unlisted criteria”.

The civil service is about an unconcerned about age and salary as it’s possible for an employer to be, so while it’s not impossible I really wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.

Yes, it's that kind of role, so the skills and experience required were clear and very familiar to me. I know the skills are in demand (my own employer is struggling to recruit) but since starting this thread I've persuaded myself that the market supplement may have attracted a lot of internal applicants as well as external applicants, so that makes me feel a bit better about it.

Did you go on the portal and check for feedback op?
You mention that you included your year of graduation, I thought they asked as standard that year and institute of graduation were not included.....could be that you got screened out for not following the instructions.

The portal doesn't have any feedback - I checked.

I also followed the instructions very carefully - there was no instruction to leave dates out.

As zombiecupcakes said, there seem to be different recruitment processes for different job functions. Mine was for a senior technical role in a digital function, so the instructions were to demonstrate skills and experience in line with the documents provided. It wasn't a behavioural assessment.

This isn’t a reason to screen someone out.

We score people based on the criteria listed in the advert. You don’t get screened out for spurious reasons. That’s not a thing. It starts and ends with how you score against the criteria.

OP, it could well be that there were stronger applicants. But if you’re applying again, do make sure you’re explaining how your experience translates and not just listing things you did.

Hi I've just received a 2 as a score and obviously got rejected by HM Treasure for a role in policy Anti Money Laundering. Any ideas please on how to improve? I answered behaviours (3 questions) I think quite well. I didn't though put Education in my CV unfortunately. Could this be a negative factor?