Interview to work at Civil services for the Serious frauds office, any tips?

[NishaaS123]

Hi guys, my toddler will start nursery in September this year so I am looking to go back into work. The SFO has a hybrid policy which would he really helpful with a 3 year old. Any tips on any questions they would ask and how I could prepare? Thanks in advance!

Work on your examples based on the Success Profiles, make sure you have more than than one example for the behaviours they are testing you on, use the STAR answer model concentrating on the action & result bit!

And good luck!

I went to an interview for a similar organisation. It was the oddest. They said we'll ask you three questions. They literally meant that. So my advice would be think of ways to provide broad but relevant responses. Or you can be like me and anticipate 'tell us a bit about yourself/what do you think you would bring to them team' type stuff that was never going to come. Apparently those questions are too open and can lead to scores impacted by unconscious bias.

I’m a Recruitment manager in the Civil Service.

Firstly, I’d caveat the comment above saying have more than one example for each competency with ‘but only use one of them’. Have back-up examples in case one fits the question better than the other, but you’re far off doing one example fully than two examples less well.

For the job you’re applying for there will be a number of competencies being assessed. It will tell you in the advert which these are, and you will be asked one question on each. There may be some probing question following-up on your answer if you haven’t covered everything.

Use ‘I’ not ‘we’ in all your examples.

Most Civil Service organisations have very flexible working policies, so don’t limit yourself to SFO unless that’s a particular area of interest to you

Use the STAR structure for your answers- it helps you cover everything. And align it to the success profiles, make it as detailed and relevant as you can. Lots of 'I', really show your strengths.

As above, lots of CS has flexibility and hybrid working, explore other vacancies too.

Thank you so much for the replies guys! I have about 4 examples for each behaviour I am being assessed against lol, hopefully that should be enough, I just happen to apply for SFO and get an interview I have applied for other organisations within the CS aswell, I used to work for them before I had my child I was with MOJ and that interview was very easy but I wanted to be prepared for this one and not take it easy lol. 😅 hoping for the best