Civil service behaviours - job application

[backaftera2yearbreak]

Evening all,

im usually a pretty competent human. I’m trying to apply for what I think would be an EO grade in the civil service (I’m B3 in Scottish government) and these questions about behaviours are pushing me over the edge!

Im struggling with working together and delivering at pace. It’s a policy role, and I don’t work in policy but have been told my previous experience will help me.

any advice/tips/websites to help would be grateful received

You need to remember how competitive CS roles are, most roles I go out with get 100+ applicants (especially when we have offices across the country the post can be pinned to) so the fact it can be so hard to get past the sift is often purely down to numbers. CS applications are just competencies, personal statement, CV and interview. It takes a lot more effort than many other jobs, but the tasks themselves aren’t rocket science if you’re willing to put the time in.

I think that's what gets to me. I graduated 30 years ago so have a lot of experience in the workplace, but the way they recruit seems so rigid and yet so shallow.

But we won't agree on this. I'm about to start a different public sector role and that was a much better process.

100+ applicants really isn't unusual.

I'd be ideal for AO and EO CS roles. But I can't be fucked with the recruitment process. It's absolutely ridiculous. I would have done it when younger and more naiive. But I see it for what it is now. It's an excuse to pay too many HR people too much money.

Not very helpful, I know, OP. Good luck with it all. Hope your role is more useful than the HR ones.

The only thing more annoying seems to be NHS recruitment. What a load of waffly shite on their job adverts.

Chat gpt it

There are entire industries around getting into a lot of careers, I don't think CS is unique in that or in the nonsense in application process.

NHS has a similar industry around it, and a similar painful application process - though I find education tends to be far worse when it comes to nonsense in interviews. There are some strange interview activities I've seen there, which may be where there are so many resources out there for preparing for them.

It may not be (and probably an argument for a simpler process as it’s also a heck of a lot of work for us on the other side I assure you!!) I’m merely saying it’s not difficult, it’s time consuming absolutely, but that’s different to difficult. If you’re not succeeding it’s not necessarily that you’re not hitting the mark, but that it’s often a numbers game. That is something they agree with a lot on the Reddit I assume you’re referring to.

I love ChatGPT and it certainly has its uses in applying for jobs, but a ChatGPT’d behaviour based application that hasn’t been personalised sticks out like a sore thumb most of the time.

Having run recruitment boards in the civil service - they have almost fuck all HR support. Dozens of random staff are dragged in to sift and interview it's part of the reason results are so random. And you get some very woeful people I posts they didn't really want

In my experience all HR do is sift out people who don’t meet the essential experience or nationality requirements; it’s down to the hiring manager to lead the sift and interviews etc, we even have to find our other panel members which isn’t easy at G7+ when you need 3 members with one being independent (and inclusive).

I’m merely saying it’s not difficult, it’s time consuming absolutely, but that’s different to difficult. If you’re not succeeding it’s not necessarily that you’re not hitting the mark, but that it’s often a numbers game.

I feel like we are slightly talking at cross purposes. I've just secured a public sector job, with a large element of writing, that had over 100 applicants. That's not the problem.

The problem is that with 30 years of work experience in similar roles I still have no idea how condensing this down to the 'tell us about a time that you ...' type of application or interview is effective. And making people write that in such a specific way seems almost discriminatory. You are surely losing great candidates this way. When I was involved in recruiting and interviewing I'd have hated to have to choose the candidates that scripted and rehearsed to follow a formula.

Anyway - that's my two penneth.

I don’t know what to say because I don’t know what you’re finding difficult about it. When I’ve recruited I’ve had plenty of good applicants, interviewees and ultimately employees. I’ve managed lots of duff people that I’ve inherited and needed to performance manage, but I’ve not employed one person I wouldn’t employ again. I’m not seeing the issue being described of not getting good candidates. As with any system, it’s how you apply it. I’m quite a harsh scorer, I know what I’m looking for and the success profile process does enable me to get that (just not very quickly!)

I'll try one last time. As someone who has recruited and interviewed in the past, I don't really see the value in this 'examples/competencies/behaviours' method of recruitment. It filters out those who aren't the best writers but might have the best skills. Do we really need those who can do a great STAR answer or those who have the best technical skills?

It's a system that we all pay towards, after all, so people 'outside' it commenting on what seems like a complicated, expensive closed shop isn't unreasonable.

I'm done now.

That’s fine, that’s not unique to the civil service was my initial point. I’ve come across competencies and STAR requirements inside and outside the public sector.

I mostly hire senior staff these days and I admit the CV is the most valuable part of the process, when it’s more junior staff though when everyone has more limited experience I do think competencies are valuable.

AI can be really useful for this- write down the example you think demonstrates working together and ask it to tailor it more for EO Working Together and it will pick out the most relevant bits. Then you can tweak it to keep it personal.

The rules allow for that as long as you aren't allowing AI to run riot making up examples that you didn't actually do.

Interesting that pp describes this style
of recruitment as “discriminatory”. It’s designed to reduce the risk of discrimination by ensuring those making hiring decisions do so in a standardised way. I think inevitably that means the process becomes slightly formalistic but it’s the same for everyone and the process and hiring criteria are public. So much better than senior CS recruitment decades ago, when it was all done on a nod and a wink and completely inaccessible to anyone outside a very narrow social class.

My main issue with CS recruitment is the time it takes. Our applicants will often be applying for private sector legal roles alongside their CS application, and they’ll have a private sector job offer in the bag before we’ve even done the first sift. It makes us completely uncompetitive and limits the pool to those who would only consider a public sector role.

If recruiters want it to be discrimatory they can make it discriminatory. Internally it's still possible to predict which person will be successful in the process and yet unable to do the role.
I know people who are exceptional in their role but have struggled to get promoted because they crumble in the interview.
As someone who sits on panels Ive also scored some women really quite highly and had to argue the point with male colleagues who've scored them very low - and then I consider their team of mediocre men and I realise they just can't see that the middle aged woman has given a perfect answer.