Civil Service Interview help with competencies

[hollytom]

Can anyone help with competency examples? I have applied for an EO position in the Civil Service in the Department of Work and Pensions.
If I’m being honest I didn’t put a massive amount of time into my competency examples in my application, I just thought I would have a go and see what happened.
I have now been invited to interview and I really want to do my best. I only scored 4s on the sift so I know I need to do better. I have never applied for a competency based job before so this is all new. I have been researching questions and I am aware of the STAR format for answering questions but I am still unsure if I am on the right track with my examples.
There are 4 competencies one of them is
Making effective decisions- my example is from when I worked in HR I had to review ill health retirement awards, I had to get advice from various parties such as doctors, consult with staff reps and then prepare a detailed report with a recommendation on decision to reduce or maintain an existing award which could be controversial. This would then go to the board to decide based on my recommendation.
Am I on the right track here? Any advice would be great.

the STAR technique will see you right! I'm sure you will have covered this in your research but key things to remember:

The Situation + Task are brief- just enough information that they can follow what happened, (they won't really care about the specifics)

Actions=75% + of your answer- what you did, why you did it that way

Result = doesn't have to be long but is vital. What happened as a result of your actions? what wouldn't have happened if you weren't there?

Your example seems good but focus on how you made the decision, what were the key elements you want to emphasise?

The Action and Result section might look like this:

1. You made sure you had all the facts, from relevant parties (you might add something about how you knew you had all the facts and you'd asked everyone you needed to, were there occasions you had to get info from different people than usual? e.g. Speech therapy? You're demonstrating that you analysed each case individually, not just followed a pattern)

1. You analysed them. How? e.g.You thought about what were the most important facts in this case and why these were priorities based on xxxx; maybe how the ill health issue related to the work environment? I can't really elaborate because I know nothing about your old job but hopefully you can be more specific here!

1. You communicated the decision clearly, giving all the relevant facts so that people understood the reasons this decision was the right one (esp as it could be controversial- this is a great point to put in!)

The result was... The key thing here is how did you know it was effective?
e.g. the people taking recommendations to the board felt confident in arguing the case; x% of your recommendations were enacted/accepted; people felt more able to understand why a decision had been made

Does that help?

Thanks to does help.
Yes I will give more detail, Such as I took advice from the medical officer, staff rep and member of staff. Taking all facts into account I came to a decision that there had been an improvement in the employees health and I therefore prepared a report detailing all of the information.
It was controversial in that the former employee had been awarded a high amount in ill health as they were suffering from work related PTSD. However this had improved.
The result was the case went forward and my recommendation was agreed. It was difficult because it was a work related illness that had caused the retirement and there was a significant reduction in pension.
The ex employee was unhappy as was their rep. I had to deal with these issues personally.
Do you think if I can give enough detail this will gain higher marks than a 4?