Government jobs selection criteria

[Imtootired]

I’ve worked for a long time in retail and customer service, my longest and most recent job in a supermarket. I am looking for a government job for better pay and conditions. I am applying for public facing roles as that is what I have experience in although I also have a degree in history. I have applied for quite a few and had no follow up interest. I’m in Australia and they make it very difficult with selection criteria. I got some feedback that I was saying that I can do things but not giving good examples. I’m just wondering what a good example would be for great customer service? I was great with the customers all the time and got great feedback from them but for very boring small things and nothing stands out to use as an example. Also for prioritising tasks. I’m not sure what a good answer would be? It’s so frustrating when I know I have customer service skills but they seem to want you to speak in HR code to tell them about it

Your examples need to say what you did. UK Civil Service uses the STAR model.
S - situation, one or two sentences setting out the high level issue.
T - task, what you needed to do
A - action, this is the bulk of the example. Be specific and set out what you did.
R - result, again one or two sentences stating the outcome.

Don’t limit yourself to customer facing roles. There can be internal roles that supply a service to other employees/colleagues e.g IT, HR, Finance etc.

Thanks for the reply. I will try to work using STAR as I think that’s exactly the kind of thing they want here in Aus, too. I’m just not sure if helping an elderly customer after a fall or recommending products customers need would be good. I have so much customer experience but it’s all so boring and it’s hard to get across the skills I used. I am mostly going for customer facing positions as they are more entry level and don’t need experience in professional roles but I will keep my eyes out for others as well.

STAR is definitely the way to go. I think helping an elderly customer is a great example. It does not need to be anything that would crop up in their role, just an example to prove you have those skills. I imagine it is very like the UK system and they will be ticking off each criteria that you demonstrate in your application. And if there are a lot of applicants they will only interview those that tick all of the criteria.