Should I chase up civil service interview outcome again

[User41]

So I had an interview on 6th June for a civil service job and was told at the interview they were aiming to make a decision within a week. Two weeks later I hadn’t heard anything so I chased and they said they were hoping to be in contact with the results end of last week/start of this week (23-26June).

I still haven’t heard though. Should I chase up a second time? Or given how much time has passed should I just assume I haven’t got it?

It’ll be 4 weeks this Tuesday coming. I’d just assumed that the Civil Service would let you know either way with it being Government. Especially as the recruitment process involved a lengthy application form, written test and interview

I work in Resourcing for a big CS dept. The process takes ages and at the moment the Government Recruitment Service is working with a very high level of requests so things are taking quite a longer than normal to be processed. You will definitely hear from them, whether successful or unsuccessful. Good luck!

Ah thank you that’s good to know. I don’t think it was best interview tbh but fingers crossed!

@coffeeschmoffee hi I finally heard back and didn’t get it sadly. I have been placed on the reserve list for 12 months though. I just wondered do you know if Departments actually use these lists in practice? They originally advertised for 3 posts but by the time of the interviews their funding got cut to only 1 post. So I suppose in a 12 month period they may possibly be able to get more funding.

And does everyone over a certain mark get placed on the list? I’m conscious I might not be at the top of any reserve list and it’s difficult to gauge where I might be.

For behaviours (graded 1 to 7) I received 3 sixes and 2 fives. And strength (1 to 4) I had 2 fours and 1 three. Don’t know if that’d be a low pass so to speak.

Sorry as you can prob tell by all the questions it’s a job I would have loved!

Hi@User41

Well done! Those are fantastic scores! For behaviours, 4 is the pass mark so anything above that is great. 7s are very rare! Strengths are scored out of 4 and they dont always have a pass mark (its up to the vacancy holder if they want to set a pass mark for strengths or not depending on how relevant they feel they are to their role). Everyone who scored 4s on the behaviours will be on the list unless the pass mark was raised (this is sometimes done if there are a lot of applicants and they need to whittle them down)

In my Dept we ALWAYS take people from reserve lists for other roles which are similar but not the same to the one advertised. This means we dont have to run as many campaigns. I got my current role from a list and i had to wait a while to be matched as they go down the list in merit order but there's no way of knowing where on it you are. I'd say your chance of getting an offer is high but it may take ages and it may well be for a similar role rather than identical one.

@coffeeschmoffee ah thank you so much for taking the time to get back to me and for such encouraging detailed info! It’s especially good to hear that you got your current role from a reserve list. I’ll have my fingers, toes (and maybe even eyes) crossed!