Civil Service Interview - No Behaviours?

[Whit3ChocolateDigestive]

I've just found out I was offered an interview for a EO Civil Service job I applied for! I'm over the moon but feeling extremely nervous - it will be my first in person interview in over a decade.

The advert says the interview will be assessed using Success Profiles and will assess strengths and experiences.

If anyone has any advice about CS interviews or just about nerves in interviews in general I would appreciate it! I'm trying to do some research now and there seems to be a lot of information about behaviour profiles but not as much about strength and experience components of Success Profiles? I'm also a lot more anxious now than I was when I was interviewing when I was much younger and I'm not sure how an in person interview will go. Does anyone know how many people there are likely to be interviewing me?

I had one that was just strength based.
Quicker shorter questions. You get partly marked on enthusiasm so be very very enthusiastic!

Is it for the Scottish Government? They use success profiles. Regardless similar approaches should work anywhere in the civil service: use STARR - situation, task, action, result, reflection. S and T should be minimal - they don’t want to know all the details as it’s not relevant. They want to know what you did and why you did it. Why did you take the approach you took? Did you consider several approaches and select one? If so, why that one? What would you do differently if you were to do it again? Always make it about what you did I.e. “I” not “we” - interviewers don’t care what your team did.

Best advice I was given for nerves was to take plenty breaks for drinks of water etc while I think about the question. You are allowed to ask for the question to be repeated and to take a little time to think of a response, so make sure to do that. Also try to speak slowly - as an interviewer it is hard to pick everything up when someone is speaking fast.

Marks are not awarded for enthusiasm by itself but a positive, calm demeanour will impress most interviewers.

Interview panels in my experience have always been three people - that’s the minimum required. There could be more people, but more than likely it will be three.

Last point - interviewers tend to be nervous too, and they want you to do well. Try to think of it as a supportive environment, not a hostile one.

Best of luck!

Experience questions tend to be "tell me how you..." type questions, both in the past tense (how you overcame a challenging situation type thing) but can also be hypothetical, "how would you approach X in this role" the latter really caught me off guard in an interview earlier this year, so have a think about what you think the role entails and what you'll bring to it. I think the STAR approach would still work with past tense experience questions, you might want a broad opener though "I have lots of experience in this because x, y, z, but a specific example is....".

Some tricks with strengths are they are short (less than 2 mins each), be enthusiastic but build it, and if asked an either/or question pick a side, don't sit on the fence. Have a look at the strengths word dictionary so you're throwing in some relevant terms.

In my department you technically only need 2 people for SEO and below and has to be 3 people for G7 and above. But it can often be 3 people because you have to have an "independent" and we usually like 2 people from the team there so you end up with 3 with the independent added.

Thank you for the replies, they're very helpful. Do the CS tend to ask why you want to work for them, or why you're interested in this particular role?

@Whit3ChocolateDigestive that is often used as an icebreaker, it's not marked but obviously gives an impression so it is worth thinking about. You might want to bring it up in strength based questions sparingly as well (ie I'm good at X Such as the role requires) so definitely worth thinking about generally.