I’ve recently been offered a job with the CS so I’ve got current experience. At first, I struggled to get my head around it, but the more I did it the more it clicked. I’ve had multiple progressions to the next stage and multiple interviews now (most still outstanding). My advice is to, first of all, focus on the essential criteria in the job description, then the desirable. List out the ones you have direct experience of that you can speak to. Then take note of the behaviours for that role. Go and look at the success profile and read the behaviours listed for the grade you’re applying to. Write your 250/500/whatever is applicable statement for that behaviour using the paragraph from the success profile, but use an example for that behaviour from the essential/desirable criteria for that job. I try and pick an example that ticks off more than one bullet point of the essential criteria.
So for example, say you’re going for a job that lists working to multiple deadlines in a fast paced environment with essential criteria of working in a busy office with competing demands and diary management, it’s likely one of your behaviours will be working at pace. Think about an example for working at pace from your own work history that you can include all of the above essential criteria in.
In the end, I had a sample document with 250 word statement for the most common behaviours that kept cropping up in the jobs I was applying for, and I simply adapted the foundation of each to include the specific essential criteria for that individual job. At interview I expanded on the exact same example for that behaviour.
Things to consider:
They aren’t really asking anything different from usual competency based interviews, they’re just presenting it differently. To tick more boxes you need to find an example that not only shows your ability to do the job but also that shows your ability to apply specific skills you would have learned from doing that work to other situations. Ask yourself why they want to know certain things. So using my working at pace example above, they’re asking to find out how you cope with situations with competing demands, multiple deadlines, unexpected situations that may throw you a curve ball, and how you use your initiative to solve problems. All perfectly standard things.
Watch loads of civil service interview videos on YouTube. Jac Williams is very good snd covers most of the behaviours. I watched them all through multiple times and practiced the questions he asked.
Read sample questions on google to get an idea of how the same thing can be worded in different ways.
Prepare at least one main answer for each behaviour but have a back-up secondary one you can use if it better fits the question.
Do NOT just vomit out a rehearsed answer. But instead know your own examples so throughly that you feel very comfortable chatting around them.
Hope this helps!