Civil service EO to HEO

[mymumwouldntapprove]

I’m an EO with DWP, joined as an AO in 2005 and promoted to EO in 2008. Since then I’ve done the mum thing and worked part year/part time (though never less than 34 hours a week).
I am good at my job. I get excellent results, and do TDA to cover my line manager in his absence, and among the most experienced in my team. I am being pushed to apply for a HEO role - this would be my line manager’s job effectively.
This is only the second time this has come up in my office in the 12 years I’ve worked there; I can’t travel further afield because of childcare (there’s no WFH/hybrid option) and so I can’t afford to miss the opportunity but I am really struggling with the application.
when I applied for my current role it was a 50 word expression of interest and a recommendation from my line manager. This is the full 1250 word application based on the success profiles and a recorded video interview which is something I’ve never done before and which scares me silly!
My line manager is very supportive, as is my SEO (she emailed me whilst she was on leave to tell me the role was live and to tell me to apply) and both have said I am the best at what I do, the examples I have are strong and just need to believe in myself, but I’m nervous.

Has anyone got any pointers for someone in my situation?

Find someone impartial who has recently been involved in civil service recruitment and ask them to critique your application. People who know and like you often won't give you the best feedback because they don't want to upset you/want to be encouraging.

I fit the bill by the way - if you'd like me to look over your personal statement or would like some tips I'm happy to if it would help, send me a PM if so 🙂

Read the candidate guidance.

I’ve spent the week coaching people to get their applications written and it’s become pretty evident they haven’t really read the guidance that would have given them a lot of help.

Thanks both.
I have read the application guidance carefully, and I’ve done a first draft which I’m not totally happy with but is ok as a starting point - I read it back and thought, I need to say more about why and put some facts and figures in this. Line manager read it today and said the same things as I was thinking.
going to redraft it over the weekend, closing date is the 7th.

The why and the how is usually what's missing, people say what they did but leave out everything else.

Thinking about the most common behaviours -

Making effective decisions - very often I've no idea what decision they were making so the example is completely lost, say what you were deciding.

Communicating and influencing - again no idea what the message was or who you needed to influence - but a great way to answer this one involves they "why" - why did you choose that approach etc.

Delivering at pace - very common to think it means "fast delivery" and forget it's actually about how you balanced all your work and made sure things got done at a steady pace. I want to hear about how you prioritised, reprioritised, good HEO examples involve a curveball and you saying how you reprioritised including alerting your seniors to the impact of delivery of other things.

Managing a quality service - I see less nonsense on this one but at HEO in DWP I think it needs to be an example of how you supervised a service rather than how you dealt with your own caseload.

Seeing the bigger picture - I want to know that you understand the context you're working in beyond the service you're delivering - what's the political mood music for instance and how did you reflect that in the way you ran the service. Made up eg - your team delivers PIP, govt gives disability claimants a kicking, prompts lots of phone calls from worried claimants, what did you do to prep your staff etc, why did you do this.

Working together - don't fall into "leadership"/being in charge, and instead emphasise how you made sure everyone was on a level playing field.

Leadership- be clear what you were leading and remember it's not necessarily about being in charge/being in the superior role. Easily accidentally devolves into working together.

Changing and improving - often devolves into managing a quality service, be very clear what you changed/improved and why.

Developing self and others - ignore this one unless you want to work in HR 😝

Key tip- all your examples must be “I did this” not “we did this”. Anything “we” will be largely disregarded. They want to know what you did personally. The Jac Williams videos on YouTube are a good resource.

I'm an SEO grade elsewhere in the CS. Good luck, from experience the application process through the grades isn't the easiest is it? 😊

I'm assuming the application is requesting a personal statement for the written part? My advice would be scrutinise the job spec, what does it say, how they use the data and why? Use 'I' not 'we'

Video interview, be your true authentic self, use 'I' not 'we' x

Well, so far so good - I’ve been offered an interview.
irrationally terrors of this as it’s a very very long time since I did one (a decade at least) and I have never done an interview on Zoom, ever so we will see how this goes.

That’s great news @mymumwouldntapprove !

I’m a SEO in same dept and interview and sift candidates at SEO and below grades. Happy to give advice. Highly recommend someone outside your area of work gives you advice though, someone who doesn’t know the jargon or context etc

@mymumwouldntapprove that's such good news!
@youveturnedupwelldone I could have done with you a couple of weeks ago. I teams interviewed for CS and it was awful. I had good examples but found myself gabbing..... oh after the 'warm up' question where I had a complete brain fart and couldn't talk about anything..... I froze.

They were very nice mind you :) just waiting to be rejected!

Hi, I have an upcoming interview for a HEO role in recruitment. I just wanted to know can I use any examples from previous roles for the behaviours or should I focus some on my role in recruitment?
Any help and advice is really appreciated

@Mumonamission123 You should use the strongest examples you have. Within my branch of the CS we do advise the examples should be timely - so not older than two years old - so just don’t identify them by date of description such as “five years ago”.

If you are applying for a role where you have direct experience of the role advertised you should use as many examples of that as possible.

Thank you for your message, it's just really hard to come up with examples in civil service recruitment as I predominantly was interviewing and sifting applications. I would love to use more examples in recruitment but can't think of anything half decent to write

In that situation @Mumonamission123 use the wider examples you have.

The initial planning and identifying examples is really difficult!

I just feel like I'll be penalised for not using one recruitment example. There's 4 behaviours no strengths

If you draft the example so the core behaviour is clear and demonstrates the transferable skill you should be fine.

Well, I wasn’t successful at the interview, and it’s highly unlikely that another opportunity will come up within a reasonable distance for me. So I guess I will stay where I am!

@mymumwouldntapprove You gave it your best shot!

Ask for feedback so that you can see where you might have scored lower. Keep an eye out on the recruitment sites - it’s an odd time in CS recruitment so you never know.

Hi,

I am in the process of applying for a HEO role in the civil service. I am struggling with ideas to use for my ‘making effective decisions’ and ‘managing a quality service’.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.