Civil Service Interviews

[BobAJob317]

I would appreciate some advice re. Civil Service Interviews, from those more experienced please. (I am not yet in the Civil Service).

My question is around the questions around behaviours. Do you need to stick to one STAR story per behaviours being questioned on?

I had an interview Friday.
I was asked a question, say around Communicating and influencing, just one bit of it. Which I answered ok, I think.

But then another question came in, around the same behaviour, but a different question, and the story I had just explained didn't provide experience of this.

Thinking about it now, would it have been ok to initially share why the STAR story just explained didn't fulfil this, but why another STAR story, within a different role did, and to explain it?

Thanks for your advice, learning! Hopefully getting there!

Honestly, every department interprets this differently. What level was it for?

It could be that whilst both of them covered communicating & influencing and the essential experience, with each one covering a different point.

Good luck!

No- you can use a many situations as you need to demonstrate the full scope of the behaviour.

I don't think you need to justify using a different situation for the 2nd question. Although if that demonstrates reflection and self awareness that's no bad thing!

Was it a follow up question on the first behaviour, or moving onto a second behaviour?

sounds like the former, so it’s likely that your first response didn’t ‘nail it’. In that situation it’s usually better to seek to address it from the original example you chose. or (if you chose a crap example) provide another but keep it short.

It’s often good to seek to address the specific Q, not the whole behaviour topic, and to focus on your personal, relevant actions, at the right level for the role. Avoiding too much context, ‘we did this’ or step by step / processy content.

This - it's about getting the example to show the behaviour. Follow up questions really point out where you haven't quite covered that. Another example to do so is fine.

Thank you all, great food for thought and advice.

I have applied for another Civil Service Role, so I am trying to learn from the one that just had. If I then get invited to another interview hoping to be even better prepared 😀🙏

@UpendedPineapple - I am struggling to come up with a single STAR story that will cover every single point for one behaviour.

But is that be what I should be trying to do?

@UpendedPineapple apologies, just reread your comment and seen that you said "Another example to do so is fine."

Realistically you have about 5 minutes to cover each behaviour, including follow up questions, so you'll be hard pressed to use more than one example in the required depth.

You don't have to cover every single point, it's not a tick list. When you look at the dictionary first look at the summaries of the behaviour - that's what you need to demonstrate, and then refer to the grade appropriate examples of what it looks like in practice - the examples aren't a tick list so you don't need to cover all those in your example (pretty much impossible anyway!)

Not everyone asks follow ups - I only tend to if the example is very nearly there and I just need one more thing to score it better, or if I think the candidate is lying! If the example isn't working and no amount of follow ups would rescue it I don't bother. Similarly I would have told you how much time per behaviour and if you run out of time, I just move things on in the interests of time. Don't rely on the interviewer extracting the information from you.

When you say two on the behaviours, was the second question a strengths question?

I have always told applicants to just say “I didn’t in that situation but I did when ….” Keep the second example brief and to the point.

Example - did you have to manage conflict? Not in that situation but I did have two team members disagreeing on the best way to organise a conference. This is what I did ….”

Thanks both, lesson learnt!

@JohnMytton thank you for those tips

Good tips!

you need to address the specific interview question asked, eg how you influenced, handled conflict, made progress on a project, at the right kind of level for the role, not addressing the whole behaviour.

useful to prepare several options for each behaviour before the interview, then pick the most appropriate for the Q.