Civil Service On Line Application - Employment v Skills & Experience v Personal Statement

[LlamaJ]

Does anyone have any advice on how to structure the CV sections please on:

1. employment history
2. previous skills and experience and
3. personal statement?

I’m confused regarding what goes in each section, the length and how you differentiate between skills & experience and the personal statement.

Employment History – should this include:

Positions held, dates, bullets of main achievements/responsibilities (like a CV)?

In the Civil Service guidance it says … Your work history can include paid work, volunteering work and/or work experience through school or college. You can also mention experience you have from school, college or hobbies and clubs you have been involved in.

This could be very long.

Skills and Experience – should this address:

Each skill/experience on JD and person spec with examples of how I meet them?

In the Civil Service guidance it says .. .Your skills and experience will be scored against the essential criteria in the job advert so make sure your information is relevant to the job.

This could be very long.

Personal Statement

In the guidance it says the purpose of a personal statement is to showcase your relevant skills and experience against the job requirements. Requirements are often referred to as the person specification or essential criteria.

How is this different to skills and experience (apart from a word limit)? Am concerned about being repetitive.

Thank you.

Used to work in public sector and sift CVs - not sure how civil service applications work but as a hiring manager, I would be looking out for the following:

1. Employment history: Similar to CV, listing your various roles with a few bullet points on the more recent roles (less detail on roles from 10+ years ago). There shouldn’t be too much overlap between this and the skills and experience section.

2. Skills and experience: I would split this between experience and skills. If the job description has essential vs desirable criteria, you absolutely must address each of the essential criteria. Address desirable criteria if possible but failure to demonstrate the essential criteria will probably mean your CV will be sifted out.

1. Experience: Describe how many years of experience you have in doing XYZ in which context / organisations. Match it to the job description as far as possible.
2. Skills (and qualifications): Look at the job description and identify the key 4-6 skills (you might need to group them, poorly-worded job descriptions sometimes repeat the same point in different ways). Split this between technical skills/ education/qualifications and soft skills. For soft skills, give brief examples of how you have evidenced these skills, preferably linking back to the organisation’s stated values/ethos (e.g. “I have strong stakeholder management skills and consistently receive positive feedback from peers on my collaborative approach.” is more compelling than “I’m good at stakeholder management.”)

3. Personal statement: This is a good place to cover your motivation and interest in the role/organisation, and why you think it’s a good fit for you based on your skills and experience. Include any other compelling points (e.g. awards you have won).

Be succinct and precise - even if the job description doesn’t specify communication skills, assume that what and how you write will also be taken into consideration. Try not to exceed 250-350 words for each section.

Good luck!

There is often a word limit for the personal statement (usually one of 500/750/1000 words) and if you’re applying via the CS Jobs website it will not let you exceed the limit. Ie you can’t physically type any more words in. For this reason I recommend drafting in word and then copying into the application.

For employment history, I would expect positions held and dates together with a bit on responsibilities and achievement. I would only want to read about volunteering, work experience etc if it’s someone with not much employment history, so recent school leaver/graduate or someone returning after a career break.

For skills and experience, I’d put anything particularly required by the job. For example, if it’s an analytical role, experience of using particular analytical software. I would cover a bit of the job description but in my view the part where you demonstrate you meet the essential criteria is the personal statement. In my view this is the most important bit and must demonstrate how you meet the essential criteria for the job. I think it’s good practice to start by writing a paragraph for each point under essential criteria. Certainly when I’ve been sifting personal statements, I love candidates who do this as it makes it so much easier to score them.

I am a civil servant and when I’ve been recruiting, it’s the employment history and personal statement that I pay most attention to.