Civil service applications

[notsuperbug]

I am looking to redirect my career from education into the civil service and I have a few questions about the application process. Do any of you lovely lot have experience of this and might be able to help with my questions?

First of all the role I am looking at lists 7 required competencies - would you normally use one example for each or multiple examples?

Also some of my relevant experience was gained as part of a (cross party) political pressure group. Is this something I could/ should use or should I think of other examples?

Finally the application process only asks for a 3 year job history. Unfortunately I have not worked a great deal in the last couple of years and most of my relevant experience for this post pre dates this. Would be be acceptable to add additional work history elsewhere on the form?

Each CS department can have its own slight peculiarities on specifics, and a recruiting line manager has their own preferences.

I have not been a recruiting manager for a very long time, but have been involved as the independent in more recent years.

The advert page should have links to resources about the competences and the overall process, so have a good read through.

Unless their guidance says otherwise, usually one example would be preferred, but to cover the full range of competence requirements in the documentation sometimes a couple of examples might be needed.

For the job history, check the guidance as “3 years” might be an “at least” with the option of more (such as 5-10) but one way of adding something else that you want to highlight is in a competence example such as “during my time as team leader in company between 2015 & 2020 I had the situation that ….”

I’m a current civil servant, I’d say one example per competency. You only have a 250 word limit for each so it will be a struggle to use mode than one example in each competency. Remember to use the STAR approach (situation, task, actions, results) and focus on what you actually did (use “I”, not “we”). It’s also fine to use the same example across more than one behaviour but don’t just copy and paste, make sure you’re making it relevant to the behaviour.

As someone who works in policy, I’m ok with examples from time working in a pressure group. Many people end up working in the civil service do so because of an interest in certain issues.

As a recruiting manager I’m fine with going back more than 3 years on career history but I’d be a bit worried if all of the relevant examples are from 10 to 15 years ago. Just put it in the career history/CV section.

PS don’t forget to cover the gap in employment, they will prefer to see that you ran your own business, were made redundant and walked across the Sahara, raised a family, etc rather than were in prison for killing your last boss

Thank you - that’s really helpful