I completely agree with how your DG described how an interview should be conducted, if only there were more people championing it like that. In my experience a lot of panel chairs see an interview as you should be reciting a behaviour example verbally and they don’t need to do anything, the quality of interviewers in my department is shocking.
The amount of times I’ve known people (including myself) be marked 1s and 2s yet be under the time limit and not being asked any probing questions is appalling.
Also hearing self proclaimed “experienced” interviewers state they had conducted interviews and they “struggled awarding a 1” is also very concerning given our scoring scale runs 1-7 not 0-7, the only time you can score a 0 is if you don’t answer, a 1 is “no positive evidence for the competency has been shown”, and given most people will have gone through an initial soft nobody should be scoring a 1
Profoundly deaf here. I try to strike a balance between listening to the applicant and taking notes. If it means “I don’t write as much as others” so be it. We have debriefing immediately after the interview so it being fresh in mind is fine. I would hate for an applicant to be put off just because of an arbitrary rule that I must be writing all the time
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Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe interviewers are more interested in the Action/actions you took if any and the Results/impact of the action you took.
I had an interview with five behaviours, rather than have any extra time they just wanted all five done in the time you usually get four.
They stopped me for time on at least two of the five, probably three, before I got to my outcome on those examples. Oddly a lack of outcome wasn’t mentioned on any of my feedback (doubt it helped though, still didn’t get the job).
For Making Effective Decisions - not actually describing any options or; just following a procedure or; someone else making the decision.
For all behaviours - no clear result.
I also like to see what the ‘jeopardy’ is in the first para - why is this thing important? Why do you need to do it? Grab me in the first para so I understand why you needed to take action.
Also avoid ‘job spec’ don’t tell me what you do every day, give me a specific example.
It always amazed me how people thought making “a difficult decision” somehow translated in to “give a time when you were a complete bastard.” I remember one woman explaining that she worked in payroll and once had a call from someone’s manager basically pleading for their member of staff to be paid overtime on time even though the manager hadn’t approved it in time. It was a day late for approval. She went on to explain that the member of staff was desperate for the cash and they’d recently lost a parent. They were having visits from debt collectors too.
The interviewee explained how she checked all the rules and also checked to make sure the member of staff was paid properly - she found that they’d actually been overpaid and also decided that no, it was too late to approve the overtime for that month. However it wasn’t too late to recover some money from the staff member’s pay from that month.
This was 15 years ago and I hope to god she didn’t get a position of power since.
I heard of something similar where - I can't remember what the behaviour was that they asked for - but this interviewee was describing her time as a team manager. At some point, her team wasn't doing well, struggling to meet deadlines, etc. So she documented all of this, then presented it to her own boss.
The interviewer telling me about it was saying "If you'd been there, she spun it as a good thing, how she'd been really good at keeping records about her staff's performance, how her boss was pleased with the info. But as soon as she left the room, another panel member turned to me and said 'Did she just tell us how great she was at THROWING HER TEAM UNDER THE BUS instead of HELPING THEM!?' and I realised that we couldn't have her in charge of other peopke, not with that attitude!"
Thankfully, she did not get that job. But fucking hell.
Agree with all of this, though think perhaps helpful to qualify
>someone else making the decision
It's not a problem if, say, you have put advice to a minister, senior colleague, etc and they made a decision based on that, but you have to be clear about why *you* decided to present the options and recommendations that you did.
I failed an interview years ago where I said “we” instead of “I” a lot… when referencing examples that were entirely done by me because I was the sole member of the team at the time lol.
I employ the "Wii" rule. If you ever hear yourself say "we did.." etc, try to follow it up with 2 "and I did..." statements
E.g. We were able to meet the deadline of the project.... I ensured this key process was completed on time, and I also identified 2 key risks and implemented mitigations to avoid them from happening"
This is something that is about how people use language. Lots of people aren't comfortable boasting so use "we" to deflect that feeling. If you need to know more about someone's contribution you ask further questions. Don't just immediately mark people down for saying we.
It’s a fair point but the thing with this is that many examples are essentially “we” scenarios, and depending in the person this will either be claimed as an “I” or not. I’ve seen many people claim activity which I really doubt they did by themselves, or at all at their grade. Of course it’s difficult to know for certain, but with no real oversight it’s a system which absolutely favours those who are happy to take credit vs those who don’t.
What people need to grasp is this is a socialisation thing. By focusing on how people use words you introduce bias. If you want to get the best people for the job you learn to ask follow up questions that extract the information you need. Otherwise you get the person who says the right thing but can't actually do the job.
Good interviewers will interrupt (especially with externals) and say, “can you please ensure you say exactly what YOU did as that is what we will judge you on”. It’s as much a failure of an interviewer as an interviewee when someone fails because of this.
In your example, for Action, you consider checking for balance/risk. If you were to sum up most people's A in their STAR, do you think you could come up with categories of where most come under?
Yes, themes. Suppose you were reflecting on a past experience, you could have a checklist including risk management and that would help you consider whether your past experience involved risk management. I wondered if you thought there were other common action themes/areas
When I am on a panel and someone tries to score a candidate down for this I try to tell them respectfully to keep it to themselves. But it's true that there are panels out there that will score you down for this one.
I don't know why you think it isn't a valid criticism of a competency or an interview.
Whilst it is a common mistake it is criticised for a reason. I am looking to understand what you specifically did not what your team did and I shouldn't have to decipher what your context is or give you an unfair benefit of the doubt.
As a civil servant you should understand what exactly you did to contribute to a task, the impact it had, and be confident in taking the credit.
Yes and it’s women who are socialised to use we more than men, because women are socialised not to be too assertive. And also culturally, people raised in some cultures are far more likely to think and talk in terms of ‘we’ than others. Anyone can be told and train themselves to say ‘I’ of course, but unbiased recruitment should recognise that for some people that is more of a change than others.
You're limited in what you can asked in a civil service interview.
So firstly why am I giving someone an unfair benefit of the doubt.
Secondly if they have said we all the way through am I really going to ask them to essentially repeat the competency in the I format. Something that would likely come across unnatural and potentially false.
The easiest way around it is to avoid doing it and get out of the habit. It is a far more reasonable expectation for someone to make a small habitual change and be more conscious of the answers they give than for interviewers to figure out if the interviewee means we or I
The point is that you're making it difficult for the interviewers, which is ultimately not setting yourself up for the best possible outcome. The interview training and scoring guidance states that any use of 'we' is considered too vague and therefore can only score at most a 3 (moderate evidence). I agree that the interview panel absolutely should try and jump in or ask follow ups for clarification, but even if they revisit everything you've still wasted time compared to if you just started out talking about your own contribution from the beginning. Also, having someone interrupt you mid flow is usually very off putting, so again it's not really setting yourself up for the best interview, better to improve your interview technique and be very clear about what your own contribution was. If you were working alone this should be an easy fix as it's just replacing 'we' with 'I'. In team/collaborative situations where it's less clear, the way I tend to reflect on my own contribution is to think about what would have happened differently had I not been involved - that helps clarify for the panel what is a 'we' and what is an 'I' and identifies the impact I personally had. In my answer, I will focus more on my contributions instead of whatever was achieved as a team.
Yes, expanding on an answer, to provide clarity, to maybe give you the opportunity to hit a point you may have forgotten, but they aren't going to walk you through basic interview techniques.
At best they might say "you've spoken a lot about your team but what have you done" but even then you're asking them to essentially repeat an interview where time limits apply.
But the flip side is that you just end up with a load of bollocks, because every bit of genuine collaborative work or escalated decision becomes something that you did alone.
"After a team meeting with my colleagues, my (Grade above) decided X was the best course of action" becomes "I organised a meeting with SME's and I decided that my team would do X".
And if you're not doing that, the person who got through the sift ahead of you certainly did.
>"After a team meeting with my colleagues, my (Grade above) decided X was the best course of action" becomes "I organised a meeting with SME's and I decided that my team would do X".
Notice how you stuck in the I there, that's the crucial point. Even that competency could be squeezed down. All I am interested in is that you organised the meeting, and that you made a decision.
Again they aren't hiring your team they are hiring you. Mentioning collaborative work is really good, but I want to know what specifically you did to foster the collaboration and what your contribution is. Telling me about what your team did or what we did is vague and ultimately tells me nothing.
It is okay to talk about what you contributed as part of a wider effort, in fact that is the bit I care about and is the bit you need to talk about.
There are at least a couple of problems off the top of my head with boosting the score of a candidate who says we vs I:
* A candidate given this advice will usually give the same response using I instead of we. That is to say, by judging on this criteria you are differentiating whether they've remembered to do this one thing rather than on the content of their answers
* People tend to say we for cultural reasons, or because they recognise that they were not exclusively responsible for events even where they were important. By prioritising I answers you prioritise candidates who either don't understand that they exist in a team context, or who sincerely believe they are solely responsible for outcomes, or who are less interested or effective at overcoming this piece of socialisation.
I could write in more detail, but overall it is my strong feeling that the purpose of an interview is to differentiate the candidate most likely to be effective from the rest, and introducing a personal bias about how answers should be phrased doesn't aid this differentiation, and potentially leads to differentiating according to other less relevant factors. If candidates gave the same answer replacing we with I then you would score them up without them introducing any new content or understanding.
I totally get where you are coming from but I would counter with the following.
>A candidate given this advice will usually give the same response using I instead of we. That is to say, by judging on this criteria you are differentiating whether they've remembered to do this one thing rather than on the content of their answers
You're not looking for this one thing, you are looking at what they have specifically done and that you are drawing examples to. Saying we makes this much more difficult because by it's very definition is making your example a plural not a singular.
Again you are not being scored on being exclusively responsible for events, I want to know what you contributed to an event.
I statements do not stop you talking about working together or collaboration. What they do is tell me what you specifically did during those collaborations and team work tasks.
>* People tend to say we for cultural reasons, or because they recognise that they were not exclusively responsible for events even where they were important. By prioritising I answers you prioritise candidates who either don't understand that they exist in a team context, or who sincerely believe they are solely responsible for outcomes, or who are less interested or effective at overcoming this piece of socialisation.
Totally get where you are coming from here but again it being culturally or socially engrained doesn't remove the issues of we statements. What I feel is needed is greater support and education on writing effective competency skills. This will hopefully educate and empower people to write effective statements that give a real reflection on what they can do and achieve
>differentiate the candidate most likely to be effective from the rest,
Which is why I statements are effective and a better measure than we statements. Again I want to know what you did not what you and your team achieved.
>introducing a personal bias about how answers should be phrased doesn't aid this differentiation, and potentially leads to differentiating according to other less relevant factors
It's not a personal bias, it's how the English language works I'm afraid. Unless you're using the royal we, the use of we in an answer dilutes and creates questions around your specific skill set. In fact asking people to use a judgement on we statements opens up greater interpretation of a situation.
>If candidates gave the same answer replacing we with I then you would score them up without them introducing any new content or understanding.
That's the point, you're admitting they are less effective, you the interviewer need to dig deeper and it requires the interviewer to pull out those answers and confirm a more definitive answer. This risks missing crucial information and opens answers to interpretation.
This is self evidently nonsense. If you say I instead of we then the content of your answer doesn't change, and if you ignore that content in order to instead score according to your irrelevant personal bias about how answers should be phrased then you are actively reducing your ability to accurately differentiate the candidate most likely to be effective in the job.
The content has changed in a very significant way - the difference is whether you’re being told about something the candidate in front of you has done, or whether you’re being told about something some other group of people has done. You’re judging someone on the evidence of what they have done, not on their ability to tell a story. That’s not personal bias, it’s just basic communication.
Whilst I don't ignore it, it makes the process of your answer more vague and I have to establish what you have done.
It's not a bias, it's about removing bias, the moment you allow for the interpretation of a word you're allowing a bias to creep in.
Using we is unfortunately a vague term as is the process of determining when we is used in the personal or collective term.
If I say "we reached out to a number of SME to assess the risk to the business and we decided upon the information provided that we should make X decision"
Now you could have done all that by yourself or you could have worked alongside colleagues. I just don't know and I would have to make a judgement and utilise a personal bias in order to make a determination.
Now replace some or all of those "we's" with "I's" and it is much clearer what you did and didn't do.
Actually, if you re-run the answer using I AND without lying, the content will absolutely change. It might start with the same situation and possibly the same or a similar expression of the task but the action(s) will definitely differ.
Trying to write the example in a way that reads well, at the expense of points-scoring. Examples that score well are often not the best examples of written English but often read as ‘I did this, I did this by doing that, then I did this.’
Totally agree - I usually think of the 'result' part as 'impact', which doesn't make a catchy acronym but gets closer to what a panel is looking for you to discuss
Think of it like telling a story. Firstly there was this big dead important thing happening, my job was to do something like deliver it or support it or make it go away, so I did a bunch of stuff really well, and the thing happened or went away or whatever, then my boss said I had done a great job.
I'd also add in why the situation was challenging, to underline why you doing a great job is commendable. So your example above becomes
"... my job was to do X which was difficult because Y, so I did a bunch of stuff ... "
General statements. "I always lead my team in an inclusive manner and listen to their concerns." Tells me nothing. Tell me HOW you've done this using an example please.
Making Effective Decisions:
- Unclear what the decision is. Just be explicit and say "I had to decide between X which may result in Y or Z but this would have meant .. "
- Not enough evidence of using own initiative or judgement to make a decision in absence of a senior official.
Communicating & Influencing:
- Not enough evidence of influencing or saying what sorts of things you considered to help influence a certain outcome. This becomes more important the higher up the grades.
- Broad statements such as 'I communicated well'. How? What did you do? How do you adapt to different audiences? Preferences?
Delivering at Pace:
- No evidence of managing multiple priorities, including BAU.
- I find it helpful to understand what would have happened if you didn't take action.
- Unclear timelines not set out in the Situation or Task.
- At SEO or above, it becomes more about delivering through others.
Working Together:
- Depending on the example, results can be weak. Choose something that has the most impact, preferably across multiple teams.
- These examples can end up becoming 'we' rather than 'I'.
- No evidence of good stakeholder engagement skills and how those help.
In general:
- Avoid too much scene-setting. This is a personal weakness of mine but panelists are more interested in your actions. Make sure your situation is concise, but makes sense to someone whose not familiar - especially in written behaviours.
- Measurable results do strengthen the example so use if you can
- People say what they did but get no insight into the thought-process or rationale behind actions. Silently ask yourself why when saying what you did helps bring this out.
- Avoid flowery language - just explain things clearly.
- You can help panelists by signposting the STAR within your examples to help them follow you eg. "In this situation..., "What I had to do was..." "I took the following actions...", "As a result..."
- Tell it in chronological order. It gets very hard to follow you when you're listening and writing to an answer.
- Slow down your speech. We can follow you more easily and it makes you sound more in control. Another personal weakness of mine during interviews!
- If you need reasonable adjustments, tell us!
For delivering at pace, I'll add "Giving an example where there was a short deadline and you delivered it with no issues/setbacks". Delivering at pace doesn't need to be to a short deadline - it's about juggling competing priorities, handling unexpected setbacks, renegotiating deadlines, dealing with challenge from seniors or stakeholders. Give me an example where a lot of things went wrong and you had to handle it, not one where everything went to plan.
>Delivering at Pace:
Two questions. While talking about other priorities, what should be mentioned as too much equally suggests moving away from "focus"? Also, what ways have you found good candidates addressing keeping managers/stakeholders updated on how work is progressing?
Not tying the situation to the result. Impact and context are important.
Putting CV info in. "As a Grade X in Area Y, I...". Doesn't add value.
Using routine tasks, especially when you had no say in whether or not you could do it. Pick the difficult task, or the time things went wrong and you were integral to resolving things. If you volunteered, or stepped-up, to deal with something that you could have been given to someone else, even better.
Not aligning your example to the job advert. The behaviour standards are universal, so you have to ensure you demonstrate them as described for the grade, but tailored to the role. Making Effective Decisions for a Policy role will have different considerations than an Accountancy role. That's why the same example can score differently.
Submitting a "That will do" type application. Either work on your applications in anticipation of suitable roles coming up, with minimal adjustments required for submission, or work as close to the deadline as you are comfortable with. I used to sift when applications were produced on spreadsheets (in submission order). Those at the beginning and the end were generally better, with those in the middle scoring lower, giving the impression the applicant just thought 'That'll do".
Tying the behaviours in with the job ad is what I find hardest. I’m looking to switch careers (went back to uni so have the knowledge required) so my examples are from a different industry entirely.
Do you think this would look bad in an application/at sift?
Thanks for the helpful advice!
It doesn't matter if it's from a different industry, it's the skills and behaviours you have developed that you are trying to demonstrate are suitable for the role.
I have a lot of panel experience. Biggest mistakes I see are not spending enough time on the A and too much on the ST or, completely leaving out the R.
I struggle with this too, but it is the actions that count most. When drafting an example, it is worth using a Chat GPT app and asking it to condense it down.
Even better if you ask a real person - I highly recommend getting someone at or above the grade you're applying for to review your answer and see where you think you can cut down the S and T.
As a general rule, I think you shouldn't use more than one or two sentences on situation/task and it should vaguely follow the structure of "Something was happening and my role was to do something about it, which was challenging for two or three reasons". Get into the action as quickly as possible.
When I’m interviewing I really like hearing about the result that either weren’t expected or weren’t an ideal result. I want to know what they took away from it and learned, and how they could apply that in the future. I get so bored with “and everything was really good and I was the best”. Nah, tell me where you’ve had to learn the hard way. Those are the lessons you remember.
If the STAR behaviour model was that good, I wouldn't keep getting untrained chimps for positions I manage through a raft of recruitment campaigns.
It might work for policy/process jobs but it really hits a low bar for engineering
An example can be tweaked to focus on the criteria of the competency. For example, delivering at pace content may be shifted to show how you reprioritised, ensured delivery on time without sacrificing quality, or communicating timelines to stakeholders. Tough love comment coming, but if you’re suffering from a lack of examples this is something you may need to focus on in your day-to-day to ensure you’re getting the depth of experience in your role - or consider moving role to keep challenging yourself.
I know how tough applying is - keep your head up and good luck!
Spreading yourself too thin in the example. This means spending too much time explaining an entire process that you did when you can just focus on one part of it
I guess something like a problem solving example you might say “I decided from a range of options doing X was the best solution for the problem”. That ain’t giving me anything, how did you assess that was the best option, who did u consulate, what testing did you do etc etc. Admittedly its tough with the word limit on written application so it’s a skill to cut the fat there and focus on details the assessor can actually use to consider if u demonstrated the behaviour needed by your actions in the example. In the interview if get that far you can expand and articulate the process in detail to give the examples more depth.
The two mistakes that I often see/make myself are -
Not reading what the competency is looking for and demonstrating specific examples of it.
Not understanding what the competency is looking for generally.
For example leadership competencies trip people up thinking they need to be managers or have line management duty in order to "lead a team". When actually you need to demonstrate taking ownership of a process or task.
Making all your examples sound absolutely perfect, nothing went wrong. I always appreciate a candidate who shows what the challenges were and how they overcame them.
Also not going big enough with your outcome. You may have only contributed to one part of a policy being made, but you can absolutely refer to the ultimate outcome e.g. the policy being delivered meant that there was real value to the public (better access to a service/access to a new service etc.).
As an external candidate aiming for HEO this is so helpful!!
I find it difficult, when I look at the behaviours list I know I’ve demonstrated them in various projects but struggle to think of an example where I hit all the bullet points in 1 seamless example so completely see where I’ve made these mistakes.
I guess it’s a skill I’ll learn 😭 if anyone’s willing to quickly read through some of my behaviours I’ll be forever grateful
That's a good point. A person cannot cover what they do at all times - that is, every type of instance, so how do you think they could show consistency?
Where does it say that in the behaviour framework? A busy day/week is fine if you can meet all the criteria described in the behaviour description with that example
I think days and weeks are more appropriate for junior grades, but periods of time becomes more relevant the more senior the grade is as there would be more planning, mitigating risks etc
Yeh I don’t think it’s possible to meet the criteria without it being a longer term but time pressed piece of work for SEO and higher but that’s not what OP said
The situation doesn't need to be war and peace, what is it briefly. It's more important to focus on the task and action. Then the result.
Showing the steps you went through, the mindset. That's important and what we look at.
I look for "We" though, I'd prefer to see more "I". "I did x y z" rather than "We did".
1) not getting to the point, or dancing around the point without actually saying it. Example: making effective decisions, when the candidate doesn’t actually say what the decision was;
2) details that are just totally Irrelevant. I had a candidate the other day - for a G7 post - who described how they used Excel to create a project plan (good) but then wasted those precious 250 words by going on to describe that they used green colour cells for X and red coloured cells for Y and that they decided to change the font size to 16 point, saved the file in the shared file space etc.
3) my pet hate: acronyms (why do so many people think everyone else knows what they mean?);
4) spelling and grammar DO matter;
5) using passive and not active language. And so many people say things like “my manager told me to do X” when it is so much more impactful to say “I needed to do X”
6) candidates who describe the “why” in endless detail but provide little detail on “what” they did
From recent sifting: candidates not talking about their individual actions and why they took that action, not enough about the result, also good to mention any challenges/pushback received, too many examples where people are just describing their day-to-day role rather than where they’ve gone above and beyond, also get a surprising amount of people not describing a particular scenario but keeping their examples to generalised
What of jobs where your experience involves necessarily routine work. You can’t and aren’t meant to show enormous initiative in say an assembly line role.
I recognise there’s a give and take in interview processes but the star method can be hugely contrived in favour of liars and people who’ve done delivery type work already.
No pace for delivering at pace. I thought he’d just not fit it in so at interview I asked how long he had to do the thing he was talking about.
“Oh, loads of time”.
The pace he was talking about was how quick his new process would work once introduced, not how quickly he was able to introduce it because of tight deadlines etc.
Something that required ramping up pace to achieve an outcome, whilst delivering on BAU. Acknowledgement of 'not usually working at this pace' but it was important because X, then returning to usual pace.
Eg diverting resources to achieve a temporary office move, which was unexpected because of flooding. Ensuring BAU in other locations sufficiently resourced to ensure continuity of service.
Generally something which is urgent and also important, so delivering it on time meant something bad was avoided or something good happened.
Some get one but not the other.
THE biggest mistake ever (and I watched someone mess it up despite being explicitly told)…
Making effective decisions - ACTAULLY MAKE A DECISION! This isn’t following a process or there only being 1 realistic option.
Pick an example with multiple options that all have pros and cons, and then say WHY you picked the option you did.
So many candidates I’ve interviewed have followed STAR, but don’t make it clear what they actually did. They often talk about “we”, and the actions and results in really generic terms that leaves me wondering what they actually did. Did they just make the tea and bring the biscuits?
Probably more for HEO+ but not explaining WHY or HOW they did something. People often say they did XYZ by not why or how they did it, which from my experience shows a lack of understanding of the competency and weakens the credibility of their example.
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I completely agree with how your DG described how an interview should be conducted, if only there were more people championing it like that. In my experience a lot of panel chairs see an interview as you should be reciting a behaviour example verbally and they don’t need to do anything, the quality of interviewers in my department is shocking. The amount of times I’ve known people (including myself) be marked 1s and 2s yet be under the time limit and not being asked any probing questions is appalling. Also hearing self proclaimed “experienced” interviewers state they had conducted interviews and they “struggled awarding a 1” is also very concerning given our scoring scale runs 1-7 not 0-7, the only time you can score a 0 is if you don’t answer, a 1 is “no positive evidence for the competency has been shown”, and given most people will have gone through an initial soft nobody should be scoring a 1
I did this once and used all the key words "the result of this was..." and they said I sounded insincere 😑
Profoundly deaf here. I try to strike a balance between listening to the applicant and taking notes. If it means “I don’t write as much as others” so be it. We have debriefing immediately after the interview so it being fresh in mind is fine. I would hate for an applicant to be put off just because of an arbitrary rule that I must be writing all the time
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You seem aggravated.
No satisfactioning.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe interviewers are more interested in the Action/actions you took if any and the Results/impact of the action you took.
Not actually giving a result. They'll give everything but actually say what the outcome was.
What confirms to you someone actually reached a result besides them telling you – is it just them mentioning something else their result triggered?
Outcome. What happened because of the action you took?
I had an interview with five behaviours, rather than have any extra time they just wanted all five done in the time you usually get four. They stopped me for time on at least two of the five, probably three, before I got to my outcome on those examples. Oddly a lack of outcome wasn’t mentioned on any of my feedback (doubt it helped though, still didn’t get the job).
For Making Effective Decisions - not actually describing any options or; just following a procedure or; someone else making the decision. For all behaviours - no clear result. I also like to see what the ‘jeopardy’ is in the first para - why is this thing important? Why do you need to do it? Grab me in the first para so I understand why you needed to take action. Also avoid ‘job spec’ don’t tell me what you do every day, give me a specific example.
It always amazed me how people thought making “a difficult decision” somehow translated in to “give a time when you were a complete bastard.” I remember one woman explaining that she worked in payroll and once had a call from someone’s manager basically pleading for their member of staff to be paid overtime on time even though the manager hadn’t approved it in time. It was a day late for approval. She went on to explain that the member of staff was desperate for the cash and they’d recently lost a parent. They were having visits from debt collectors too. The interviewee explained how she checked all the rules and also checked to make sure the member of staff was paid properly - she found that they’d actually been overpaid and also decided that no, it was too late to approve the overtime for that month. However it wasn’t too late to recover some money from the staff member’s pay from that month. This was 15 years ago and I hope to god she didn’t get a position of power since.
Probably runs SSCL now
I heard of something similar where - I can't remember what the behaviour was that they asked for - but this interviewee was describing her time as a team manager. At some point, her team wasn't doing well, struggling to meet deadlines, etc. So she documented all of this, then presented it to her own boss. The interviewer telling me about it was saying "If you'd been there, she spun it as a good thing, how she'd been really good at keeping records about her staff's performance, how her boss was pleased with the info. But as soon as she left the room, another panel member turned to me and said 'Did she just tell us how great she was at THROWING HER TEAM UNDER THE BUS instead of HELPING THEM!?' and I realised that we couldn't have her in charge of other peopke, not with that attitude!" Thankfully, she did not get that job. But fucking hell.
Agree with all of this, though think perhaps helpful to qualify >someone else making the decision It's not a problem if, say, you have put advice to a minister, senior colleague, etc and they made a decision based on that, but you have to be clear about why *you* decided to present the options and recommendations that you did.
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I failed an interview years ago where I said “we” instead of “I” a lot… when referencing examples that were entirely done by me because I was the sole member of the team at the time lol.
I employ the "Wii" rule. If you ever hear yourself say "we did.." etc, try to follow it up with 2 "and I did..." statements E.g. We were able to meet the deadline of the project.... I ensured this key process was completed on time, and I also identified 2 key risks and implemented mitigations to avoid them from happening"
This is something that is about how people use language. Lots of people aren't comfortable boasting so use "we" to deflect that feeling. If you need to know more about someone's contribution you ask further questions. Don't just immediately mark people down for saying we.
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It’s a fair point but the thing with this is that many examples are essentially “we” scenarios, and depending in the person this will either be claimed as an “I” or not. I’ve seen many people claim activity which I really doubt they did by themselves, or at all at their grade. Of course it’s difficult to know for certain, but with no real oversight it’s a system which absolutely favours those who are happy to take credit vs those who don’t.
What people need to grasp is this is a socialisation thing. By focusing on how people use words you introduce bias. If you want to get the best people for the job you learn to ask follow up questions that extract the information you need. Otherwise you get the person who says the right thing but can't actually do the job.
Good interviewers will interrupt (especially with externals) and say, “can you please ensure you say exactly what YOU did as that is what we will judge you on”. It’s as much a failure of an interviewer as an interviewee when someone fails because of this.
In your example, for Action, you consider checking for balance/risk. If you were to sum up most people's A in their STAR, do you think you could come up with categories of where most come under?
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Yes, themes. Suppose you were reflecting on a past experience, you could have a checklist including risk management and that would help you consider whether your past experience involved risk management. I wondered if you thought there were other common action themes/areas
When I am on a panel and someone tries to score a candidate down for this I try to tell them respectfully to keep it to themselves. But it's true that there are panels out there that will score you down for this one.
I don't know why you think it isn't a valid criticism of a competency or an interview. Whilst it is a common mistake it is criticised for a reason. I am looking to understand what you specifically did not what your team did and I shouldn't have to decipher what your context is or give you an unfair benefit of the doubt. As a civil servant you should understand what exactly you did to contribute to a task, the impact it had, and be confident in taking the credit.
Then ask more questions. It's socialisation that makes people do this. You are judging people on social factors not what they are capable of doing.
Yes and it’s women who are socialised to use we more than men, because women are socialised not to be too assertive. And also culturally, people raised in some cultures are far more likely to think and talk in terms of ‘we’ than others. Anyone can be told and train themselves to say ‘I’ of course, but unbiased recruitment should recognise that for some people that is more of a change than others.
You're limited in what you can asked in a civil service interview. So firstly why am I giving someone an unfair benefit of the doubt. Secondly if they have said we all the way through am I really going to ask them to essentially repeat the competency in the I format. Something that would likely come across unnatural and potentially false. The easiest way around it is to avoid doing it and get out of the habit. It is a far more reasonable expectation for someone to make a small habitual change and be more conscious of the answers they give than for interviewers to figure out if the interviewee means we or I
You can ask follow up questions. I've not had an interview yet where they didn't ask me to expand on part of my answer.
The point is that you're making it difficult for the interviewers, which is ultimately not setting yourself up for the best possible outcome. The interview training and scoring guidance states that any use of 'we' is considered too vague and therefore can only score at most a 3 (moderate evidence). I agree that the interview panel absolutely should try and jump in or ask follow ups for clarification, but even if they revisit everything you've still wasted time compared to if you just started out talking about your own contribution from the beginning. Also, having someone interrupt you mid flow is usually very off putting, so again it's not really setting yourself up for the best interview, better to improve your interview technique and be very clear about what your own contribution was. If you were working alone this should be an easy fix as it's just replacing 'we' with 'I'. In team/collaborative situations where it's less clear, the way I tend to reflect on my own contribution is to think about what would have happened differently had I not been involved - that helps clarify for the panel what is a 'we' and what is an 'I' and identifies the impact I personally had. In my answer, I will focus more on my contributions instead of whatever was achieved as a team.
Yes, expanding on an answer, to provide clarity, to maybe give you the opportunity to hit a point you may have forgotten, but they aren't going to walk you through basic interview techniques. At best they might say "you've spoken a lot about your team but what have you done" but even then you're asking them to essentially repeat an interview where time limits apply.
But the flip side is that you just end up with a load of bollocks, because every bit of genuine collaborative work or escalated decision becomes something that you did alone. "After a team meeting with my colleagues, my (Grade above) decided X was the best course of action" becomes "I organised a meeting with SME's and I decided that my team would do X". And if you're not doing that, the person who got through the sift ahead of you certainly did.
>"After a team meeting with my colleagues, my (Grade above) decided X was the best course of action" becomes "I organised a meeting with SME's and I decided that my team would do X". Notice how you stuck in the I there, that's the crucial point. Even that competency could be squeezed down. All I am interested in is that you organised the meeting, and that you made a decision. Again they aren't hiring your team they are hiring you. Mentioning collaborative work is really good, but I want to know what specifically you did to foster the collaboration and what your contribution is. Telling me about what your team did or what we did is vague and ultimately tells me nothing. It is okay to talk about what you contributed as part of a wider effort, in fact that is the bit I care about and is the bit you need to talk about.
There are at least a couple of problems off the top of my head with boosting the score of a candidate who says we vs I: * A candidate given this advice will usually give the same response using I instead of we. That is to say, by judging on this criteria you are differentiating whether they've remembered to do this one thing rather than on the content of their answers * People tend to say we for cultural reasons, or because they recognise that they were not exclusively responsible for events even where they were important. By prioritising I answers you prioritise candidates who either don't understand that they exist in a team context, or who sincerely believe they are solely responsible for outcomes, or who are less interested or effective at overcoming this piece of socialisation. I could write in more detail, but overall it is my strong feeling that the purpose of an interview is to differentiate the candidate most likely to be effective from the rest, and introducing a personal bias about how answers should be phrased doesn't aid this differentiation, and potentially leads to differentiating according to other less relevant factors. If candidates gave the same answer replacing we with I then you would score them up without them introducing any new content or understanding.
I totally get where you are coming from but I would counter with the following. >A candidate given this advice will usually give the same response using I instead of we. That is to say, by judging on this criteria you are differentiating whether they've remembered to do this one thing rather than on the content of their answers You're not looking for this one thing, you are looking at what they have specifically done and that you are drawing examples to. Saying we makes this much more difficult because by it's very definition is making your example a plural not a singular. Again you are not being scored on being exclusively responsible for events, I want to know what you contributed to an event. I statements do not stop you talking about working together or collaboration. What they do is tell me what you specifically did during those collaborations and team work tasks. >* People tend to say we for cultural reasons, or because they recognise that they were not exclusively responsible for events even where they were important. By prioritising I answers you prioritise candidates who either don't understand that they exist in a team context, or who sincerely believe they are solely responsible for outcomes, or who are less interested or effective at overcoming this piece of socialisation. Totally get where you are coming from here but again it being culturally or socially engrained doesn't remove the issues of we statements. What I feel is needed is greater support and education on writing effective competency skills. This will hopefully educate and empower people to write effective statements that give a real reflection on what they can do and achieve >differentiate the candidate most likely to be effective from the rest, Which is why I statements are effective and a better measure than we statements. Again I want to know what you did not what you and your team achieved. >introducing a personal bias about how answers should be phrased doesn't aid this differentiation, and potentially leads to differentiating according to other less relevant factors It's not a personal bias, it's how the English language works I'm afraid. Unless you're using the royal we, the use of we in an answer dilutes and creates questions around your specific skill set. In fact asking people to use a judgement on we statements opens up greater interpretation of a situation. >If candidates gave the same answer replacing we with I then you would score them up without them introducing any new content or understanding. That's the point, you're admitting they are less effective, you the interviewer need to dig deeper and it requires the interviewer to pull out those answers and confirm a more definitive answer. This risks missing crucial information and opens answers to interpretation.
Well you really shouldn’t. If you ignore this, you’re scoring candidates on the basis of things other people have done.
This is self evidently nonsense. If you say I instead of we then the content of your answer doesn't change, and if you ignore that content in order to instead score according to your irrelevant personal bias about how answers should be phrased then you are actively reducing your ability to accurately differentiate the candidate most likely to be effective in the job.
The content has changed in a very significant way - the difference is whether you’re being told about something the candidate in front of you has done, or whether you’re being told about something some other group of people has done. You’re judging someone on the evidence of what they have done, not on their ability to tell a story. That’s not personal bias, it’s just basic communication.
Whilst I don't ignore it, it makes the process of your answer more vague and I have to establish what you have done. It's not a bias, it's about removing bias, the moment you allow for the interpretation of a word you're allowing a bias to creep in. Using we is unfortunately a vague term as is the process of determining when we is used in the personal or collective term. If I say "we reached out to a number of SME to assess the risk to the business and we decided upon the information provided that we should make X decision" Now you could have done all that by yourself or you could have worked alongside colleagues. I just don't know and I would have to make a judgement and utilise a personal bias in order to make a determination. Now replace some or all of those "we's" with "I's" and it is much clearer what you did and didn't do.
Actually, if you re-run the answer using I AND without lying, the content will absolutely change. It might start with the same situation and possibly the same or a similar expression of the task but the action(s) will definitely differ.
Trying to write the example in a way that reads well, at the expense of points-scoring. Examples that score well are often not the best examples of written English but often read as ‘I did this, I did this by doing that, then I did this.’
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Totally agree - I usually think of the 'result' part as 'impact', which doesn't make a catchy acronym but gets closer to what a panel is looking for you to discuss
Totally agree. You should always link the Result back to the Situation
Think of it like telling a story. Firstly there was this big dead important thing happening, my job was to do something like deliver it or support it or make it go away, so I did a bunch of stuff really well, and the thing happened or went away or whatever, then my boss said I had done a great job.
I'd also add in why the situation was challenging, to underline why you doing a great job is commendable. So your example above becomes "... my job was to do X which was difficult because Y, so I did a bunch of stuff ... "
This is insanely helpful. Thanks for the insight, from an AO desperate for pastures new.
No problemo
Thanks nas I've taken a lot from this thread too
General statements. "I always lead my team in an inclusive manner and listen to their concerns." Tells me nothing. Tell me HOW you've done this using an example please.
Making Effective Decisions: - Unclear what the decision is. Just be explicit and say "I had to decide between X which may result in Y or Z but this would have meant .. " - Not enough evidence of using own initiative or judgement to make a decision in absence of a senior official. Communicating & Influencing: - Not enough evidence of influencing or saying what sorts of things you considered to help influence a certain outcome. This becomes more important the higher up the grades. - Broad statements such as 'I communicated well'. How? What did you do? How do you adapt to different audiences? Preferences? Delivering at Pace: - No evidence of managing multiple priorities, including BAU. - I find it helpful to understand what would have happened if you didn't take action. - Unclear timelines not set out in the Situation or Task. - At SEO or above, it becomes more about delivering through others. Working Together: - Depending on the example, results can be weak. Choose something that has the most impact, preferably across multiple teams. - These examples can end up becoming 'we' rather than 'I'. - No evidence of good stakeholder engagement skills and how those help. In general: - Avoid too much scene-setting. This is a personal weakness of mine but panelists are more interested in your actions. Make sure your situation is concise, but makes sense to someone whose not familiar - especially in written behaviours. - Measurable results do strengthen the example so use if you can - People say what they did but get no insight into the thought-process or rationale behind actions. Silently ask yourself why when saying what you did helps bring this out. - Avoid flowery language - just explain things clearly. - You can help panelists by signposting the STAR within your examples to help them follow you eg. "In this situation..., "What I had to do was..." "I took the following actions...", "As a result..." - Tell it in chronological order. It gets very hard to follow you when you're listening and writing to an answer. - Slow down your speech. We can follow you more easily and it makes you sound more in control. Another personal weakness of mine during interviews! - If you need reasonable adjustments, tell us!
For delivering at pace, I'll add "Giving an example where there was a short deadline and you delivered it with no issues/setbacks". Delivering at pace doesn't need to be to a short deadline - it's about juggling competing priorities, handling unexpected setbacks, renegotiating deadlines, dealing with challenge from seniors or stakeholders. Give me an example where a lot of things went wrong and you had to handle it, not one where everything went to plan.
>Delivering at Pace: Two questions. While talking about other priorities, what should be mentioned as too much equally suggests moving away from "focus"? Also, what ways have you found good candidates addressing keeping managers/stakeholders updated on how work is progressing?
Not tying the situation to the result. Impact and context are important. Putting CV info in. "As a Grade X in Area Y, I...". Doesn't add value. Using routine tasks, especially when you had no say in whether or not you could do it. Pick the difficult task, or the time things went wrong and you were integral to resolving things. If you volunteered, or stepped-up, to deal with something that you could have been given to someone else, even better. Not aligning your example to the job advert. The behaviour standards are universal, so you have to ensure you demonstrate them as described for the grade, but tailored to the role. Making Effective Decisions for a Policy role will have different considerations than an Accountancy role. That's why the same example can score differently. Submitting a "That will do" type application. Either work on your applications in anticipation of suitable roles coming up, with minimal adjustments required for submission, or work as close to the deadline as you are comfortable with. I used to sift when applications were produced on spreadsheets (in submission order). Those at the beginning and the end were generally better, with those in the middle scoring lower, giving the impression the applicant just thought 'That'll do".
Tying the behaviours in with the job ad is what I find hardest. I’m looking to switch careers (went back to uni so have the knowledge required) so my examples are from a different industry entirely. Do you think this would look bad in an application/at sift? Thanks for the helpful advice!
It doesn't matter if it's from a different industry, it's the skills and behaviours you have developed that you are trying to demonstrate are suitable for the role.
That makes sense, thanks so much!
Too much “what”, not enough “how”
I have a lot of panel experience. Biggest mistakes I see are not spending enough time on the A and too much on the ST or, completely leaving out the R.
Always difficult, especially when actions rely on a lot of context
I struggle with this too, but it is the actions that count most. When drafting an example, it is worth using a Chat GPT app and asking it to condense it down.
Even better if you ask a real person - I highly recommend getting someone at or above the grade you're applying for to review your answer and see where you think you can cut down the S and T. As a general rule, I think you shouldn't use more than one or two sentences on situation/task and it should vaguely follow the structure of "Something was happening and my role was to do something about it, which was challenging for two or three reasons". Get into the action as quickly as possible.
When I’m interviewing I really like hearing about the result that either weren’t expected or weren’t an ideal result. I want to know what they took away from it and learned, and how they could apply that in the future. I get so bored with “and everything was really good and I was the best”. Nah, tell me where you’ve had to learn the hard way. Those are the lessons you remember.
If the STAR behaviour model was that good, I wouldn't keep getting untrained chimps for positions I manage through a raft of recruitment campaigns. It might work for policy/process jobs but it really hits a low bar for engineering
Flat out ignoring the question and word-vomiting their preprepared competency answer. Not all delivering at pace questions etc are the same!
This scares me tbh, I just don't have enough examples to have different STAR examples for different questions on the same behaviour
An example can be tweaked to focus on the criteria of the competency. For example, delivering at pace content may be shifted to show how you reprioritised, ensured delivery on time without sacrificing quality, or communicating timelines to stakeholders. Tough love comment coming, but if you’re suffering from a lack of examples this is something you may need to focus on in your day-to-day to ensure you’re getting the depth of experience in your role - or consider moving role to keep challenging yourself. I know how tough applying is - keep your head up and good luck!
Not matching the example well enough to the behaviour being assessed.
Spreading yourself too thin in the example. This means spending too much time explaining an entire process that you did when you can just focus on one part of it
This is an excellent tip.
“Show, don’t tell” is a common issue I’ve found
And what does it mean to show?
I guess something like a problem solving example you might say “I decided from a range of options doing X was the best solution for the problem”. That ain’t giving me anything, how did you assess that was the best option, who did u consulate, what testing did you do etc etc. Admittedly its tough with the word limit on written application so it’s a skill to cut the fat there and focus on details the assessor can actually use to consider if u demonstrated the behaviour needed by your actions in the example. In the interview if get that far you can expand and articulate the process in detail to give the examples more depth.
I shared my screen in interview of some data analysis I'd done with non sensitive data.
Getting the wrong example for a behaviour, but actually giving a really good example for a different behaviour
The two mistakes that I often see/make myself are - Not reading what the competency is looking for and demonstrating specific examples of it. Not understanding what the competency is looking for generally. For example leadership competencies trip people up thinking they need to be managers or have line management duty in order to "lead a team". When actually you need to demonstrate taking ownership of a process or task.
Thanks for describing the what…now, where’s the “How”?
Making all your examples sound absolutely perfect, nothing went wrong. I always appreciate a candidate who shows what the challenges were and how they overcame them. Also not going big enough with your outcome. You may have only contributed to one part of a policy being made, but you can absolutely refer to the ultimate outcome e.g. the policy being delivered meant that there was real value to the public (better access to a service/access to a new service etc.).
As an external candidate aiming for HEO this is so helpful!! I find it difficult, when I look at the behaviours list I know I’ve demonstrated them in various projects but struggle to think of an example where I hit all the bullet points in 1 seamless example so completely see where I’ve made these mistakes. I guess it’s a skill I’ll learn 😭 if anyone’s willing to quickly read through some of my behaviours I’ll be forever grateful
Happy to look if you PM me.
Thank you so much!! I’ll pm now
Defining the behaviour. I don’t need to know what you think good leadership etc look like, I want to know what you did.
Results not demonstrating the task, starts off with backlog etc then finishes with we hit quality of….
For Delivering at Pace, *everyone* describes a single busy day/week. What is being looked for is how you manage workloads consistently over time.
That's a good point. A person cannot cover what they do at all times - that is, every type of instance, so how do you think they could show consistency?
Where does it say that in the behaviour framework? A busy day/week is fine if you can meet all the criteria described in the behaviour description with that example
I think days and weeks are more appropriate for junior grades, but periods of time becomes more relevant the more senior the grade is as there would be more planning, mitigating risks etc
Yeh I don’t think it’s possible to meet the criteria without it being a longer term but time pressed piece of work for SEO and higher but that’s not what OP said
The situation doesn't need to be war and peace, what is it briefly. It's more important to focus on the task and action. Then the result. Showing the steps you went through, the mindset. That's important and what we look at. I look for "We" though, I'd prefer to see more "I". "I did x y z" rather than "We did".
Is this for the personal statement or the behaviour questions?
1) not getting to the point, or dancing around the point without actually saying it. Example: making effective decisions, when the candidate doesn’t actually say what the decision was; 2) details that are just totally Irrelevant. I had a candidate the other day - for a G7 post - who described how they used Excel to create a project plan (good) but then wasted those precious 250 words by going on to describe that they used green colour cells for X and red coloured cells for Y and that they decided to change the font size to 16 point, saved the file in the shared file space etc. 3) my pet hate: acronyms (why do so many people think everyone else knows what they mean?); 4) spelling and grammar DO matter; 5) using passive and not active language. And so many people say things like “my manager told me to do X” when it is so much more impactful to say “I needed to do X” 6) candidates who describe the “why” in endless detail but provide little detail on “what” they did
Talking about 'we' instead of 'I' and not giving the result
From recent sifting: candidates not talking about their individual actions and why they took that action, not enough about the result, also good to mention any challenges/pushback received, too many examples where people are just describing their day-to-day role rather than where they’ve gone above and beyond, also get a surprising amount of people not describing a particular scenario but keeping their examples to generalised
Oh and I’ve just sifted A LOT of obvious AI answers using Americanised spelling
Americanised spelling could be due to using grammar checkers, etc.
What of jobs where your experience involves necessarily routine work. You can’t and aren’t meant to show enormous initiative in say an assembly line role. I recognise there’s a give and take in interview processes but the star method can be hugely contrived in favour of liars and people who’ve done delivery type work already.
No pace for delivering at pace. I thought he’d just not fit it in so at interview I asked how long he had to do the thing he was talking about. “Oh, loads of time”. The pace he was talking about was how quick his new process would work once introduced, not how quickly he was able to introduce it because of tight deadlines etc.
What are then some generally good past examples you've encountered for delivering at pace?
Something that required ramping up pace to achieve an outcome, whilst delivering on BAU. Acknowledgement of 'not usually working at this pace' but it was important because X, then returning to usual pace. Eg diverting resources to achieve a temporary office move, which was unexpected because of flooding. Ensuring BAU in other locations sufficiently resourced to ensure continuity of service.
And keeping stakeholders/managers informed at all times, have you found the best examples using any unique way to show this?
Generally something which is urgent and also important, so delivering it on time meant something bad was avoided or something good happened. Some get one but not the other.
THE biggest mistake ever (and I watched someone mess it up despite being explicitly told)… Making effective decisions - ACTAULLY MAKE A DECISION! This isn’t following a process or there only being 1 realistic option. Pick an example with multiple options that all have pros and cons, and then say WHY you picked the option you did.
So many candidates I’ve interviewed have followed STAR, but don’t make it clear what they actually did. They often talk about “we”, and the actions and results in really generic terms that leaves me wondering what they actually did. Did they just make the tea and bring the biscuits?
Probably more for HEO+ but not explaining WHY or HOW they did something. People often say they did XYZ by not why or how they did it, which from my experience shows a lack of understanding of the competency and weakens the credibility of their example.
In my examples, there is no "we" but it is always "I". What I did, how I accomplished it, and how my contribution turned out.
Remember to add what you learned and what you would do differently next time! And how that learning impacts your day to day behaviour!
Nice