Civil Service behaviours and how to write examples

A Civil Service behaviour example is a short written account of something you did that shows one of the nine behaviours at the level of the job’s grade. Panels score each example on its own against the indicators for that grade, so the best ones are specific and about your own actions. Most people use the STAR structure and keep the result at the end brief.

The nine behaviours

The Success Profiles framework lists nine behaviours:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving
• Making Effective Decisions
• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Developing Self and Others
• Managing a Quality Service
• Delivering at Pace

An advert usually asks for a handful of these and may name one as the lead behaviour. When a campaign gets a lot of applications, the sift is often done on the lead behaviour first, and only candidates who pass have the rest of their application read. Put the most effort into that example.

Read the indicators for your grade

Each behaviour is described separately for each grade, from Administrative Assistant and Administrative Officer through Executive Officer, Higher and Senior Executive Officer, Grade 7 and Grade 6. The descriptions sit in the Success Profiles behaviours document on gov.uk. Take Delivering at Pace: an AO indicator is about taking responsibility for the quality of your own work, while a Grade 7 indicator is about setting priorities for a team and keeping the wider department’s objectives in sight.

Before you write, copy the indicators for your grade and the behaviour into a document, then pick an example that lets you hit several of them in plain words. A panel member scoring forty applications in an evening has those indicators next to your example.

Writing the example with STAR

STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result. The STAR method guide covers it in detail. For a Civil Service behaviour the balance usually runs like this:

1. Situation and Task in two or three sentences. Where you were, what the problem was and what you were responsible for.
2. Action as the bulk of the example. What you did, step by step, and why.
3. Result in two or three sentences. What changed, with a number if you have one, and what you learned or would do differently.

Write in the first person. “We reorganised the rota” tells the panel nothing about you. “I mapped the gaps in the rota, proposed two options to my manager and agreed the new pattern with the team” does.

Fitting into the word limit

The advert or form states the word limit for each behaviour example, and the form usually stops you typing past it. The limit is tight, so cut the scene-setting first. The panel does not need your team’s full history or a long explanation of the policy area.

A few habits help:

• Drop phrases like “In my current role as” when the context is already clear.
• Use numbers in place of adjectives: “cleared a backlog of 300 cases in six weeks” is shorter and stronger than “significantly reduced a large backlog”.
• Do not repeat the behaviour title back to the panel.
• Leave out acronyms the panel may not know, or spell them out once.

Write a long draft and edit it down. That is easier than writing to length from the start.

Hypothetical example: Making Effective Decisions at EO

Say you work in a contact centre and a system fault means some customer records show the wrong payment dates. You are the team’s senior caseworker.

Situation: a system fault was showing incorrect payment dates on a group of customer records, and callers were being given wrong information. Task: my manager asked me to decide how the team should handle calls until the fault was fixed. Action: I pulled a list of the affected records from the reporting tool and checked a sample against the source data to confirm the pattern. I compared three options: carrying on as normal, pausing all calls, or using a short script and a manual check for affected customers. I chose the third because it kept calls moving and removed the risk of wrong dates being quoted. I wrote the script, briefed the team at the start of the next shift and set up a shared log so we could track every affected call. Result: no further wrong dates were given out, and the log gave IT a clear list of records to correct.

The example is invented, but its shape is what panels look for: evidence, options weighed, a decision with a reason, and a result.

How examples are scored

Each behaviour is scored on a numbered scale set out in the candidate pack, usually with a minimum pass mark for each. A high score in one behaviour does not always make up for a fail in another, so check whether the campaign sets a minimum per behaviour. At interview you may be asked about the same behaviours again, and interviewers can ask follow-up questions to test the detail. Have a second example ready for each behaviour in case they want something different. Our guide to competency-based interviews covers that stage.