How the Civil Service sift works

The sift is the stage where a panel reads and scores the written parts of your Civil Service application, and only people who reach the required standard go on to interview. Your name and personal details are hidden from the people marking it. Each assessed section, usually behaviour examples, a CV or a personal statement, gets its own score. When a campaign attracts a lot of applications, the panel often marks the lead behaviour first and reads the rest only for candidates who pass it.

Who reads your application

Applications go through Civil Service Jobs. The recruitment team, or a shared service working for the department, strips out your name, contact details and equality monitoring answers, and passes the assessed sections to a sift panel. The panel is normally the hiring manager plus at least one colleague at or above the grade being recruited.

Name-blind sifting is standard practice across the Civil Service. It means the panel judges what you wrote and nothing else. Some adverts also ask you not to put your name, your current department or other identifying details in your examples or personal statement. Follow that instruction, because a panel member who spots a familiar name has to declare it.

What gets marked

The advert tells you which Success Profiles elements are assessed at the sift. The usual mix is below.

Part of the application	Element it assesses	How it is usually marked
Behaviour examples	Behaviours	Scored one by one against the indicators for the grade
CV or employment history	Experience, sometimes Technical	Scored against the essential criteria in the advert
Personal statement	Experience, sometimes Behaviours	Scored as a whole against the criteria listed
Online tests	Ability	Pass or fail at a cut-off, usually before the written sift
Qualification questions	Technical	Pass or fail

Online tests often come first, and if you score below the cut-off for that campaign, nobody reads your written application. Civil Service online tests covers what each test involves.

The lead behaviour and the pre-sift

Many adverts name one behaviour as the lead behaviour. If the campaign gets more applications than the panel can read in full, it runs a pre-sift on that one example. Candidates who score below the standard are rejected at that point, even if their other examples were strong.

So put your best evidence into the lead behaviour. Pick the example where your own actions were clearest and the result was easiest to show. Our guide to Civil Service behaviours covers how to match an example to the grade indicators, and the STAR method gives a structure that fits most word limits.

How scores decide who is invited

Each section is scored on a numbered scale set out in the candidate pack, with descriptors running from little or no evidence up to evidence well above the standard for the grade. Panel members score separately and then agree a final mark for each section.

You have to clear two thresholds. The first is a minimum score for each element: fall below it on any one element and you usually fail the sift, however well you did elsewhere. The second is a ranking. If more people pass than there are interview slots, the panel invites the highest totals and the effective pass mark rises. A solid application can miss out in a popular campaign for that reason alone, and the same application could get an interview in a quieter one.

When candidates tie, panels often use the lead behaviour score to separate them. The candidate pack sometimes says how ties are handled.

Disability Confident and adjustments

Many departments offer an interview to disabled candidates who opt in to the Disability Confident scheme and meet the minimum criteria at the sift. The minimum criteria are the pass standard for each assessed element, not the ranking cut-off, so you can be invited even if your total would not have made the top group. This does not guarantee a job. The details are in our guide to Disability Confident and guaranteed interviews.

You can also ask for adjustments to online tests, such as extra time, through the contact in the advert before you sit them.

Timing and what you see

Most adverts give an expected sift date and an interview window, with a note that the dates may move. Your status changes in your Civil Service Jobs account once the sift is complete, and you get an email. Campaigns with thousands of applicants can take several weeks to sift.

If you are rejected, check whether feedback is available in your account. Where it is not, a short request to the vacancy contact sometimes gets a score or a comment. Asking for feedback after a rejection has wording that keeps the request brief.

Getting through the next sift

Write each example to the behaviour named, using the indicators for the grade in the advert, not a higher or lower one. Keep to the word limit, since text over the limit may be cut or ignored. Spell out acronyms and describe your own actions in the first person. Tailor your CV to the essential criteria in the order they are listed. Before you start, check the nationality rules in the advert so you do not lose a strong application on eligibility.