2020 Executive Officer Civil Service

November Golf

Its concerning the amount of people who haven't read the information booklet, stage familarisation booklet and emails received.

Madelyn

Mike Foxtrot wrote: »

Its concerning the amount of people who haven't read the information booklet, stage familarisation booklet and emails received.

I was just typing the same thing.
I cannot understand how anyone can do a competition without reading all the information. I read it several times and printed it.

Cqkylie

That exam was just cruel... we are applying for EO not for NASA!! I honestly don’t think a PO exam would have been that ridiculously diffucult..
Questions about containers and their measurements & calculating metres etc like seriously?? I don’t envision me having to ship containers as an EO.. Did anyone else get them types of questions?

Connected99

Madelyn wrote: »

I just completed the test..
I was doing verbal and thought I was still doing the practice one. Be careful as it does not tell you that you have started the actual test. Unless I missed something.

The numerical was way easier that I thought it would be.
I have no idea how well I did because it went so fast.

Same happened to me!!

kiki smiling

Yes I had the shipping container question.....I guessed all answers for that one as none of the answers matched my calculations. I was so disappointed after the numerical.

newbraces

What's the OOM number?

gestappo

newbraces wrote: »

What's the OOM number?

It’s your ranking on how well you did compared to everyone else

Anonire

kiki smiling wrote: »

Yes I had the shipping container question.....I guessed all answers for that one as none of the answers matched my calculations. I was so disappointed after the numerical.

My last 3 questions were about the containers. None of my answers matched at all. At that point I didn't know if it was preferable to spend time trying to figure them out or just move on. If we had known is it better to take half an hour and get a correct answer or take 5 minutes and get an incorrect answer it would be handy. Up to that point I thought the numerical was fine. It's only 3 out of the 15 anyway.

Mikefitzs

Mike Foxtrot wrote: »

Its concerning the amount of people who haven't read the information booklet, stage familarisation booklet and emails received.

They are the ones that will get the jobs and walk around the office like headless chickens asking C.O.’s for help.

Govannan

newbraces wrote: »

What's the OOM number?

Just to help you further, OOM stands for Order of Merit.

Dublintigger

newbie18892 wrote: »

I did a free practise E-tray this morning online. I think it was on the assessment centre website. I had never done anything like it before so went in blind just to see what I felt about it. It was a scaled back version with four emails to answer. I got scored 50%. Not sure how positive or negative that is in the grand scheme of things but I'm planning to practise more. Does anyone have website recommendations for practising on?

Did you do the Situational Judgement Test (SJT) on SOVA?

quintana76

job seeker wrote: »

Internally, I am not sure. I'm not working in the Civil Service.

There were verbal and numerical exams. Same as the normal external ones.

tom_thumbs84

Tommy come lately here just finished the test.

The numerical wasn't as hard as some of the ones on Jobtestprep, but were still pretty manky.
Some of the ones on Jobtestprep are more like riddles than arithmetic, but at least the real ones today felt like actual sums-

I couldn't get some of my calculations close to the answers, so that was a bit disconcerting-so I eyeballed the graphs and hoped for the best.
They seemed to get easier for me as they went along, so it was nice that the algorithm took pity on me.

Sure what can you do I suppose.

Aleece2020

Lot of people seem worried about the recordings. Unless you whipped out your phone during those 30 second intervals, I imagine you'll be fine.

Bamboozled2410

tom_thumbs84 wrote: »

Tommy come lately here just finished the test.

The numerical wasn't as hard as some of the ones on Jobtestprep, but were still pretty manky.
Some of the ones on Jobtestprep are more like riddles than arithmetic, but at least the real ones today felt like actual sums-

I couldn't get some of my calculations close to the answers, so that was a bit disconcerting-so I eyeballed the graphs and hoped for the best.
They seemed to get easier for me as they went along, so it was nice that the algorithm took pity on me.

Sure what can you do I suppose.

Between knowing some answers, guessing some and maybe getting them right and then just flat out guessing wrong- the algorithm probably felt worse than I did at the end

SONIC2008

The only good I got of that was cleaning my dining room in preparation for the recordings.

I am pretty sure the algorithm felt like throwing busy bee maths questions at me in the end.

Disaster.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Mike Foxtrot wrote: »

Its concerning the amount of people who haven't read the information booklet, stage familarisation booklet and emails received.

I was thinking the same thing. There's so many posts on here that would rule people out of the competition if you could match them to their applications.

flazio

Cqkylie wrote: »

That exam was just cruel... we are applying for EO not for NASA!! I honestly don’t think a PO exam would have been that ridiculously diffucult..
Questions about containers and their measurements & calculating metres etc like seriously?? I don’t envision me having to ship containers as an EO.. Did anyone else get them types of questions?

Perhaps, but you if you are assigned to the Department of Transport or Marine then you could be working with people who do work with containers. No harm in understanding their job.

thecom1993

Just finished the test with forty minutes to spare. I understand the need to make sure we're not being helped but Christ Almighty, that was a load of crap. I was in work on a revenue computer but had to swap to my phone as there are no web cams.

Nekarsulm

Didn't get the container questions, got two different sets of graphs concerning insurance costs, and a set about shop rental costs in London, Paris, New York and Berlin.

We live out in the country, and half way through the test a van drove uptown thehouse and guy got out and started ringing the doorbell. I couldn't move, then he came to the window looked straight at me and started knocking.
I had to ignore him, couldn't even look towards him.
I bet he thought I was a brazen **** !

floorpie

Just finished this. 10 minutes for verbal, 40 for numerical.

I personally find these verbals to be largely illogical/inconsistent, so I don't know how I did here.

Re: numerical, I was dubious at how difficult people were reporting the to be, but it certainly was more difficult than previous campaigns imo. I'm sorry I didn't get it done sooner so I could advise people, but perhaps the most surprising thing I got in many questions were weighted averages across as many as 10 values. So revise weighted averages asap (i.e. in the next 30 seconds).

Extrapolations for future values were also required, not too bad, but they were ambiguously worded to throw you off. I.e. you may need to extrapolate numerous values separately, based on the growth of each value.

The last thing that threw me off was when they gave a formula for calculating effective tax, with not enough data to use the formula. In this case, *read the question*. I got stuck on this for probably 10 minutes and in the end it was a silly trick.

In all cases I at least found an answer that was listed, but I'm not sure this means much.

fionnr01

thecom1993 wrote: »

Just finished the test with forty minutes to spare. I understand the need to make sure we're not being helped but Christ Almighty, that was a load of crap. I was in work on a revenue computer but had to swap to my phone as there are no web cams.

How do you mean 40 minutes to spare?

CivilCybil

My numerical questions were about car insurance and then about company cars.
There was one question asking about average mileage which sounds simple (as in, average is add the total mileage and divide by the number of cars) but no matter what way I worked it out my answer came nowhere near the provided answers.

Oh well, will just have to wait and see.

MrKingsley

Did mine there a couple of hours ago.

Very happy with the Verbal. I’ve done a few of them recently for different jobs so knew What I was looking for.

The numerical was a mixture between straightforward and impossible for me. I didn’t spend longer than 90 secs on any question though. If I was no where near an answer after that time I had a guess.

Best of luck everyone

Jovetic

40 mins on numerical. You won't be going any further

I could have spent longer but made sure to do it in less than 15 mins

floorpie

CivilCybil wrote: »

My numerical questions were about car insurance and then about company cars.
There was one question asking about average mileage which sounds simple (as in, average is add the total mileage and divide by the number of cars) but no matter what way I worked it out my answer came nowhere near the provided answers.

Oh well, will just have to wait and see.

This is one of the questions I refer to above (https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=114706292&postcount=1434). The answer here was a weighted average, i.e. you have to multiply the number of each model by the mileage per car, then divide by the total number of cars across all models. This would be more obvious if there were 5000 of one model of car, obviously then the total average mileage for all cars would be heavily weighted by the high number of that single model.

The method you did would be more correct if there were just one of each model.

There were never questions like this on previous tests, that I recall, and there were more involved weighted averages in later questions.

Marmo1986

newbie18892 wrote: »

I did a free practise E-tray this morning online. I think it was on the assessment centre website. I had never done anything like it before so went in blind just to see what I felt about it. It was a scaled back version with four emails to answer. I got scored 50%. Not sure how positive or negative that is in the grand scheme of things but I'm planning to practise more. Does anyone have website recommendations for practising on?

Can’t stand the e tray, think it’s a pointless exercise. I got 53 the last time, pass makenwas 55 then. It was straight after the interview which I passed, eliminated because of e tray 😫

VitreousLife

CivilCybil wrote: »

My numerical questions were about car insurance and then about company cars.
There was one question asking about average mileage which sounds simple (as in, average is add the total mileage and divide by the number of cars) but no matter what way I worked it out my answer came nowhere near the provided answers.

Oh well, will just have to wait and see.

By the sounds of it we had the same test and I’m fully sure I got maybe one correct answer haha best of luck!

Dublintigger

VitreousLife wrote: »

By the sounds of it we had the same test and I’m fully sure I got maybe one correct answer haha best of luck!

I think there were a number of different test for both numerical and verbal.
I suppose the adjudicators need a bit of variety when marking the assessment 😂

Govannan

fionnr01 wrote: »

How do you mean 40 minutes to spare?

Yeah I think this person has the meaning of "time to spare" backwards!