Executive Officer (Dublin) in the Civil Service 2023

dubbloke100

Placed OOM mid 700's in the inter-departmental competition. Whats my chances of getting called for an interview?

eamonnq

If someone misjudged the amount of words used in one of the responses and went over the 500 word limit, and there application was not continued with due to this, is there any way of finding out the issue or appealing it ?

Not myself.

Technocentral

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121051787#Comment_121051787

LargeVolumeRecruitment5@publicjobs.ie is the email address for queries.

Technocentral

Good luck to all, I passed all 3, got top tier result for situational, middle for verbal reasoning and lower for numerical.

HBpencil

Does anyone have a copy of the information booklet? I tried to view it but they’ve taken it off already.

jessshel

Anyone any tips for interview 🙏

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121053511#Comment_121053511

Lots of prep!

user1250

@jessshel review civil service renewal 2030 with a good focus on theme 3.

EO 2022 thread have some good tips and example questions 🙂

HiggieL

This one?

user1250

Yes and good example questions in the below link.

Hope this helps!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058227180/the-questions-you-might-get-asked-at-eo-heo-thread-for-the-civil-service#latest

jessshel

Thanks so much

HiggieL

@user1250 thanks so much 😀

blondie1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121048926#Comment_121048926

Yes , doing well in the interview changes a lot .

jessshel

Has anyone got their interview date?

vatsie76

Hi folks, any tips on scoring well in these test. I managed to pass but keen to improve the score. Any tips will be appreciated!

jessshel

With the maths I try to answer as many as possible correctly and if I’m not sure of an answer I will skip as there is no negative marking and it’s really hard to get them all answered anyway.

Guffy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121073740#Comment_121073740

Would it not make sense to just throw a guess in rather than skip

vatsie76

my concern is more on verbal reasoning. Any tips to up the score pls 😂

EduKate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121071843#Comment_121071843

Apply for any position that has similar tests on publicjobs.ie, regardless of whether you want the position or not - use it as practice, particularly for the situational tests.

For verbal questions, pay attention to whether the words used are 'absolutes' or not - like 'must', 'should', 'always', 'all', 'every', 'never' etc when deciding if something is true or false - they're easy to overlook. If you're running out of time, guess and go with your gut on whether an answer sounds like it could be true or false - honestly, you'd be surprised, particularly if there's a passage about something like pollution or traffic that you might have a tiny bit of knowledge about.

Here's examples from the familiarisation material:

Q.7 Some of the key reasons for the recent growth in sporting activity are related to each other.

Q.46 The Department has guidelines on procurement practice.

Q.51 Better inter-connectivity with public transport is expected to help increase the number of people commuting by cycle.

Q.52 The quality of individual managers has no real impact on the productivity of the businesses they manage

Even without reading the passages those questions refer to, you can probably guess the answers if you were struggling for time based on whether they sound plausible (correct answers are True, True, True, False).

For numerical, there will always be a text heavy set of questions. I skip those and leave them to last because (for me at least) they take up a disproportionate amount of time. Google the 'unitary method'. Once you get the hang of that and percentages, passing shouldn't be a problem.

For situational stuff, pay attention to whether the passage mentions doing 2 tasks. If it does, a good answer should cover how you handle both tasks, not just one.

For example, if the passage says you have two tasks - to answer a bunch of emails and do a briefing for a minister when you're struggling for time, one of the options might be to delegate emails to a clerical officer.

That might seem like a good answer, but if that's all you do, and the answer doesn't mention anything about the ministers briefing, then it's actually weak. If you check the other answers, you'd notice there would probably be one that covers both of the tasks. A good/excellent answer should always cover every part of the task with the task being completed on time.

With regards to getting someone above you involved, like a HEO or AP - contacting a 'higher up' might seem like a good idea, but the passage will often mention that they're in a meeting or doing something that would prevent them from being available before the deadline. They use this a lot for the 'delivery of results' on time competency SJT questions. If the passage involves a deadline, and an answer involves contacting/waiting for someone else, it's usually not a great option.

Try to think of 'why is this specific detail in the passage', what competency are they examining, does the answer address everything or only part of the task, and does this address the issue now or does it involve waiting on other people (with a deadline). Just because an answer sounds good in isolation when you read it doesn't mean it's the answer they want if it overlooks something in the passage - one part of two tasks or overlooking one of the small details in the passage.

Added: I failed the SJT the first time I took it. I applied for other positions purely for practice, trying different things - my scores have gradually increased. Got 600's this time. It's a skill that can be learned.

Practice questions can be found at https://www.quickstart360.co.uk/runtesteo.aspx

I input the competencies into ChatGPT, then ran those questions through it, and asked ChatGPT to give me its logic/reasoning - it pointed out things I missed that I now look for. Gradually got the scores up in that practice test too.

Turtyturd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121074168#Comment_121074168

I haven’t done them in a while but when I first started applying I used to struggle with them but a couple of things that worked for me are;

approaching them with the same mindset as the numerical ones and looking at them logically. If it says ‘A’ it can’t be ‘B’ or ‘C’…whereas if you’re just reading it as the paragraph you think it could be ‘A’ or it could also be ‘C’.

All the information is in the paragraph and you don’t need to think about ‘what if this, or what if that happens’ which is another thing that seems to catch people out.

Buy practice books, I downloaded a few books with these types of assessment questions in them but the difficulty was much higher than the ones used by the CS, I went through them and by the time it can to doing the CS ones they seemed much easier and the answer jumped out.

Bookworm23

Has anyone been called for an interview? Just wondering how much notice you get? My clerical interview was 3 weeks notice so hoping for the same so I can prepare. I have 2 small babies so my brain is not running well with the lack of sleep 😅 I mean logically I could just tip away at it now but I work better with deadlines. 😂

HiggieL

I actually bought practice tests and tou have them for 12 months. It was £38 and well worth it. https://member.assessmentday.com/member/login .

They gave a discount code on the site.

Lollipops23

I passed all 3- I was convinced I'd failed the Numerical one. I'm Open Stream 323/Inter 110 (I'm not in the CS so that doesn't matter!)

I'm hoping my CMO isn't too high, and I get called for an interview sooner rather than later.

Results were:

Numerical Reasoning- 495

Verbal Reasoning- 566

Situational Judgement-616

Overall 1182.

jessshel

I found out on the 1st Sept that mine was going to be 13th ☺️

jessshel

Like I said it’s just what I try and do as it works for me. It’s hard to get all the questions answered so I try to do the ones I’m 100 percent sure on instead of wasting time trying to understand the more difficult ones to me

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121077463#Comment_121077463

What OOM range are you?

skidmarkoner

Interview?

jessshel

60 for open and 18 for inter

sdsdsd25

Does anyone have experience with the Irish-language stream? I'm in the high 20s in OOM, wondering when I should expect a call if at all

IndigoStreak

I have my interview coming up soon and I'm just wondering if your answer to a competency based question covers another competency will that count or will they ask for another example for the other competency?