Interdepartmental HEO

The circular is up on gov.ie but I don't think PAS have formally announced the compeition yet

I presume that 2 years service is still required, can't see any mention of it.

Question 13, why would they need to enquire about your age

Only just getting over the agony of missing out on an internal HEO comp, might as well heap more agony on myself.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends

Change thread title to :: Interdepartmental HEO 2022 ( Serving Civil Servants Only )

Just to make it stand out a bit more ? :)

No idea if it's possible in new boards, but a forum mod should be able to do it. You used to be able to draw attention to the mods by reporting a post, but I reported the post 2 days ago and nobody changed it yet so I guess the reporting feature might not be working yet

Basically telling you, your responses may be used for short listing and to provide your best examples. Tick box under it guessing thats to confirm your in agreement and you’ve read it.

Hi All, good luck from the outset. I notice that questions 3, 4, and 5 can easily be answered using the STAR method. However, question 2 seems as if that's not what they are looking for. I am planning to do as they ask and just give the brief summary while not necessarily using the STAR method for question 2. I wonder what way others have read into this?

Is shortlisting based on the application? I thought they did tests for interdepartmental heo competitions?

Also how are people defining a "project" for the purposes of the project management question? I have been part of several AP-led projects in which I played crucial roles but feel like I have never really managed a project myself.

I doubt it will be - for the 2020 inter-d we had to do the same questions, and then the next step was the tests which were proctored remotely. I failed the management test for those, so I'm not sure if they were used later on. For my internal HEO interview we had to fill out a similar form and they narrowed us down based on a video interview - doing it by application seems like too much work for them. The answers I gave on the internal form were the basis of my HEO interview, so definitely be mindful about that picking the examples. One of my examples was too technical I think so they failed me on that compentency.

I've done some stuff on the financial end in my department, so going with that for project managment. Only answer I'm keeping from my 2020 application since I know it works from my internal interview!!!

How much employment history are people including? Previous applications asked for everything back to leaving school, including any gaps.

For question 2, leadership examples. Does it mean 500 words for each leadership example, or 500 words for the whole competency ?

It says (all responses 500 words), so that's not clear when it comes to this particular competency imo

When I start typing it shows how many characters are left and it shows the total number of words I have typed. But good to know that the boxes only let you fill in 500 words. 400 is the most I have in any box at the moment

when starting to input employment history is it most recent first and add from there. or your earliest employment and add from there. it doesnt indicate which way to start inputting.

I just popped my most recent one in first. When finished, it asks if you want to put in more, and when you do, it adds them underneath, so it would make sense to put in your next most recent and so on. It's actually more intuitive than that old PDF form, so that's good. At the end, it gives you the option to jiggle them around if needs be, with Move Up and Move Down buttons as far as I know.

Hitting about 300+ for all the more recent ones anyway. Few lines describing my general work and then a couple of paragraphs detailing things I'm proud of that I think will be good options for my application.

It's hard to know exactly what they want, but I suppose the more words you put in, the more marks you should be able to get for shortlisting

I just popped mine in. Phew. I had copied my examples to Word to edit down to 500 words. I did in each example, one was 499 and then when I copied it back to the form, it said 504 words! This happened in each of them - very annoying. I left it though. It had taken me so long to edit it, I couldn't remove another word!! gah

Best of luck everyone!

Anyone idea of timeline of next stages?

and what the next stages are?

From my experience, there may be shortlisting (only happened once) from our form, depending on numbers. Then usually they'll take the first batch to psychometric testing, when that stage is over, it could be interview - am not so sure since Covid though.(There may be another stage that I've forgotten about too!) If you're in the first batch and do well all the way through the competition, it will take a couple of months I'd say.

Can you recall the questions?

Stage one taking place at the end of April, more info to come in mid-April

Does anyone know what the below is about?

Candidates who require reaosnable accomodations, we ask that you submit a psychologist/medical report be to ASU@publicjobs.ie by the 7th April 2022 if you have not already done so

I miss the two years service by a few days. How strict are they with that? Everyone in work tells me I should apply anyway..so I put in the application form anyway to see what happens but I'd really like to know if this application has a hope of success. It will be worthwhile from a practice point of view anyway, but still. I tried emailing the PAS but they gave me no help whatsoever.

Also, with these tests, is it known which company is the service provider for them? I assume this makes a difference based on a conversation I had with someone in work recently, but I cannot see anything about this in the literature they have sent out. I got through the aptitude tests on the AP competition last year but didn't for the AO, which really disappointed me, so I'd like to get some more familiarity with the process.

I'd be surprised if you are given any leeway in the two years service.

There were four. The first was an introduction of yourself. The key question was your team leadership skills, if you didn't pass that, you didn't go any further. The other two were judgement, analysis, and decision making and management and delivery of results.