Economist & Policy Analyst Graduate Role

From memory, this was a challenging but fun excercise that required you to go through several documents on a particular policy issue / challenge. I think they were actual internal civil service documents and we labelled as such unusually.

I did pretty well on this and concentrated on basic principles of policy analysis like the Five E's:

Effectiveness - How well does it work (or how well will it be predicted to work)?

Efficiency -How much work does or will it entail? Are there significant costs associated with this solution, and are they worth it?

Ethical considerations - Is it ethically and morally sound? Are there unintended consequences

Evaluations of alternatives - How good is it compared to other approaches? Have all the relevant other approaches been considered?

Establishment of recommendations for positive change - What can actually be implemented? Is it better to amend, replace, remove, or add a policy?

You should be able to display a small bit of number crunching if there's data in there (if only to display you can do it under time constraints, nothing to mad), but most of all, try to have a nimble mind about the excercise and show you're considering all permutations - you'll likely to be asked to rank your favoured policy proposals and have a short paragraph defending your choices. And be prepared to back up what you say from the panel.

Hi Louisejam, I actually got called to clearance last week so hopefully we won't be waiting long. Does anyone know how long it usually takes between getting called to clearance and actually starting work?

Also, thanks to everyone who shared their experiences on this thread over the last few years. Being able to look back over them was a great help throughout the process.

Hi there! I found the case study assessment a bit funny, particularly as I didn’t really prep at all (I don’t think there was a way you could tbh- the purpose was to test your critical thinking skills and ability to rationally analyse rather than to assess your knowledge). I did find the grilling at the end, which went into detail about what I wrote and why I took a particular stance, a little overwhelming? But then I thought to myself if I failed so far, so be it, and leaned into the idea that this ‘grilling’ is just a constructive chat (and that there weren’t necessarily any “right” answers, so long as you could reason?) where I could bounce ideas off people… that might sound a bit strange, but one basic example of this would be when they had asked me something to the effect of “how do we gauge train users’ experiences with Irish rail”, and I went on to talk about how assessing train users’ experiences would inherently infer a bias in any survey/assessment, as if they’re train users, then chances are they’re somewhat happy with Irish rail, so you’re sort of cherry picking survey responses. So, I presented them a question instead; how do we find and establish a channel of communication between us as survey moderators and the potential Irish rail customers in the future who are currently avoiding the service for whatever reason, as well as currently Irish rail customers? I think going with this tack showed I was able to be a little resourceful in a critical way but also look at the bigger picture? I hope this gives a sense of how my assessment went- when I was finished it, yup I was a little drained, but I also felt stimulated in an energising way?

Also, in other news, I’ve heard from PAS that they’ll be calling on everyone who got on the panel this year- so it’s a matter of when rather than if! Who knows how long it take to work through the panel and get past clearances 😅

@louisejam that was a great response to the Irish Rail question, well done.

For anyone whose waiting, the garda vetting took about two weeks for me, so don't worry too much about the horror stories about people waiting for months haha.

Yup, I’ve been called now! I’ve submitted my garda vetting form so I’m just waiting to hear back- It’s quite a nerve-wracking process having to wait to hear back as I’m a little concerned there’ll be no consideration for where candidates are based. I live hours away from Dublin and re-locating isn’t an option, I had just assumed that as there was no location specified on the information pack for where the jobs are based, that remote working would be an option for those who don’t live nearby? It would be a bit heart breaking to jump through all these hoops and wait months to hear how I’ve done, only to have to turn down the role simply because of its inaccessible location (that wasn’t specified too)!

Have you since heard back @Bobbitt ? I’m in a similar boat myself!

Hi! Hard to believe I’m asking this so many weeks on, but have you heard anything yet? I am still waiting on getting assigned a department 😅

I actually started about a month ago, the job is real, don't worry haha! I know the wait is incredibly frustrating but the work has been really interesting so far and it's definitely worth it

The Interview process is different this year to prior years in its format. So it's hard to tell, I have heard from people with an interview it's a presentation now on a self-selected topic.

Hi guys! Anyone around who got places on the OOM?

Yes! Also in batch 1.