How to Read a Civil Service Advert and Its Essential Criteria

What are the parts of a Civil Service job advert?

Layouts differ between departments, but most adverts use the same building blocks.

• Summary or role purpose, which says what the team is for. Use it for context and vocabulary.
• Responsibilities, which describe the day-to-day work and show the scope and autonomy of the post.
• Person specification, which holds the essential and desirable criteria. Essential criteria are the ones you need to meet. Desirable criteria are extras that may count in your favour.
• Behaviours, chosen from the nine Success Profiles behaviours and assessed against the descriptor for the grade.
• Technical skills, qualifications or professional memberships, where the role needs them.

Strengths are not named in adverts. They are assessed at interview, so you will not find them listed anywhere in the vacancy.

Then come the practical details. Treat the closing date and time as fixed. Take the grade and salary range from the advert itself, because pay varies by department and location. Note the location. Read the security and nationality requirements, because clearance level affects how long checks take and nationality rules differ between roles. Finally, check how to apply, including what the form asks for and any word limit.

What is assessed at sift and what at interview?

This varies by campaign, so look for any wording in the advert or the candidate information that says which criteria are tested at which stage. As a general guide, sift assesses written evidence against behaviours, technical requirements and experience. Sifting is name-blind. Strengths are not part of the written application, so nothing about them needs to appear in it.

Scoring and pass marks vary by campaign, and the vacancy holder decides how applications are marked. At interview you are usually asked about behaviours again, with strengths added, and some roles include a presentation or technical exercise.

If the advert does not say, assume anything listed could be tested at sift, and prepare examples you could also talk through for around five minutes at interview.

How do you turn an advert into a checklist?

Work through the advert line by line and write one row per requirement. Copy the criterion in the advert's own words, then add the following.

• Where it is probably assessed, using what the advert says rather than guesswork.
• Whether it is essential, desirable, a behaviour or a technical requirement.
• The grade level it should be evidenced at.
• Your best single real example, in a few words.
• Any gap you can already see.

Responsibilities are not usually separate criteria, but they show what the assessor will look for in your examples.

Example only. If the advert asks for "experience of managing stakeholder relationships", your row might read "essential, sift, HEO level, regular liaison with three partner teams on a shared reporting deadline, gap is no external stakeholders".

How can you tell the grade from the advert?

Most adverts state the grade, and where a department uses its own job titles, the advert normally gives the national equivalent. The salary range is a cross-check, not proof, since pay varies.

If the grade is unclear, read the responsibilities for clues about scope, such as how many people, services or decisions the post covers and how much direction the postholder is given. Then read the official behaviour descriptor for the grade, because the same behaviour name asks for different evidence at different levels.

Use the descriptor as a test for each example you pick. If your example looks well below the advertised grade in scope, independence or consequence, look for a stronger one.

How do you map your experience to each criterion honestly?

For each row, choose one real situation where you personally acted and something changed. Write what you did, using "I", and the result. Evidence can come from paid work, volunteering or other settings, as long as it is true and you can defend it at interview. Avoid reusing one example as the main evidence for every criterion.

Sometimes you only partly meet a criterion. Do not stretch it. Instead, do the following.

• State the part you can evidence, at its real scope.
• Keep every verb and number accurate. You may be asked to explain it.
• Add closely related experience only if it is genuinely transferable.
• Treat desirable criteria as optional, but think carefully about an essential one. A criterion with no evidence on the page has nothing to assess.

Example only. The advert asks for experience of managing a budget. You have tracked spend against a team forecast and flagged variances to your manager, but you have never held delegated authority. Say exactly that, with the outcome of what you flagged.

Right to work, security clearance, nationality, shift flexibility, relocation and UK residency are different. They are declarations of fact, not achievements, and they do not replace evidence for a criterion. Answer them truthfully, and never claim a clearance you have not held or a willingness you do not have.

Where Koda fits

Koda helps you apply this to your own experience. It works from your real evidence and matches it to the role and grade, so each criterion on your checklist is met with something you actually did and nothing invented. You stay in control of every word you submit.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• The Civil Service Application Process, End to End
• The 9 Civil Service Behaviours, Explained
• Civil Service Grades Explained: AA to SCS