How to Turn Your CV into Civil Service Evidence

A CV that lists your duties tells a panel where you have worked, but not what you did well. Civil Service applications are assessed against behaviours and the criteria in the advert, so you need evidence of actions and results, not a list of responsibilities. This guide shows you how to find real situations in each role, turn a duty into an achievement, match examples to behaviours, stay truthful when you have no figures, and keep your evidence ready for interview.

Why does a normal CV not work as evidence?

Behaviours are assessed against the descriptor for your target grade, which describes what a person actually does at a given level of scope and independence. A line such as "Responsible for managing the team inbox and producing weekly reports" describes a job. It does not say what you decided, what you changed or what happened as a result, so an assessor has nothing to judge.

Duties also hide level. Two people at different grades can hold the same duty, and only the action, the scope and the outcome show which level the work sits at.

How do you find achievements in each role?

Work through each role, newest first, and ask the same questions. Do not worry about wording yet.

What problem, change or pressure came up, and why did it matter?
What did you personally do, and which decisions were yours?
How did you go about it, and who did you work with?
What changed afterwards, for the service, the team, the public or your manager?
Is there a real figure that goes with it, such as volume, time, money or people?

Paid work is not the only source. Volunteering, work experience and activities outside work can all supply evidence, and your strongest example counts however long ago it happened. Write each situation as its own note, with only the facts that belong to that one event. Never blend several events into one.

What does a duty look like once it becomes an achievement?

The change is from describing the job to showing what you did and what it led to. Choose wording that matches your real ownership, so say you led something only if you led it. The figures below are invented for illustration only, so use your own real details.

Example before. Responsible for processing correspondence from members of the public.
Example after. Cleared a backlog of 400 letters by building a triage log that sorted cases by urgency, so replies met the team's target times within one quarter.
Example before. Prepared monthly budget reports for the team.
Example after. Redesigned the monthly budget report for a team of six by replacing three spreadsheets with one shared template, cutting preparation time from two days to one.
Example before. Helped customers with complaints.
Example after. Resolved a rise in repeat complaints about delayed refunds by agreeing a clearer holding message with the finance team, after which fewer customers needed to call back.

Notice what the after versions share. Each one is a single real event, each shows something you did rather than something you were responsible for, and each ends in a change someone could observe. If you are still in the role, describe finished achievements in the past tense, and keep every bullet for an ended role in the past tense.

How do you match examples to behaviours and prepare for interview?

Start from the advert, not your CV. List the behaviours and essential criteria the vacancy names, then read the official descriptor for your target grade. Choose your strongest real example for each one and check that its scope, independence and consequence suit the level. Strengths are not named in adverts and are assessed mainly at interview, so use your CV to evidence behaviours and criteria.

Try to make your examples work as a set. Each should add something new, so avoid showing the same behaviour again and again when another example could cover a gap.

For each achievement, keep a short note of the situation, task, your actions, the result and what you learned. Interview answers about behaviours ask for a specific time, and a good answer runs for around five minutes spoken. Reflection, the second R in STARR, is expected from SEO upwards. Your panel may ask about anything on your CV, so you should be able to talk it through without reading it out.

What do you do when you have no figures?

Never invent a number, team size, budget or scope. You will need to explain at interview where every figure came from, and you should only claim what a neutral reader of your history would accept as true. Running the front desk for one office does not become a regional role.

If you have no figures, you still have options.

State a real scale, such as the number of cases, users, sites or teams you dealt with.
Describe an observable outcome, such as a process the team adopted or a decision taken on your advice.
Use how long you sustained something, taken from the dates of the role.

Check old emails, reports and handover notes before you decide a figure is lost. If you still cannot defend a number, leave it out. Do not take the action from one project and the figure from another either. Each fact may be true, but together they describe something that never happened.

Where Koda fits

Koda helps you apply this to your own experience. It starts from your real evidence and matches it to the role and grade you are targeting, with nothing invented. You stay in control of every word, so what goes on your CV is yours to check and change.

Frequently asked questions

Should I keep a list of duties as well as achievements?›

A short line describing the role is fine if the job title does not explain it. Spend most of your words on achievements, because duties give a panel nothing to assess. If a duty matters to the advert, turn it into an achievement with an action and an outcome.

How many bullets should I write for each role?›

There is no fixed number in the framework, and adverts or application systems may set their own limits, so check the instructions first. As a guide, give more space to recent or highly relevant roles and less to older ones, and make each bullet a separate achievement.

What if I worked in a team and did not lead anything?›

Describe what you personally did within the team, and choose wording that honestly reflects it, such as contributed to, produced or coordinated. Do not claim other people's work or the whole team's result. A clear, true account of your part is more useful than an inflated one.

See how your experience scores against a real vacancy

Upload your CV and Koda benchmarks your evidence against any Civil Service job description, free, no card required.

Upload your CV

Related guides

Official framework reference: Success Profiles on GOV.UK. Grade requirements and processes vary by campaign, so always follow the specific vacancy advert.