How to Write Selection Criteria for Australian Government Jobs

Are you applying for an Australian Government job but struggling to write your selection criteria?

If you are, then you’re not alone!

Even the most senior people within the public sector also struggle to do this.

They even seek out professional help.

So, I’m going to give you 3 tips to increase your chances for an interview!

Ready to dive in?

Tips For Writing a Selection Criteria

These tips come from an award-winning selection criteria writer, Carolyn Smith.

Carolyn is so good that even senior executives within the public sector go to her when they need help.

We interviewed her on our Career Care Package YouTube Channel.

She gave us absolute gold!

Here are highlight hot tips from that interview.

Tip # 1: Make Sure You’re Qualified to Do the Role

I know that seems like a really basic thing to say.

But applying for government jobs can be really confusing.

Recruiters can write selection criteria really generically.

So, if you just look at the selection criteria requirements you might think that you’re qualified for the role.

The best place to look to see if you are qualified is actually the duty statement or the accountability statement.

This is so you can see what you’re going to be doing every day.

If you can tick off most of those, then that’s a good guide directing you towards whether you can actually apply for the role.

Carolyn has this great advice in the interview that we did with her, “Even Einstein wouldn’t get a job as a Commissioner because he doesn’t have the requested experience.”

Tip #2: Provide Evidence of Your Skills

I used to recruit on government panels, and had to wade through hundreds of selection criteria.

So I’m sure many other government recruiters would also say what I am about to say here.

What used to drive me nuts was when people would make claims about their strengths or their viewpoint on various things but then provide no supporting evidence!

One way that you can actually provide evidence is by using the STAR approach.

I’ve written another blog on how to answer STAR examples which you can read here.

But essentially, STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

So, make sure you provide lots of concrete examples to provide evidence of your ability to perform a particular task or that demonstrates a particular skill that you have.

Tip #3: Provide Examples Where You Demonstrated the Skills

The advertiser may ask you to demonstrate skills in responding to selection criteria.

For example if it says, “Demonstrated good communication skills”.

When you select an example to provide, you’ve got to understand how you’d be applying those communication skills on the job.

Because you could be applying communication skills to:

• facilitate meetings
• write media releases
• write speeches
• train people on communication skills

It really depends on the job.

The example that you want to provide when you write up your specific examples is where you’ve applied communication skills that are meaningful on the job you’re applying for – the more relevant example you provide, the more likely you are to be shortlisted for an interview.

I hope these tips I’ve given you help you land an interview or at least help you to get started!

If you’d like interview tips, here’s a FREE e-book on the biggest mistakes to avoid during job interview. Download your free copy of “The 7 Deadly Sins to avoid at job interviews” here!

I strongly recommend that you hop over to the video recording with Carolyn Smith on how to write your selection criteria.

Because she is the guru of all gurus and there’s absolute gold in the interview!

Watch the full interview here.

I’ve also created a video where I discussed these 3 tips: