Civil Service behaviours: how to write examples

The nine behaviours

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving
• Making Effective Decisions
• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Developing Self and Others
• Managing a Quality Service
• Delivering at Pace

Each behaviour has indicators that change with grade, from Administrative Assistant and Administrative Officer up to the Senior Civil Service. Read the indicators for your grade in the official behaviours document and match your example to them.

How to write a behaviour example

1. Pick a real, recent example that fits the behaviour and the grade.
2. Use STAR: keep the situation and task short and spend most words on your actions.
3. Say 'I', not 'we'. Assessors score your own actions.
4. Include the result and, where you can, what you learned.
5. Stick to the word limit in the advert.

Worked example: Managing a Quality Service

Situation: Customers often complained that letters from our team were hard to understand. Task: My manager asked me to improve our three most-used letter templates. Action: I read a month of complaints to find the common confusions, rewrote the templates in plain English and tested them with two colleagues from another team who didn't know the process. I asked our legal adviser to check the wording, then trained my team on when to use each version. Result: Complaints about letters fell over the next quarter, and other teams asked to use the templates.

This example is illustrative. Use your own evidence. Prepare for the interview with the competency-based interview guide and the interview question tool.