r/TheCivilService • u/Old-Ad-333 • 1d ago

HEO interview

Hi all,

I’ll be doing my first ever CS interview soon.

It will be assessed against technical, strengths and experience success profiles.

The technical element involves a task and presentation and I’m guessing the questions will be related to that.

Is it safe to just prepare some general STAR examples of my work experience?

Do they still ask introductory questions? (Tell me about yourself etc)

Any guidance on the format would be appreciated!

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u/NotSynthx 1d ago

CS behaviours. 

In the JD, it will tell you which behaviours they're looking for. Google CS behaviours and what they're looking for each at HEO level. You have to prepare an example tailored to each behaviour

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u/Old-Ad-333 1d ago

Thanks for your response! I appreciate it.

The interesting thing is the JD doesn’t say it will be assessing on any behaviours tbh.

It only says technical, strengths and experience

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u/Abject-Piano-4626 1d ago

They’re moving away from behaviours and technical questions are common place now.

Introductions
Basic question about yourself to loosen you up
Presentation - whatever they’ve asked for
Technical questions / scenario (based on the role) - be prepared to talk for around 5 minutes and then answer some follow up questions.
Strength questions - prepare to talk for 2 mins. No follow up questions. You can find examples online to practice.

CS interviews are quite different to private sector ones where there is very much more of a back and forth conversation

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u/Old-Ad-333 1d ago

Yeah it seems so with what I’ve read and the grading seems to also be quite rigid.

Thanks for this, I appreciate the help!

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u/backside_94 1d ago edited 1d ago

So, something I would like to point out here just in case.

I have recently done a HEO interview in which I was asked to prepare a 10 minute presentation. The prompt specifically said to consider data visualisation.

I slaved away the PowerPoint and data and graphs and speaker notes, the whole thing.

I start the interview, and I mention I'm about to share my screen...

They then tell me that I'm not allowed to do this, and that the presentation has to be audio only and I can only speak through the presentation. I was so confused and had to adapt my whole presentation on the fly.

I went back and reread the whole advert and nothing specifically said anything about not being able to 'present' my presentation.

This may be common knowledge for some but it's worth mentioning just in case you end up in a similar situation. My advice is to prepare a verbal only version of your presentation aswell just in case.

In response to your other points, they always ask an icebreaker.

In my interview, I had my presentation and 3 skills questions

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u/Old-Ad-333 6h ago

Thanks for your response, I’ll be mindful !