What Is The Pass Mark For Civil Service AO?

Truegho

What is the interview pass mark for Admin Officer in the Civil Service? Just scored 12 on my HMRC interview, which unfortunately was not enough to be successful.

denla

Truegho wrote: »

What is the interview pass mark for Admin Officer in the Civil Service? Just scored 12 on my HMRC interview, which unfortunately was not enough to be successful.

The pass mark is not a certain score, but being the top 5-10% in the scorer's list. So the more people that applies the more difficult it is to be on the top of that score list.

Truegho

Well, I scored 4, 3, 3 and 2 on the competency questions, so . . . have I been rejected just because more people scored, say, 13?

denla wrote: »

The pass mark is not a certain score, but being the top 5-10% in the scorer's list. So the more people that applies the more difficult it is to be on the top of that score list.

Truegho

denla wrote: »

The pass mark is not a certain score, but being the top 5-10% in the scorer's list. So the more people that applies the more difficult it is to be on the top of that score list.

I always thought the Civil Service had a certain benchmark score - e.g. 14 - which you had to reach or exceed before you were successful at interview?

denla

Truegho wrote: »

Well, I scored 4, 3, 3 and 2 on the competency questions, so . . . have I been rejected just because more people scored, say, 13?

You'd have been rejected because you scored 2 in one area. Even if you didn't, if a lot of people scored 14 then you'd still get rejected by scoring 13 or 14 but your score points wasn't spread evenly among the questions.

Truegho

Oh, so now they reject you just because you don't spread your scores evenly across the questions? Words fail me! I always thought, as I said, you had to reach a certain pass mark (e.g. 14 or whatever).

denla wrote: »

You'd have been rejected because you scored 2 in one area. Even if you didn't, if a lot of people scored 14 then you'd still get rejected by scoring 13 or 14 but your score points wasn't spread evenly among the questions.

denla

Truegho wrote: »

Oh, so now they reject you just because you don't spread your scores evenly across the questions? Words fail me! I always thought, as I said, you had to reach a certain pass mark (e.g. 14 or whatever).

Even if you reach the 'pass mark' you still need a reasonable score for each question. This isn't just for Civil Service. A lot of companies (especially for the Gov and really prestigeous companies) using this scoring system requires you to achieve a certain overall score plus scoring a minimum score for each question before you pass. And your score still gets compared to other applicants. If they have too many applicants they'll decide on a cut off score and only interview the highest scoring applicants.

Truegho

They did invite me for interview, as I passed the first stage, which was the online sift test. It's just that I failed to get adequate marks on the four competency questions they put to me when I attended the structured interview.

Have been feeling very, very depressed about the rejection all day.

denla wrote: »

Even if you reach the 'pass mark' you still need a reasonable score for each question. This isn't just for Civil Service. A lot of companies (especially for the Gov and really prestigeous companies) using this scoring system requires you to achieve a certain overall score plus scoring a minimum score for each question before you pass. And your score still gets compared to other applicants. If they have too many applicants they'll decide on a cut off score and only interview the highest scoring applicants.

Sambucus_Nigra

You scored 12 out of what? 40? or 20?

Truegho

I don't know what the maximum mark was. I only know that when I checked my feedback on the Civil Service website, I scored 4, 3, 3, and - the question that let me down - 2.

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

You scored 12 out of what? 40? or 20?

Sambucus_Nigra

You are only assuming that it was the 2 that let you down. If they were all out of 10 then all 4 let you down.

Unless the maximum was 4 of course.