Seeing the Big Picture: Civil Service Behaviour Examples by Grade

GOV.UK defines the behaviour in these words: “Understand how your role fits with and supports organisational objectives. Recognise the wider Civil Service priorities and ensure work is in the national interest.” Civil Service Careers prints the same definition on its Behaviours page. Everything else on this page builds on that definition and on the grade-band examples that follow it.

GOV.UK introduces the examples like this: “The following examples of the behaviours are designed to give an overview of what is expected of individuals at each level.” And it adds: “There is no expectation that you need to demonstrate every part of each example to be successful.” So the lists below are a description of the standard at each band, not a checklist that must be completed.

On GOV.UK each list completes a sentence that ends “are when you:”, which is why the examples begin with a verb in lower case. They are reproduced exactly, including GOV.UK’s own punctuation. Find the band that matches the grade in your advert; the headings are GOV.UK’s.

Read down the six lists and the “picture” gets wider at each band: team, wider objectives, organisation, government, nation. The middle column quotes the wording that first appears, or matters most, at that band. The right-hand column is our reading of it and is not official guidance.

Each band has an example about the different needs of the people on the receiving end. It is the part of this behaviour that candidates writing about strategy most easily leave out.

Our reading: at every grade the “big picture” includes who is affected, and the wording moves from “individuals with different needs” at AA and AO to “all stakeholders” and “all end users” at the senior bands. An example that names the wider aim and also says whose needs it took into account covers both halves.

We looked for official example interview questions for this behaviour on GOV.UK and on Civil Service Careers and found none. What the official pages do say is short. GOV.UK says you “may be asked to give examples of when you have demonstrated a particular behaviour”, or “how you would behave in a given situation”. A Defra recruiter writing on the department’s GOV.UK blog says behaviour questions “may start with ‘Tell me about a time when…’”.

The six questions below are example questions we wrote from the descriptors, one for each grade band. Each is built from a single GOV.UK example, shown beside it so that you can see where the wording comes from. We do not claim that any department asks them. Use them to rehearse, and expect your panel to word its own.

Two points on using them. First, a panel can turn any of these into a hypothetical (“How would you…”), which GOV.UK expressly allows for. Second, each question is narrower than the behaviour. A good answer to one of them shows that line of the list clearly and touches others on the way; it does not try to recite the whole list.

The rules that apply to every behaviour are set out in full in the section “How behaviour examples work” further down this page. This section is about fitting them to this behaviour.

GOV.UK’s advice on structure is one sentence: “In your own examples, consider using the STAR method which allows you to set the scene, show what and how you did and the overall outcome.” The table below is our suggestion for what each part should carry when the behaviour is Seeing the big picture. It is drawn from the definition and the examples above, and it is ours, not an official template.

Then check the draft against your band. Take the list for your grade from the tables above, or use the tool, and go line by line. Mark a line as shown only when you can point to the sentence that shows it. Lines with no sentence behind them are either gaps to fill or parts you have chosen not to cover, which GOV.UK allows.

If the tool does not load, the six tables under “the GOV.UK examples in full” carry exactly the same lines.

GOV.UK describes Success Profiles as “the recruitment framework used within the Civil Service”. A Success Profile “is made up of 5 elements”: behaviours, strengths, ability, experience and technical. “Not all of the elements are relevant to every role”, so the job advert is the only place that says which ones your application will be assessed on. Behaviours are defined as “the actions and activities that people do which result in effective performance in a job”.

The behaviours document gives a separate list of examples for six grade bands. Civil Service Careers describes the grade structure a little differently: “There are seven broad grades in the Civil Service”. The two fit together as follows. The right-hand column is our mapping of one page onto the other.

Each band heading on GOV.UK ends “or equivalent”, apart from the last. Departments use their own grade names, so the advert’s stated grade or its equivalent decides which list applies to you. GOV.UK puts the principle in one line: “Civil Service Behaviours are specific to the grade level of the job role.”

We found no official page that gives a number. GOV.UK says recruiting managers “will choose a selection of behaviours which are best suited to the specific job role” and that “You will not be asked to demonstrate all Civil Service Behaviours for one role.” It also says: “Read the job description carefully to see which behaviours are required for the job you are applying for.” Any figure you see elsewhere for a typical number of behaviours is not from these pages.

So 250 words for each behaviour example is the figure the official pages give for the Civil Service Jobs form, and one of them says “usually”. We found no page saying every vacancy uses 250, so the limit printed in your advert and on your form is the one to write to. Note what the first row says happens to the words beyond the limit: they are deleted, not flagged.

A personal statement is a different document with a different length, and two official pages give different ranges for it. The same Civil Service Careers GOS page says personal statements or statements of suitability “can often have word limits of 500-1250 words”. A Defra recruiter writing on the department’s GOV.UK blog says “Typically, the Personal Statement is 250-1,000 words long”. Both are descriptions of what is common, not rules, and neither is about the behaviour examples.

The behaviours page says: “In your own examples, consider using the STAR method which allows you to set the scene, show what and how you did and the overall outcome.” The link in that sentence goes to “A brief guide to competencies”, published by Civil Service Resourcing on 12 April 2016. That guide was written for the earlier Civil Service competency framework, and it is still the page the 2025 behaviours document points to. Its account of STAR is below.

The same guide gives the balance between the four parts: “Keep the situation and task parts brief. Concentrate on the action and the result.” It also offers an alternative, the CAR approach (Context, Actions, Results), and says of the choice: “it’s all down to your personal style of writing.” The word used on the behaviours page is “consider”. STAR is recommended; no page we read makes it compulsory.

Four more lines from that guide apply to any behaviour: “Use ‘I’ not ‘we’. This is about your role in the task and how you affected the outcome.” “Don’t assume the sift panel has any knowledge of the situation or context.” “The sift panel cannot infer what is not included in the example and can only assess what you have actually written.” And: “Ensure that there is a clear outcome stated.”

Civil Service Careers says to “choose examples that enable you to describe specific things you did”, and to think of examples that:

GOV.UK describes the sift as “an assessment of your behaviour examples, CV and personal statement and other criteria to determine whether they are sufficient to merit you being invited to interview.” The panel “read the examples or information you provide and then rate it before agreeing on a final score. Rating scales can vary across recruiting organisations but the standard is the same.” And: “Generally to progress to the next stage a candidate should score at least 4 for each example.” The Defra recruiter’s blog describes the scale its recruiters use as “a Civil Service rating scale between 1 and 7”. GOV.UK does not print the scale itself or what each score means.

We looked for a published list of example behaviour interview questions on GOV.UK and Civil Service Careers and did not find one. The opening words quoted above are the only official wording of a behaviour question we can cite. That is why the questions in these guides are written by us from the GOV.UK examples and are labelled as ours.

GOV.UK lists the ways behaviours can be assessed “at various stages of the recruitment process”: an application form requiring written examples, the Civil Service judgement test, a personality test, an interview, an assessment centre, and job related simulations such as a presentation, an in-tray exercise, a written analysis or exercise, a group exercise or discussion, a role-play and an oral briefing. “The job description will outline the elements required for the role and the selection method(s) that will be used.”

A second online assessment is also tied to the behaviours. GOV.UK says the Civil Service Styles Assessment “measures your effectiveness in relation to the Civil Service Behaviours”. Whether your vacancy uses either test is stated in the advert.