Doing It Better – The Ultimate Selection Criteria Training & Selection Criteria Examples

Selection criteria are the favoured job application and selection tool for government jobs.

My selection criteria courses and dozens of free blogs will give you skills and your own selection criteria examples for applying for jobs using key selection criteria, in less time than it’ll take you to research and modify 5 five example answers on the internet.

Check the courses out or read on here to get a high-level overview of the course content, so you can learn how to write selection criteria responses. If you’re looking for the examples, they’re about halfway down. The first half deals with the STAR method, differences between resume and selection criteria responses, and why your examples don’t need to be job-specific.

Answering Selection Criteria

Good selection criteria responses are key to getting an interview; they are the primary interview selection tool, not your resume.

Let’s begin by looking at selection criteria example responses. Selection criteria responses need to be structured to:

Make it easy for you to showcase your work examples, and,
For the reader to understand what you’re saying.

STAR Method

The STAR Method refers to Situation Task Action Result model of presenting your answer. There would be a million key selection criteria examples written in the STAR Method, plus blogs on how to use it.

My advice: The STAR selection criteria template is simply a layout. [Since I wrote this in 2021 I have done an updated and more succinct blog on overthinking STAR].

Don’t overthink it and try to think it is like a potion or spell – which you need to mix ingredients in precise measure, or it won’t work.

In the selection criteria examples for government, further on in the blog, there are two of the three examples where you can see the STAR Method in use. You won’t see the headings of the individual sections, but, when you read them they will make logical sense. You’ll know where the person was working, and in what role. You also get a sense of what they were dealing with, and the details of how they dealt with a situation or completed a task. You then read the outcome and it connects to the rest of the paragraph.

For your selection criteria template, I would advise joining Situation and Task because they’re often hard to separate, and to address an example simply with:

Situation & Task
- Where were you working
- What role were you in
- What were you dealing with
Action
- Breaking your example down into the level of detail someone can feel as if they were observing you work.
Result
- Simply what was the outcome of what you did.

SAO instead of STAR

Joining them in your selection criteria template will make no difference to your response. Indeed, Situation Action Outcome (SAO) is a similar model that gives you identical formatting to a response as using the STAR Method.

For all the thousands of articles on the STAR Method, what they don’t deal with is your example. Even good key selection criteria examples
you can buy off the internet won’t help you because your examples are unique to you. If you’re trying to answer with selection criteria examples bought online, they will not give you is an in-depth view on the STAR Method, and, they won’t explain what you have done. They can’t. They weren’t there to know what you did. That’s how Criterial is different; I teach you how to get your skills into a key selection criteria template that is easy to read, because it’s based on the STAR Method.

I’ll briefly touch on the difference between a resume and a selection criteria, for those with private enterprise backgrounds, and then go into some examples. If you want to just skip ahead, go to the Selection Criteria Examples section further down.

Selection Criteria versus Resume

Resume

I’ll look at your resume first because people are most familiar. Your resume is your career in a few pages. It’s the jobs you’ve had, the qualities you possess, and the education and training you’ve done. Within the list of jobs will be your achievements and the responsibilities you had in the role. Your resume usually contains your referee and contact details too.

It is not a document where you go into too much detail of anything in terms of what you did, how, when, why, with what skills etc. If your career was a book, your resume is the dust jacket. It’s the synopsis of the whole story in the book.

Selection Criteria Response

Selection criteria are statements of competencies, or in other words, things you need to be able to do. Ability to work in a pressure environment is a competency/skill some people have, and some people don’t have. With selection criteria examples for government jobs, you need to give examples of things you have done that demonstrate you have that competency. It’s like giving a detailed case study of one event or thing you have done in your career that shows you possess those skills.

In answering selection criteria examples for the “ability to work in a pressure environment”, you may have been a nurse working at St Vincent’s Hospital ER on a full moon Halloween night and triaged thousands of patients, some of whom were critical. The STAR method will explain what the situation was, and, what skills you used to handle that situation. These would include:

Application of medical knowledge in making assessments of patients in triage,
Organising patients to be moved into ward beds or discharged to free up space for emergencies – communicating with other team members and wards,

The Difference Between Answering Selection Criteria and Your Resume

You would tell the story as if it were a chapter of the book and someone could read it and feel like there were there watching you.

That is the essential difference between a resume and a response to selection criteria; the depth of detail you go into in describing something. Still not making sense? The picture below shows it visually:

Your resume is your career in brief detail.

Your selection criteria examples are in-depth case studies or stories in specific detail from single events in that career. The selection panel read this and use those details to compare your skills to the other applicants to find the best, most competent person for the job. They do this by comparing the strengths of the examples. If your example of working in a pressure environment is the St Vincent’s ER, and, another applicant is in a coffee shop with the line out the door, the panel get a sense of who has the better skills in handling pressure. In this case, life and death versus a customer waiting for their latte.

Your criteria responses give you the opportunity to give key selection criteria examples describing the work you have done.

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Free Selection criteria examples

Examples don’t need to be occupation-specific

You can use any example to address any criterion, because they are generally competency-based. What are competencies? Quite simply, “the ability to do something successfully or efficiently”.

A selection criterion about working in pressure situations could apply to many jobs; it can also be answered by experience in many jobs. To say it another way with an example, a nursing role will almost certainly include the need to work in pressure situations. Nurses however are not the only people who work in pressure situations. Other professional experience could address the criterion.

The examples I give shortly will show how experience from any job can speak to competencies.

Selection criteria examples government

Applying for federal government jobs is something that you possibly want to do if you’re reading this blog; either that or apply for a state government job. I’m going to discuss and give examples of some broad classifications of government roles using the administration stream and a basic communication selection criterion. I’ll show the STAR Method as well and show how most of your response needs to come from your experience, not from a template you buy from the internet.

Selection criteria examples for administration

My training courses discuss that administration roles are a broad class of both federal public service jobs as well as state government jobs. They are one of four streams that cover:

Administrative (AO)— usually undertake department or agency administration, human resource management staff, finance officers, customer service roles, policy advisor, information, and advisory services.
Professional (PO)— these positions have a mandatory requirement for a degree qualification or equivalent. These positions cover practitioners and specialist responsibilities, or a specific profession specialisation like an accountant.
Technical (TO)— these positions require a diploma, advanced diploma or certificate level competency. Duties include some practitioner and/or specialist responsibilities, usually in support of people in the PO or sometime AO stream.
Operational (OO)—People in these positions work in various functional areas, with a range of specialist skills.

Competencies

The most common types of competencies you will have in administration roles will be:

Written Communication
Oral Communication
Teamwork
Customer focus
Computer literacy in databases
Computer literacy in Software (I will address Microsoft Office separately below)
Time and priority management.
Managing own work and/or leading management of a team’s work.

When applying for administration or professional stream roles, the criteria you need to respond to will usually be more or less the same. The biggest difference is professional roles will have a mandatory criterion for possessing a degree. Legal roles (lawyer, prosecutor) will mandate possession of a law degree. Social workers in hospitals would need psychology or social work qualifications as well as admission to the relevant professional association. For accountants it would be degree qualification and perhaps membership or admission as a CPA.

STAR Method selection criteria examples for an administration role

To provide prewritten STAR Method selection criteria examples administration roles, is problematic as your experience is unique.

As a broad example/indication of how one might read, this is a basic written and verbal communication skills selection criteria example:

Communication skills, oral and written

I have demonstrated my well-developed written and verbal communication skills while working as Executive Assistant at ABC Association. In the role, I was responsible for communication with over 26,000 members from different industries via telephone and in person. A good example of my communication skills can be seen when a member had telephoned the office with a specific workplace problem. I documented the issue over the telephone by asking the member relevant questions, listening and making clear notes.

If I needed to clarify details, I asked specific follow-up questions until I was satisfied I had the details I needed. I told the person very clearly what action I would take and when so that they knew their problem was being addressed, and, communicated the issue by email to the relevant manager to follow up and respond to the customer. To do this, I structured the email clearly using an upfront synopsis and headings in the body of the email to clearly identify issues. The outcome of this was the manager was able to resolve the customers issue on first contact because it was so clearly captured; the manager thanked me for taking the little bit of extra time to be so clear in what I communicated.

There are some more examples below with the STAR Method shown, if you jump to Microsoft Office/Suite example later in this blog.

Your Unique Content

If you have viewed my free 10 minute video Three simple actions for easily improving your selection criteria responses you will know I explain:

How to easily structure your examples using a very simple template you can apply to any criterion, and,
Why to avoid copy/paste as what you need to talk about is what you did.

You will see from this example the bulk of the selection criteria example is describing what the person did. There is nothing in most of that content you can copy/paste off the internet because it is unique to the person. It is also what panels need to read about because they need to see your skills and capabilities.

For me, as a government recruiter of more than 20 years of experience, I will say very clearly – the layout you see above is is what I need to read and why I have compiled the courses I did.

Answering selection criteria examples

Another common selection criterion you will have in an administration role will revolve around software and computer skills. Once again, the experience individuals will have in working with databases and software will be infinite and you should always write your response using the STAR Method using your own examples.

One recurring and almost guaranteed criterion will be for Microsoft Office, so I will address that now to give you some specific advice.

Microsoft Office/Suite experience

Microsoft Office is some of the most ubiquitous software in the world now…but…long gone are the days that Microsoft Office is Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The basic parts of Office are:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
OneNote
Outlook
Publisher
Access
Skype for Business

And once you extend to Office365 the additional apps and services are:

Bookings
Edge
Forms
Intune
InfoPath
Lists
Stream
To Do
MyAnalytics
Planner
Power Apps
Power Automate
Project
SharePoint
Sway
Teams
Visio
Viva (unveiled literally the day I was writing this blog – Viva is an Employee Experience Platform)
Whiteboard
Workplace Analytics
Yammer

If you were unaware there are so many, then read on closely.

Addressing Microsoft Office/Suite experience

What you will often need to do is respond to a criterion that asks for well-developed skills with Microsoft Office. Arguably the question is so broad it is pointless to ask, however, if the question is where you need to respond. So the best thing you can do to respond is to benchmark/describe your skills. Don’t just say you have excellent skills in Excel. Excel is a complex mathematical program at its heart and new versions do a lot of database-type functions as well as interact seamlessly with cloud-based analytic databases.

There are very few people who truly have excellent skills with Excel. If you’re applying for an entry-level administration role, you might get away with it, if you’re applying for a data analyst role you won’t. Say you have a good or comprehensive range of skills with Excel and then say the most complex of what you can do, and naturally give examples.

By giving specific examples you are moving away from a subjective judgment of good, bad, or otherwise, and by describing what you can do the reader can get a sense of your skills. If the most complex thing you can do is a pivot table, you have pretty average skills in the normal office, but you have almost no skill if you’re a data analyst. Here’s an example:

Microsoft Office/Suite example

Following this example, there is a breakout showing the STAR Method elements:

Proven skills using Microsoft Excel in an office environment.

I have demonstrated my range of experience using Microsoft Excel in the two most recent office administration roles listed in my resume. An example where I proved my ability to support office functions was when I was working at ABC Pty Ltd as the office manager. The company finance system was not user friendly for managers to see dashboard information for their teams. I extracted data from the finance system in csv format and using Excel I imported the information into one main worksheet. I then used pivot tables and charts to represent that information graphically on a worksheet for each manager.

Based on feedback I adapted some of the specific worksheets to include a forecasting function using formulas to allow managers to increase or decrease revenue and/or expenses to see changes in reporting and bottom lines. Feedback from the managers was that this spreadsheet was significantly easier to use and helped them save thousands of dollars in expenses by better managing cash flow and job allocations.

There are some more examples below including an analysis of poor, good and strong examples, if you jump to Criterial Courses later in this blog.

You can see the description of the Excel skills without saying they were excellent or poor, and you can also see the link between Excel and outcomes in the office.

If you have more advanced skills and want to incorporate more of the Microsoft platform in your answers, you could talk about hosting that spreadsheet on OneDrive or SharePoint and connecting it to a Power App you developed to allow managers to input data from their mobile devices.

Once again, you will see from this is the bulk of the selection criteria example is describing what the person did.

Microsoft Office/Suite example – STAR analysis

Touching briefly on the STAR Method again, you can see in that response the STAR Method is evident, and as a result when you read it, it is easy to understand what the person was doing – it’s almost as if you were there.

Situation and Task

…when I was working at ABC Pty Ltd as the office manager. The company finance system was not user friendly for managers to see dashboard information for their teams

Action

…I extracted data from the finance system in csv format and using Excel I imported the information into one main worksheet. …… to allow managers to increase or decrease revenue and/or expenses to see changes in reporting and bottom lines.

Result/Outcome

…Feedback from the managers was that this spreadsheet was significantly easier to use and helped them save thousands of dollars in expenses by better managing cash flow and job allocations.

A Word on Microsoft Teams

Have you heard Microsoft Teams is taking over everything? Not quite, but if you don’t like Teams you’d better get used to it. Soon.

If you haven’t noticed, Teams has app connectors for the other Office365 Apps. The storage for Teams can be in SharePoint or OneDrive. Teams is replacing Skype for Business and if your organisation has Yammer, you’ll have probably thought the chat features in Teams feel very much like Yammer. Planner recently got integrated into Teams as “Tasks by Planner”. Long story short, Teams is becoming a very focussed collaboration point for users and Microsoft apps. If you want a Microsoft app to become familiar with, make it Teams as it will serve you well into the future.

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Criterial Courses

My courses can teach you – in a little over an hour – how to write selection criteria responses for yourself.

How long does it take you to randomly try to assemble selection criteria responses from free examples on the internet for one application? Is the result any good anyway?

Shown and explained below from those courses is what distinguishes a poor from a good from a strong response:

A poor response fails to give an example of how you have displayed the competency required,
A good response gives an example of how you meet the competency required, and,
A strong response gives an example of how you have exceeded the competency required, and if you want to make it even better, explains how your example aligns with the organisation’s values and/or mission.

Writing a selection criteria response to achieve the highest standard is explained in depth in the course. After all there is no point in just learning how to do a good response, if others are writing better ones!

Once the course has explained how to write an outstanding response based on the STAR method, it gives examples and explain why they are either poor or good. Here, I’ll use the criterion “Demonstrated highly developed communication skills (verbal and written)” as a selection criteria example.

Poor

I believe that good communication skills are important in dealing with difficult people. At all times in the workplace I use these skills, and have done this across a range of roles and organisations. As a club secretary I write emails to other people and clubs and also was involved in developing our companies corporate intranet where I developed all the content for my team. I use the phone to communicate with people wherever possible and confirm conversation by way of email if needed to ensure understanding. I will bring all of these skills with me to this role and believe I will be able to do the job.

Can you pick why that is a poor response?

Look at the standard in the criterion ‘Demonstrated highly developed’ and look at the response ‘I believe that good communication skills’ so the response is not at the level it needs to be. The skills described are sending email and making phone calls, which also do not meet the ‘highly developed’ standard. The ‘developing content’ may be an example of a highly developed written skill, but, the answer does not give enough level of detail. Referring to the explanation of resumes and selection criteria at the start; the detail given might be okay in a resume but not in a selection criteria response. The response itself is wordy and not brilliantly written – the frequent use of ‘and’ makes the sentences long. Remember, how you write your selection criteria response is evidence of your written skills!

Okay

I have good communication skills and have experienced dealing with difficult people as a sales representative in a large department store; when customers attempt to return goods without receipts which we cannot do by policy, so they can become irate. I can handle these situations and treat people fairly and with respect. An example of when I handled an irate customer was in the post Christmas sales recently. The customer became enraged and began raising their voice. I asked them to lower their tone, or alternately, move to an area away from other customers. Fairly but firmly I explained the policy and the options they had. I caught the attention of a nearby manager to reiterate the policy. As a result the customer settled down and decided on pursuing one of the options they had been given.

Can you pick why that is an okay response?

This selection criteria example cites dealing with ‘difficult people’ and in a retail context. It gives the situation and actions taken, as well as the result so the STAR Method is evident. It is formatted well, easily read and the communication skills are valid. What the example lacks in strength is due to the complexity described. It is one customer interaction where one policy is applied to one situation. When it is compared to other applications to find the best, most competent person for the job – the strength may be found wanting.

Strong

I have outstanding communication skills which I have displayed in dealing with situations involving complex highly emotive issues as a mediator in the Disputes Court. In many matters there are complex issues of law, relationships, financial stress, emotional difficulty and at times mental health. A recent example was a Court ordered mediation which I conducted for a long running matter as a last resort before a trial. I first ensured all parties had written advice as to the process and how it would occur on the day. I clarified with everyone that they understood the process and were clear on when it was occurring.

In the mediation I used my active listening skills to ensure parties were heard and clarify any misunderstandings. I ensured all parties had equal time to give their views and kept the session focussed. I applied policy and law fairly but firmly; to try to negotiate agreed outcomes between parties. This not only achieves agreement between parties but also achieves Court strategic outcomes by minimising rework as there is higher chance of agreements being complied with. The result of the mediation was that the parties agreed, which I then documented on the day. The parties thanked me for my skill and patience in resolving the dispute that, to date, they and other mediators had not been able to.

Can you pick why that is a strong response?

The level the skills are described at is outstanding, which exceeds the standard required. In addition, the example given shows skills at the level. There is no point saying you have outstanding skills and not backing that claim up. The point of difference to the previous example is clearly the complexity. It draws on law, relationships, financial stress, emotional difficulty and mental health. The STAR method is evident and as a result it flows easily. The response connects the skills and the situation to the strategic outcomes “This not only achieves agreement between parties but also achieves Court strategic outcomes by minimising rework as there is higher chance of agreements being complied with”, which shows the reader this is a person who understands not just what they do, but, also how it contributes to their team and their organisation.

If you can give five key selection criteria examples like that in your next job application, you’ll be getting an interview, for sure.

Why You Should Write your Criteria Responses Yourself, not use Selection Criteria Examples

In my first blog, I addressed how to write a selection criteria. A strategy some people use to write a response to a selection criteria response is a sample they can follow; like Selection Criteria Examples or templates. That’s a little like paint by numbers. You can fill in the boxes for that selection criteria example, but can’t apply it to a different job context. That’s like trying to take a paint by numbers flower and make it a beach scene. You don’t know how to get the numbers on the page in the first place. You will need a lot of selection criteria templates to address all the possible criteria you’ll want to address – especially when you consider the examples presented above, the content of which are almost completely specific to the individual and what they did.

With paint by numbers, there is also no understanding on the part of the person why they are putting blue where it has the number 3 and yellow where it has 4; other than the fact “it works”.

With the scene set (pardon the painting pun), let’s look at how Selection Criteria Examples and templates are very limited when writing a good criteria response.

Reason #1 – Paint By Numbers

You buy a set of Selection Criteria Examples, but they have limited re-use. If you buy an administration selection criteria example, how are you going to apply that to a project officer role? How do you apply an IT selection criteria example to a customer service role?

Once again, it’s paint by numbers; as long as you have a blue colour to put in the shape with the 3 in it, you’re okay. What happens when you have no blue, or one of the shapes doesn’t have a number? Do you go back to the manufacturer and say your paint by numbers is faulty?

Templates have very limited application in much of life. If you were going into business, I could give you a profit and loss template, but unless you understand:

Revenue
Cost of goods sold
Gross profit
Expenses, and,
Net profit

What can you do with the spreadsheet? Assuming you put the numbers in the right places, you’re still not going to understand it.

Reason #2 – Changing Frameworks Making Selection Criteria Examples Redundant

Government frameworks are practically endless, and they change all the time; these were discussed in depth in a recent blog. Queensland alone has had the following frameworks in recent years:

2009 – Capability and leadership framework (153 pages)
2015 – Workforce capability success profiles (9 pages)
2021 – Leadership competencies for Queensland (16 pages)

Roughly on average that’s a new framework for grading public service jobs every five years. If you think a framework goes from 153 to 9 and then to 16 pages and your templates still fit – I have to tell you in the immortal words of The Castle, “Tell her she’s dreaming”.

What will stay current over all those changes are your skills when you learn to read, understand and respond to criteria. All of them. Not just specific Selection Criteria Examples.

The skills I learned as a young public servant in the late 1990s still apply today and, with repeated use, are very quick and easy to use.

Ask yourself, how hard is it to spot a selection criteria example off the internet? The reader will never spot it, surely?

Reason #3 – Plagiarism

Plagiarism is surprisingly easy to spot in a job application, or a school assignment or a university paper. There are a few kinds that really stand out:

Same content as someone else has used,
Content that is obviously written by different people, and,
The subset of that which is a selection criteria and resume that are obviously written by different people.

Detecting plagiarism is easily done with various tools, and, it is easy to see in the writing styles of different authors. I’m not aware of any being used in government job application screening. That’s not a green light to plagiarise. Tools are easily replicated by basic internet searches using some pretty simple Boolean techniques.

Consider this, if I as a reader think you have plagiarised, it is going to take me a few extra seconds to open a browser and do some searches. If I find you have plagiarised your application, your credibility is pretty much done. That’s a high stakes affair as a job applicant. Assuming you want the job and you’ve taken the time to apply for it, why risk your credibility? Do you think misrepresenting yourself or lying, are qualities I want in a person I employ? If you answered yes, please phone a friend and guess again!!

Reason #4 – It’s Easy to DIY

Learning to respond to selection criteria can be learned in an hour or two. Seriously. It can. I have taught hundreds of people how to do it. You can learn a reusable skill to address any selection criteria for any job for:

The same money you’ll pay for a pack of single use templates, and/or,
The same time you’ll spend reading through those templates like a 1970’s clerk looking for one

It’s an absolutely learnable skill, just no one has bothered to teach it so easily, before now.

Don’t Spend Your Money on Buying Selection Criteria Examples

Purchasing Selection Criteria Examples or templates are a high-cost way of applying for jobs. They have limited reuse over time as frameworks change, and limited application for roles other than they’re specifically for. They’re going to be hit-and-miss to use because you don’t understand why you’re putting in the words you are, and how do you know you’ve selected the right template? Without the basic skills of understanding what you’re doing and why, you’re feeling your way in the dark.

For the same cost that you could purchase some Selection Criteria Examples, you can very easily learn the skills yourself. Learning the skills is a one-off cost you’ll get value from for life, and you’ll be able to apply the skills to any role you apply for.

My working life went from social welfare officer, to police officer, to intelligence analyst, to IT account manager, to IT system manager and now a manager of a big data/Cloud analytics team. There are no Selection Criteria Examples that allow you to make that transition; that is simply having the skills to read a job description and apply your relevant skills to the application.

That is exactly what I set out to teach in Criterial’s online courses.