The single most useful thing to know about Civil Service behaviour questions is this: your answer is not being judged on how impressive it sounds. It is scored against a published marking key, the Success Profiles behaviour markers for the grade you applied at. The person sifting your application has that list in front of them. Most applicants have never read it.
That gap explains most rejections. Strong candidates with genuinely good examples write answers that read well and score badly, because the answer never touches the specific things the marker list credits. The fix is not better writing. It is knowing what the list says.
Nine behaviours, six grade bands
The Success Profiles framework defines 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, and Delivering at pace. A job is assessed on a chosen subset named in the advert, never all nine, so the advert tells you exactly which marking keys apply.
Each behaviour is then defined separately at six grade bands, from Administrative Assistant and Administrative Officer (AA and AO) at the bottom, through Executive Officer (EO), Higher and Senior Executive Officer (HEO and SEO), Grades 7 and 6, up to Deputy Director and above. Across the whole framework that is 326 distinct markers. The behaviour name stays the same; what it takes to demonstrate it changes completely with the grade.
The same behaviour, two different marking keys
Take Communicating and influencing. At AA and AO grade, the markers include:
"put forward your views in a clear, constructive and considerate manner"
"use plain and simple language, being careful to check written work for errors"
"listen and ask questions to ensure your understanding"
At Grade 7 and 6, the same behaviour asks for:
"explain complex issues in a way that is easy to understand"
"deliver difficult messages with clarity and sensitivity, being persuasive when required"
"monitor the effectiveness of own and team communications and take action to improve where necessary"
Same behaviour, different job. The AA and AO version is about clear, careful, error-free communication in your own work. The Grade 7 version is about difficult messages, persuasion and improving how a whole team communicates. An answer full of team-wide influence on an AO application reads as inauthentic, and an answer about checking your emails for errors on a Grade 7 application scores low. Pitch at the band you applied for.
How a sifter actually scores your answer
In practice, each marker gets credited when your answer clearly demonstrates it with specific evidence, partially credited when you brush past it, and not credited when it is absent. A sentence like "I always communicate clearly with stakeholders" earns nothing, because it is a claim, not evidence. "I rewrote the letter in plain English and complaints about it stopped" can be credited, because it shows the thing happening.
This is why answers that merely sound senior or polished fail. The sifter cannot score tone. They can only score evidence against markers, and the markers are concrete: talked to relevant people, explained the reasons, considered risks, checked understanding. If the words are not there, the mark is not there. If you want to see this scoring run against your own draft, Application Coach checks a written answer marker by marker against the real framework for your grade.
STAR: the recommended shape
Official guidance recommends the STAR method for written behaviour examples: situation, task, action, result. Set the scene in a sentence or two, say what you specifically needed to do, spend most of the answer on what you actually did, and end with what happened because of it.
The weighting matters more than the acronym. Weak answers spend half their words on situation and task, describing the office and the project, then rush the action. Sifters credit the action and the result, because that is where the markers live. As a rule of thumb for a 250-word statement: two or three sentences of setup, then everything else on what you did and what changed.
Two more facts from the official framework worth knowing. Examples may come from work, volunteering or hobbies; a well-evidenced example from running a community group beats a vague one from employment. And reasonable adjustments are available at every stage of the process on request.
Where good examples lose marks
The same handful of faults come up over and over in behaviour answers:
Claims without evidence. "I am a strong decision maker" scores nothing. The marker list wants the decision itself: what you weighed, who you consulted, what you decided, what happened.
The invisible "we". Team achievements told entirely in "we" leave the sifter unable to score you. Keep the team context but name your own contribution: "as part of the team that moved the service online, I mapped the old process and trained the four staff who used it."
No result. An action with no outcome is half an answer. Even an approximate outcome ("waiting times came down, from around two weeks to a few days") beats none. If the honest result is that the decision was later reversed, say so and say what you learned; assessors credit honest reflection.
Answering the wrong behaviour. A gripping story about delivering under pressure scores nothing against Making effective decisions if it never shows a decision being made. Match the story to the marking key, not to what you most want to talk about.
The practical method
Before you write, find the markers for the behaviour and grade in the advert. Pick the example from your own history that lets you touch the most of them honestly. Write it rough, in your own words, without worrying about polish. Then check it against the markers one at a time and ask of each: where in my answer is this actually shown? The gaps you find are almost always detail you have and forgot to write down, not experience you lack.
For a worked example of this exact process, marker by marker at EO grade, see our Making Effective Decisions walkthrough. For the CV side of a public sector application, our public sector CV guide covers the anonymised format and what sifters look for there.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a Civil Service behaviour answer be?▾
The application form usually sets the limit, and 250 words per behaviour statement is the most common. Use nearly all of it. A 120-word answer almost never carries enough evidence to hit the markers, and anything over the limit is cut off unread.
Can I reuse the same example for different behaviours?▾
On one application, avoid it where you can. Assessors read the whole application, and the same story twice reads as a thin evidence base. Across different applications, reuse is fine and sensible. Adjust the emphasis to the behaviour being tested each time.
What if I have no work examples?▾
The Civil Service explicitly accepts examples from volunteering and from life outside work. Organising a community event, treasurer duties for a club, caring responsibilities that needed decisions and planning: these can all evidence behaviours. What matters is that the example is real, specific and yours.
What is the difference between behaviours and strengths?▾
Behaviours are about evidence from your past: what you did and what happened. Strengths are about what energises you, and the official guidance says strengths answers should not be rehearsed because assessors want your initial response. This article covers behaviours, which is where written preparation pays off.
Are behaviour answers read by a computer?▾
No. Sifting is done by trained people scoring your answer against the markers for the grade. That is better news than it sounds: a human can credit evidence wherever it appears in your answer, but only if the evidence is actually written down.