I agree with basically all of this. Particularly the points about Strengths, they seem incredibly non-informative given the way they work and I see no other ways of doing them better, so should be scrapped.
Of the typical toolkit using a presentation is the saving grace. We tend to ask candidates to comment on a policy question that is accessible but possible to be really thoughtful about, so it both provides a discriminator for those who aren't capable of synthesizing the basics of what is on the internet about the policy issue, but then also does separately give an opportunity for those who have become really thoughtful about the policy nuances to shine.
Definitely agree that introducing better opportunities to require candidates to think on their feet would be very useful for discriminating, and doing that well is a pretty good indicator in my experience for those who do well in policy roles. As you suggest there is actually decent scope to do this already and without offending the Civil Service Resourcing beast too much, but it's just culturally not the done thing which is a shame.
One thing you don't comment on, is that there is a lot of pressure from Civil Service Resourcing to just equally weight each component, meaning the more behaviours you have the more they tend to crowd out the much more useful signal coming from something like a presentation. You can push Civil Service Resourcing to allow you to use alternate weightings but it's a grind and they're resistant.
I agree with basically all of this. Particularly the points about Strengths, they seem incredibly non-informative given the way they work and I see no other ways of doing them better, so should be scrapped.
Of the typical toolkit using a presentation is the saving grace. We tend to ask candidates to comment on a policy question that is accessible but possible to be really thoughtful about, so it both provides a discriminator for those who aren't capable of synthesizing the basics of what is on the internet about the policy issue, but then also does separately give an opportunity for those who have become really thoughtful about the policy nuances to shine.
Definitely agree that introducing better opportunities to require candidates to think on their feet would be very useful for discriminating, and doing that well is a pretty good indicator in my experience for those who do well in policy roles. As you suggest there is actually decent scope to do this already and without offending the Civil Service Resourcing beast too much, but it's just culturally not the done thing which is a shame.
One thing you don't comment on, is that there is a lot of pressure from Civil Service Resourcing to just equally weight each component, meaning the more behaviours you have the more they tend to crowd out the much more useful signal coming from something like a presentation. You can push Civil Service Resourcing to allow you to use alternate weightings but it's a grind and they're resistant.