Hi Alam,

So your question is surprisingly difficult to answer in a sense. The short answer is you can always tell them, it doesn’t hurt.

The “difficult” part is whether or not they can use it. Let me explain…let me give an example that’s quite different, which is say a specific class of drivers license. Suppose they wanted a license that would let you drive a class II size vehicle (say a small delivery van, I’m making stuff up) and you only have a Class I when you apply, but applicant B has Class II and Applicant C has Class III (all the way up to a transport truck).

When they do the first screening, you would be out (because you only had class I at time of screening), while persons B and C would be screened in. In that situation, it is very clear that even if you get your Class II later, even a week later while the process is still going on, you did not have it AT THE TIME OF APPLICATION. So you would be screened out. A legal case went through the tribunal a few years ago, and it was that sort of scenario — at the time of application, the person did NOT have the required levels, so they were screened out. The ONLY exception to having a requirement at the time of application is language proficiency. Soooo, once the application deadline passes, all the applications are essentially “locked”. You cannot add information to them to “improve” your application. At least, in theory.

Equally, through the process, you cannot do the written, and then later send them something else to add to it. Or after the interview, send them an email and say “Hey, I forgot to mention this too.”. You can’t “add” to your answers after the session ends. Which seems relatively straightforward, right?

But you’re not trying to add to your score, you’re already in the pool. You’d just like them to have up to date information for when someone looks at your file, right? So, quite often, people will send HR an updated resume. Often with notes like, “I’ve changed jobs recently” or “I have added my updated contact info”. HR gets that all the time at which time it creates a small puzzle for them to solve:

– do they include it as it is an updated version of what they have, which might be helpful to managers to see; OR
– do they rigidly say “No! Nothing can be added!”.

Up until the comp ends and the pool is established, most HR say “no” to anything except contact info; after the pool, most just add it to the file.

What you CAN”T do is just tell them you have a new certificate and ask them to add it somewhere — there’s nowhere for them to add it, they cannot modify the original screening results. At best you can tell them you’ve updated your resume to reflect completing your certificate (you may have had it on there as in progress previously?) AND that you’ve updated your contact information. With such a two-part update, they’ll likely put your new resume on file if/when hiring managers ask to look at the pool. It’s worth a shot at least.

Good luck!

Paul

Hi Myriam,

I am not going to be able to be of much help for you on those three elements.

Generally, for knowledge reqts in specialized groups like PE, you presumably have some background in HR that will give you that knowledge. For Govt, the biggest legislative piece is the Public Service Employment Act. Unfortunately, beyond that, there’s not much I can offer you as I’m not a PE…you could post on the Cnd Public Service reddit and ask if any PEs have guidance on major trends.

Equally, labour relations is pretty specialized. Obviously, Duty to Accommodate is huge, and particularly in a post-Covid / Return To Office environment.

But both of those are hard core knowledge elements that only people in HR or as PEs are likely to know.

The weird one though is actually “business acumen”. I have zero idea what they mean by that. If they just mean understanding how your org works, great; if they mean something else, I have zero idea what they are looking for or how they would test it. Is it for a core govt dept or a specialized crown corp or org? That might help narrow it down.

Paul

Hi Maryam,

Sorry, missed this in the comments queue. So let’s call it them I&R, WEWO, SIBAO, and TTT.

a. I&R goes really easily with WEWO, not that much for the other two. Certain scenarios COULD combine them, but doubtful.
b. WEWO goes with I&R, as I said, and COULD go with SIBAO, but is unlikely to go with TTT.
c. SIBAO goes well with TTT, but not so much the other two.
d. TTT is often by itself, but could go with SIBAO.

If it was me, I would combine EITHER I&R with WEWO or SIBAO with TTT, just as you suggested.

I&R is frequently tell us of a time when, and it’s really hard to mark. If they combine with WEWO, they can make it more scenario-based, and thus easier to mark too.

The last two could be either scenario or direct, they’re 50/50, not much help. You basically need to prepare for both options.

Good luck! (Or I hope it went well if you already did it!).

Paul

Hi Christian,

Soooooo that all sounds great. There are no real stats on people getting rejected at the security check stage, but it’s generally low. Part of that is because people who have security issues likely didn’t apply…if one has a criminal conviction for fraud, one probably doesn’t apply for a job that has a security clearance requirement for honesty and integrity.

I’ll give you some info on how the security process works, it’ll likely tell you what to think about. There are three general levels of security:

a. Reliability — mostly a criminal records check and a credit check;
b. Secret — a bit more, potential conflicts of interest, etc.;
c. Top Secret — full drill down, may interview you or others, etc.;

The first thing they do in a security check is put all your info into a complex search engine that searches their various databases. You can kind of think of the databases as lists of people with problems/issues for whatever reason. The search will see if your information matches anything on the computerized list. For a criminal records check, that is pretty obvious; same for credit, they just pull up credit scores and things. For Secret and Top Secret, they’ll see if your name shows up in any immigration databases as a problem…and they also ask Qs about all immediate family members such as your immediate family (siblings and parents) and a spouse’s family (inlaws), plus your own kids. They’re really looking for anything that could be a problem with you or with people who can influence you in your family. For example, if you applied for a Customs Enforcement job, and it turns out your brother is part of a notorious motorcycle gang, they are going to have questions. If you are applying for Top Secret on intelligence stuff at PCO, and you travel regularly to Syria, they’ll have questions.

When I applied for my Secret clearance, average time was 4-12 months at Foreign Affairs for new people…I got mine in 6 weeks — I was nobody, I had gone nowhere, I was basically a student with no international travel, two of my family already worked for the government. I’m pretty sure their check said, “He’s gone nowhere, he’s done nothing, he knows nobody, give him a clearance.”

The real slowdown is if you lived abroad (born or even moved). When they do the clearance, they frequently ask for information from the foreign state aka the equivalent of a criminal records check. So, it goes like this, “Hello Belgium, Canada calling as we do or as you do us, we’d like to have you run the following 3 names and let us know if anything pops up.” Belgium says no problem, a few weeks later, all good. It’s a reciprocal arrangement, things go pretty fast with most advanced countries. By contrast, a friend asked me once how long hers would take, and I had to point out…she was born in India, moved to Nigeria at age 5, moved to Canada at age 12, went to China for a year abroad during university, went back to China after grad school to work for a Chinese/German joint venture…I told her to get comfortable. It took a year for them to get enough info to give her the clearance — and there were NO issues in there, it was just a year to gather all the responses.

Going back to the computerized search, if they find nothing, they take a quick peek in person and call it a day. If it finds something, then someone has to review the findings manually.

Soooooo, did you live abroad? Takes longer. Did you travel abroad? Takes longer. Were either to countries that Canada might be suspicious about? Takes longer. None of the above? Takes shorter. Family situation is messy with people in trouble with the law? Takes longer. Only child, parents dead, no spouse, no kids? Administratively takes shorter time.

In the end, you can probably best guess whether yours will take longer or shorter.

Good luck!

Paul

Hi Jenna,

I’m going to assume that you applied for an online posted job. So while you haven’t been told which specific competencies will be tested in the interview phase, you SHOULD have the original list of all of them on the original poster unless it’s a weird internal thing or separate employer. I’ll deal with both scenarios.

First and foremost, if it was normal public service and you have the poster, look at the abilities and personal suitability items. I don’t know if there was a written already done where you might knock off some comps, but basically ask yourself “which of these As and PSs” are suitable to ask in an interview with one of the three forms:

– Tell us of a time when…you demonstrated X;
– Here’s a scenario…how would you demononstrate X;
– This job involves a lot of X…what do you think is the most important elements of X?

You can probably see 3-4 that are clearly going to be interview questions where they want to know how you would handle something. They want to “test you”. And as a test of your own abilities, ask yourself, “If I was them, which ones would **I** want to test directly?”. The rest they may kick to the reference check stage.

Secondly, if you don’t have the larger list of competencies and / or don’t want to wait, you can look at the TBS Key Leadership Skills and try to figure out what would be good for an EC-06 to do. They have a page that is the list of KLCs and sample behaviours. While they target EX level, they often have examples that you can adapt to know which apply at better levels to TLs or supervisors.

https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/professional-development/key-leadership-competency-profile/examples-effective-ineffective-behaviours.html

So, for example, the KLC for supervisor for Create Vision and Strategy lists these bullets:
a. Informs analysis with a thorough understanding of the environment
b. Works with others to implement concrete work activities
c. Contributes to the development and implementation of organizational strategies and objectives by coordinating the work of employees
d. Communicates with clarity and conviction
e. Identifies issues, implications and activities that may have an impact on priorities
f. Implements solutions that respond to changing priorities

Six things that TBS thinks a supervisor should do for KLCs. If you do all six KLCs and all the subbullets, it’s almost 50 things you should do. You can’t do 50 things. You can’t even remember 50 things. Let me suggest an alternate prep, and this will serve you not only for this comp, and other comps, it will help you start to think about management in a different way than simply “I’m passionate about supervision” (not a criticism, just an evolution of your development).

Go through the above 6 and ask yourself, “What resonates most with you?”. For vision, for myself, I will always emphasize a, d, and e the most. I’m a planner, I need context, and I need to communicate things out. Just like writing my guide. I share my “vision” of how things work. I recognize that B and C are important, sure. But that applies to every heading, nothing special about it for me. And F? Well, yeah, but I am not enamoured of that heading … it makes us more responsive than I think we should be as supervisors or amnagers. That’s great for a DM, but I don’t want to blow with the wind. I want to be the rock my team gets as support. Yeah, we’ll adapt, but there is a risk to me of being too responsive. Sooooo, as my management “brand”, I will talk about context and the bigger picture, and communicating my team’s “portion” of that bigger picture. That’s my philosophy. Which means in preparing for headings I don’t know or competencies I can’t envision yet, I **can** go through and say, “hmm, what would vision mean to me”. 2-3 of the 6 that TBS thinks are important.

If you do that for all 6 KLCs, you will have a natural management style that fits you AND that you can then communicate in a question. Soooo, let’s say you find out that the competency is about working with others in your team and motivation. So perhaps you like to start off by saying, “I think my primary role as a manager is to get my entire team to row in the same direction. For me, creating that direction is about sharing not only the destination but our ports of call along the route. Being the compass bearer to help chart our route, while working with them on the best ways to row, to balance the loads in the boat, to address maintenance issues, to figure out coverage across seats, “. I don’t know where I’m going with that metaphor, but you get the idea. By contrast, you might decide that vision is entirely about working with your team, so you’ll nail b and c automatically, those resonate more with you.

Whichever ones on the TBS list resonate with you, those are the best ones to use. Too many people will try to talk about all six and come off sounding like a parrot; the goal is for interviewers to see you, to see what you’re passionate about, how you would behave if given the chance.

The more you know what you think will be your personal management philosophy, the better you are to answer any Q about any competency because you know who you are. It’s surprising for example how easily it is to talk about vision or lifelong learning or active listening into any answer and it will “work”.

One of my favorite answers I gave to a question in an EX exam was about Values and Ethics. And I just spoke from the heart. I started saying that I don’t like V&E in govt as we use examples that are often too simplistic, about issues that are clearcut right and wrong, but that I believe that V&E is about resolving conflict when you have two principles in direct opposition to each other, that pull you in opposite directions, and there’s no right answer. I used an example of transparency in leadership against confidentiality of certain management files (it was about a DRAP-like situation). I didn’t pre-plan it much, I didn’t know the question (I expected it to be about conflict in general), and I just spoke from the heart. I didn’t make it through but the DG gave me feedback afterwards that it was the best answer she had heard in 25 years. And far from a typical answer. But I felt totally comfortable about it because in my “core values” of my management style, I have transparency as a key point. I can talk about that in 25 different ways if need be, because it’s “natural” to me. I’m not making up an answer, I’m just sharing what I would do.

All of which is a long way to say you can either wait for the actual competency subset, estimate that subset before the real list comes, or work on your KLCs and key headings that will translate very well into your real interview when you get there.

If it helps for your prep, the biggest challenge of all is being yourself. The more that you can make it like a conversation where you’re sharing what you would do and less about answering a test, the more you will look like the supervisor they want.

Paul

Hi Myriam,

V&E or Integrity and Respect are often hard to test. Of the three possible Qs (from the guide), it is:

a. Easy to imagine a previous experience question — Tell us of a time when you had to demonstrate blah blah blah
b. Harder to mark a question where they say “Here’s a scenario that will challenge your integrity and respect…what would you do in this situation?” Global Affairs used to love this form of an integrity question where your boss was doing something unethical and how you would address it. But the problem is that very few people have encountered the type of situation they portray, and thus people flounder. So it often looks like an unfair question — experienced Foreign Service Officers often can’t tell you what a good answer would look like, so how would a candidate? But it CAN be asked.
c. Easy to also imagine a Question where they say — “This job requires integrity and respect. What does that mean to you?” (more abstract).

For me, the best way to prepare is to ask yourself the third one…what DOES it mean to you? If you look at the TBS website for key leadership competencies, you’ll see stuff under headings related to respect, integrity, values, ethics, etc. But which ones RESONATE with you? For example, you might find 7-10 principles that could be part of I&R or V&E, but you can’t likely talk about them in personal detail or give examples. The world doesn’t work that way. Soooo, instead, pick two or three that strongly resonate with you out of the laundry list. Like perhaps integrity in interpersonal relations — respecting others opinions, speaking honestly, trying to understand not impress, etc. You can define it however you want, but the more you pick something you beliee in generally, the more it will come off as authentic. And really they are just looking to see how you think.

The main things people do wrong in these situations is if asked for an example, they do one of two things — they negate the question (“Oh, I would never be in a situation like that, I proactively manage my relationships so that would never happen”) or they make it too simple (“Oh, they asked me to break the law, and I said no”).

A much better example is anything where you had to struggle with the right answer…in the best scenarios, two positive elements are in conflict (like snitching on a sibling — you want to protect the sibling but you also want to be truthful with your mother). How do you resolve something when two things are in direct opposition to each other? For example, I have a past experience where I had to maintain confidentiality of some information but I had a colleague who was about to make a risky decision because they didn’t know the information that I did…I found a third path to helping them without breaking either part. I’ve subsequently heard from different senior people that it is among the best examples they have ever heard. It isn’t about how you manage when things are easy, but when they are hard that shows integrity and respect. So going back to example of interpersonal skills, do you have a past example (or can imagine one as a scenario) where someone is being hostile and rude but you still want to help them?

Good luck!

Paul

Hi Layla,

This is a really tough Q to answer. I could skirt the issue by talking about various types of accommodations available, staying strong, etc., but I’m not sure that would help you much. Or I can go in a different direction and challenge you to think about something kind of ugly.

So, at the heart of accommodation is traditional views of challenges — mostly physical. I’m thinking more about accommodations to doing jobs. So, a simple one might be a person delivering mail around a building, gets injured, can’t walk around as easily, so they give them a small cart to push or drive. Accommodated, problem solved.

And that is the goal of all accommodations…some people think is about removing what someone cannot do, but it’s not. It’s giving you extra tools so you can do the full task. Maybe in a different way, but you can do it. The reason I’m mentioning that is that certain types of accommodations are incompatible with certain jobs. Some jobs might require you to do A, B, C, D, and E as the core elements. In order to accommodate you, accomomdation would mean you that still do A, B, C, D and E. They don’t drop C, etc. They figure out a way for you to do A-E differently, but you still do them. And yet there is a long history of accommodations in the workplace, backed up by some labour law, which followed that alternate and dangerous route. If you can’t reach something on a high shelf, they make it someone else’s job. If you can’t deal with unruly clients, they give you a back-office job. None of those are really what accommodations are supposed to be about. They are wrongly reducing the job or giving you a different job, not accommodating you.

When it comes to certain cognitive or behavioural issues, certain types of accommodations are common for a test environment. So people often get extra time on texts, or maybe they can use a computer instead of answering by pen, etc. Obvious stuff, and you’re already aware of those. But there are also limits to accommodations.

For example, asking someone to complete a summary of a document in 1h might seem unfair, and they think that a reasonable accommodation might be you get 90 minutes. But it wouldn’t be a REASONABLE accommodation to give you unlimited time or a week to do it either. That’s not even close to the same test. Giving you 50% more time would always be considered by any HR or LR tribunal to be more than reasonable. Doesn’t matter if you couldn’t handle it, it’s whether you could still do an actual test, not just however works for you. It’s reasonable accommodation, not any accommodation you feel is appropriate.

Now, here’s the ugly part. There are jobs that require the employee to do a series of tasks within a certain timeline, write a summary, and be done in an hour. And there is no accommodation available in the real job that would change that. I’ll give you a good example. Cabinet meetings happen often mid-week. It is incredibly common for a large # of docs to come around the day before in the morning, perhaps 7-8 for the meeting, and someone has to summarize the content for the Minister. Often within an hour or two. Or several in a morning. There is no accommodation to have someone “take extra time”, they’re due at noon. No exceptions. If that is the case, someone who needs more time CANNOT do that job. There is no reasonable accommodation available that would enable them to meet that deadline.

So the ugly question I have to ask you is, if you are doing tests for jobs, and others are fine, but this type really throws you, are you applying for the right kind of jobs? Because even if you get through, you may go to do the job and find out that the type of scenario is what they do regularly. And maybe then have tight deadlines. They wouldn’t be able to accommodate you enough to do it and still meet the job requirements.

The test you were given is NOT simply a test of whether you can do it — it’s whether you can do it and to do so both quickly and accurately. If they gave you 2 or 3 hours, they’re not testing if you can do it quickly.

The reason I ask if the job is right for you, rather than seeing if there’s some solution that would let you “pass” it by removing the time requirement, is that getting the job might actually be a BAD thing. If you look through the PS Labour Relations Board Tribunal, you’ll see a number of cases over the years where someone started a job. And, as per above, they were supposed to do A,B,C,D. They were accommodated to do D, and B. They could do C. But there were no reasonable accommodations to do A — either they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t do it well or they couldn’t do it in the time alloted. But all four elements were part of the job. So it turns into a long protracted legal battle for the tribunal to say in the end, “nope, no reasonable accommodation would meet the reqts” and the person ended up wasting 10y of their life in a bad fit job, painful HR stuff, and a long tribunal case. But they shouldn’t have been in the job in the first place — it was a bad fit for their condition.

I know that’s not a popular view, nor even what HR or LR will tell you. They’ll blow sunshine at you, tell you that they’ll accommodate you. But most tests that managers put in their test are simulations of the type of work they do. If you cannot do it, even with accommodations in test situations, you should seriously decide if that is really the right type of job for you.

And interestingly, to be clear, this is really not about your conditions. Lots of people are good writers, strong policy people, and yet they couldn’t produce high-quality output in a parliamentary relations office on a consistent basis. It’s not a skill they have, even without any need for accommodations. Equally, lots of people with “no issues” would do the test you do and not complete it in 60 minutes. Or 90 if accommodated. But at some point, extra time changes the test from a real test to just a task.

Good luck, and I know that is not what you want to hear perhaps. But I don’t like people blindly applying to jobs that seem interesting if they’re not going to be successful later…let me know how it goes.

Paul

Hi Marielle,

The short answer is that I have no clue what they wanted. Normally, you would get something like:

SCENARIO 1: blah blah blah, What would you do? Take into account x, y, z.

SCENARIO 2: Blah blah blah, What would you do? Which would you do first?

In a setup like that, it would be 400w per scenario i.e., the sub-Qs are just helping you refine what you need to cover in your answer.

I don’t have any idea what it means by “nine (7) questions and four (3) sub-questions”. I assume when it says “for each question”, it means to answer the main 9 or 7 with 400w. However, it depends I suppose on whether the sub-Q would normally be part of the main Q already. If it said something different like “What would you do” in 1 and the subQ was “what would you avoid”, maybe that would signal another 400w.

Ultimately, it’s just badly worded. No real answer other than to ask them.

Sorry,

Paul