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

Hi Barry,

I have to say this is unusual. You have two issues in actuality…one for making the pool and one for getting a job offer.

POOL: Manager 1 verbally told you that you were successful. That means nothing. You need to get a letter from them telling you that you passed the process and were put in a pool. Until you get that, results aren’t final. The small wiggle room that you have though is that they actually took steps to get ready to hire you. They issued you a PRI, which is not a guarantee of a job offer, but they generally don’t (almost can’t) do that if you didn’t make the pool. To issue the PRI, the HR people would look at the pool, see who they’re planning to hire (might be everyone), and they start issuing the PRIs. It is the first stage to do anything, and they don’t do it if you don’t make the pool. Which isn’t to say there couldn’t have been an error, and if they did make an error, there’s nothing you can do about it. You either made it or you didn’t; an error in issuing or telling you doesn’t mean you make it, it just means they correct it and tell you that you didn’t. But I would be telling them you want an explanation of how you got a PRI if you didn’t make the pool. Now, to be clear, are you SURE that is what Manager 2 told you? Note that there are two definitions of success here — first is that you made a pool, second is that you get a job. Not everyone makes the pool, not everyone who makes a pool necessarily gets a job nor an immediate one. So M1 could have told you that you were successful enough to make the pool, M2 COULD be telling you that you’re not successful enough at this time to be offered a job. Aka you’re in the pool and not their first choice, they’re hiring other people from the pool. So you need to clarify if they’re saying you DIDN’T make the pool or that you’re in the pool but not getting a job offer right now. And to be honest, there’s something odd about it all being by “call”. They have to send you notifications in writing of making a pool or not.

So let’s talk about the verbal job offer. That means nothing. Until you get a Letter of Offer, you have nothing. Lots of “offers” fall apart as the hiring manager said we’re going ahead, and then the budget was cut, or someone who was leaving suddenly isn’t. I’ve had this happen a lot of times with my own staff — they were all good to leave to go elsewhere, and then suddenly something happened, and they aren’t going for 4 more months or something. I recently was trying to fill a gap on my team, the person was supposed to leave a week ago, and I had someone in mind to come in, and now there’s a hiccup with the other process (nothing to do with me or my team) and I have to wait to bring someone in. In your case, manager 1 made verbal commitment, but that is no guarantee of anything. Manager 2 can rescind, you only can count on written offer.

So there is no job “denial” to appeal, that’s a non-starter. You CAN and should follwo up re: making the pool though. And I will toss you a small caution, for what it is worth. M1 is gone from the equation. The only person you have now is M2…while you may be tempted to be frustrated and go hard on the “offer” that was rescinded, if you want to be considered for future jobs from that pool, focus on the problem, not your frustration. It could be an admin error of some sort, or miscommunication (i.e., you may still be in the pool but not getting a job offer yet). I’ve seen a few people go postal on the HR person or manager, turns out it was simple to fix, but the person will never get hired after their handling of the situation. Again, sharing that tip for what it’s worth. Particularly as you have NO idea what happened behind the scenes. Maybe that other manager was completely incompetent and screwed everything up, now M2 is fixing their mess. Your goal in all interactions with HR is to be calm and professional, even if/when you need to be assertive.

Note too that I’m giving you general advice as an employee in the govt based on what I’ve experienced. You could talk to the relevant union that you would have been part of and/or consult a lawyer if you feel there are other issues at play…

Good luck,

Paul

Hi Ram,

I don’t have any insights into the social media side…for Twitter/X, I assume they would want to know about following, @s, hashtags, video, images, etc. Nothing leaps out at me, but I’m not a big social media expert.

Similarly for MS office, I presume they’ll expect you to know Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint. For another person applying for something with Excel, I suggested “basic” to “advanced functions as a way of thinking of how to prepare, for example:

Level 1: Usage
– Formatting (fonts, alignment, etc.)
– Crunching (formulas, sums, etc.)
– Exporting (PDF, printing)

Level 2: Manipulation
– Sorting
– Formatting as a table
– Basic charts or graphics

Level 3: Medium tools
– Conditional formatting, styles
– Filters

Level 4: Advanced tools
– Pivot tables

You could figure out a similar set of headings and functions for the other products too…

Good luck,

Paul

Hi Jonita,

So there are only three general Qs they can ask for each, as per the guide. For example, integrity and respect. OFten the easiest way to ask about that is something to do with conflict, where it would be easier to be rude and aggressive to the other person. Except in your job for the govt, you can’t. As per the guide, they usually would frame it as either:

1. Past/Experience: Tell us of a time where you dealt with conflict with other people. How did you maintain your own integrity and treat others with success to achieve a successful outcome?

2. Present/Situation: Here is scenario (x) where a person is being very aggressive and rude towards you from outside the government. What would you do to maintain your own integrity and demonstrate respect for others?

3. Future/Principles: This job requires people to demonstrate integrity and respect daily. How would you approach your job to ensure success in this area?

If you know what the elements mean, you can craft your response ahead of time for each one of those types of questions.

Good luck!

Paul

Hi Celine,

I’d be tempted to suggest posting the Q on the Reddit forum CanadianPublicServant. There are lots of people on there who have experience wiht relocation.

However, generally speaking, there are a few options:

1. If your boss and HR is willing to let you work remote, you can do that;
2. If you can’t work remote, they could see if you could do in office from a local site (seems similar, but it’s structurally different);
3. Spousal relocation options which increase your priority to find something in the new location.

However, as it is a 1-year term, your priority status under #3 would ONLY be (at most) for the duration of your term, not likely long enough to really help you in the new location.

Not much help, sorry. Good luck, and let me know if you find something that works!

Paul

Hi Alice, congrats on getting the invite.

I think there are TWO possibilities for an “oral assessment”…

The first option is exactly as you laid out…they’ll ask you to talk about something, and generally it is testing Ability to communicate orally. Put bluntly, the test of this element is generally assumed that everyone will pass as a starting point and people who are articulate go up, and those who struggle in English (in this case) will fail. It is often to make sure someone isn’t screened in as having a mother tongue of English (in this case) but can’t actually speak it…halting speech, messed up grammar, inappropriate vocabulary, confusing explanations. To be clear, it is not a language test, it is a test that you can use your main language to explain yourself well. In my guide, I talk about structure being key and it is never more required than in your oral assessment…clear structure, clear speech, no repetition, no going in circles, etc. Your list is a perfect summary.

The second option is an interview. I have, on occasion, seen interviews referred to as an oral assessment. It doesn’t look likely here, but re-read your invitation and confirm it is not an interview on broader headings than just oral comms.

Good luck!

Paul