Preparing for the Civil Service Styles Assessment
Guidance for job applicants who have been invited to complete the Civil Service Styles Assessment.
Civil Service psychometric tests
The Civil Service uses psychometric tests alongside other assessment methods (such as application forms, evidence of technical skills, and interviews) to decide whether a person meets the requirements of a particular job.
Using tests can:
- allow candidates to demonstrate their strengths
- provide recruiters with objective assessments against relevant criteria
- identify where candidates could develop their skills
Provided that they are used appropriately, our tests are fair and free from bias or discrimination. As such:
- they offer robust and effective measurements
- there is no advantage to having additional educational qualifications or work experience
- they can predict candidate performance in later selection stages
About the Civil Service Styles Assessment (CSSA)
The Civil Service Styles Assessment (CSSA) is an online self-assessment of the effectiveness of a person’s work behaviours. As such, they represent enablers of a range of workplace skills.
It measures your effectiveness in relation to the Civil Service Behaviours, and has been selected as being important for success in your chosen job.
Behaviours is one of the five elements in our Success Profiles Framework. The Civil Service uses Success Profiles to provide a flexible means of recruiting, giving the best possible chance of finding the right person for a job.
Assessment structure
In the assessment, you are presented with a series of pairs of statements, one above the other, with a rating scale presented in between the two statements. Each statement describes a behaviour that is regarded as important in the workplace. For each pair of statements, using the rating scale, you will be asked to compare them and make a choice about which of them is most like you, and by how much.
There are 276 pairs of comparisons to review in total. This seems a lot, and may feel repetitive to complete them all one by one, but the benefit to you is that the assessment is thorough, and it enables an accurate evaluation of your work strengths to be developed.
The assessment is not timed, however most people take a few seconds to make a choice between the two comparisons. Overall, the assessment may take between 45 minutes to an hour to complete.
Practice comparisons are included at the beginning of the assessment, and no specialist knowledge or experience is required. You may navigate through the questions during the assessment until you submit your responses at the end. Please note that once you have submitted your answers, they cannot be changed.
Completing the assessment
The assessment is taken online. You will be sent an invitation, which provides full instructions on how to proceed.
You should answer the questions honestly, and your responses should be your own; you must not ask for input from anyone. Don’t try to second guess what the “right” answer is, just answer as you really feel.
If you respond randomly, or use just one option most or all of the time (such as the middle response), this is not viewed as an acceptable way of completing the assessment because you are considered to not have responded as you really feel. It’s accepted that, for a small number of the comparisons, the middle response will be a genuine response, just be careful not to overuse it.
Your responses will be checked for the presence of such patterns. If your responses follow such a pattern, this could result in your scores not being produced. If this happens, you may be asked to take the test again, up to a maximum of three attempts.
Also, hiring managers may require candidates invited to interview to retake the assessment under supervised conditions. You will learn whether you need to do this if you are invited to interview.
The assessment works on most modern browsers and operating systems, and while they should work on smartphones or tablets, we recommend using a device with a larger screen. If your browser is not supported, the assessment will alert you to try an alternative.
Try not to close the browser while taking the assessment. If you do, you will be able to re-open it where you left off. If you lose internet connection, once you are back online you can continue the test where you left off. If you lose the test page, go back to your application centre to re-open it.
Some workplaces block test access - if this happens, you will need to try an alternative device.
If you need any adjustments for the assessment, or if you experience accessibility issues, contact the recruitment team or point of contact in the job advert.
Preparation
When you are invited to take the assessment, you should try to do so as early as possible, so you have time to resolve any technical or access issues before the deadline. All queries or help requests should be submitted at least two working days before the test deadline, to ensure a response.
Before you start:
- find a quiet place with no distractions
- make sure you read all test instructions carefully
- answer every question
- you will need a stable internet connection throughout the test
- try and take the test when you feel calm, although it is natural to feel a little nervous
- while the assessment is not timed, we recommend allowing at least an hour to complete it
Practice
Before taking the CSSA, you should get used to completing psychometric tests. There are example questions at the beginning of the assessment, or additionally we have developed a standalone CSSA Practice Assessment. Completing the practice assessment can be particularly helpful if you use assistive technology to access web content, and want to know if it will work on the real assessment. We recommend taking either the example questions or standalone practice assessment before the real test, so that you’re fully familiar.
You can also watch this short video on the Civil Service Styles Assessment.
Results of your assessment
How you respond to the statement choices is compared to a representative group of applicants who have also taken the assessment, which is then used to produce your score.
Your overall score is presented as a percentile, which tells you how well you performed relative to this group. For example, if your percentile is 44, you scored better than 44% of the group.
All Civil Service jobs are advertised at a particular level. If you pass the test at the minimum required standard for that job level, you will receive a message informing you.
Then, one of two things will happen:
- where any additional tests are needed, you will be sent an invitation to complete them
- after the test deadline, the recruiter will look at all applicant scores to decide what the job’s pass mark will be. They will consider the impact on protected groups, and the number of invitations to the next stage
The recruiter may decide to raise the pass mark for the job - if so, you will be informed, and you will be told if you have passed or failed at the raised standard.
Meeting the minimum test requirements for a job level is no guarantee of an invite to continue the selection process.
Banked scores
If you pass the assessment at or above the minimum required standard, your score will be “banked” and you will not need to retake the assessment if you apply for future jobs. This is because your score will be re-used.
If you don’t pass, your score will not be banked. You can take the test again for any future jobs you apply for.
When you apply for a job requiring you to take the assessment, our system will check if you have an applicable banked score:
- if you do - you won’t be invited to the test
- if you don’t - you will be invited to the test, and must take it
A banked score will expire when any one of the following conditions is met:
- six months has passed since the banked score was obtained
- a new score benchmark is applied to the assessment
- technical work on the test hosting platform takes place which affects banked scores
For this assessment, you bank scores for the CS Behaviours report at the grade level of the job you applied for. So, if you complete and bank a score on the assessment at Executive Officer level, and later you apply for a job at Higher Executive Officer level, or if the new job uses a different assessment report than CS Behaviours, you will need to complete the test again.
Where a government department does not have these grades, they will select an appropriate level of test for their vacancy.
If you bank a score on this assessment, it will not transfer between other tests or assessments.
Feedback on the assessment
After taking the assessment, you will receive your score and automatically-generated feedback. This will be available from your application centre in Civil Service Jobs. For security reasons, we cannot provide feedback on answers to specific questions.
Get help
If you lose access during the assessment, sign in to your application centre to relaunch it. You can launch the test as many times as you need, and this doesn’t have to be on the same device.
If you have concerns about any test(s) or encounter technical problems, contact your recruitment team - their contact details are in the job advert, or you can use our general contact form. Questions about the advertised job should be directed to the contact on the advert.
When you apply, you will have an opportunity to tell us that you need help with your application, such as needing a reasonable adjustment. You can also contact the recruitment team if you need any further help, or you experience accessibility issues. We have a legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask for help if you think you need it. You can read more about this in our Reasonable Adjustments for Online Tests - a candidate guide page.
How we use your data
Personal information is held securely in Civil Service Jobs - the assessment supplier cannot see it, and will only know your name if you choose to share it.
Your information will only be used to support your job application, and evaluate test effectiveness.
For more information, see the Civil Service Jobs Privacy Notice.