Key areas we will explore in the interview include:
Your strengths: Activities that make you feel energised, things you do regularly, enjoy, and do well – plus those activities that achieve precisely the opposite (i.e., de-energise, are overly effortful, unrewarding, put off doing etc).
Motivators: Knowing what motivates and demotivates you, having clear career goals.
Your self-awareness: How well you know your own strengths, motivators and areas for development and can use these to good effect in your life.
Understanding: How well your strengths and motivators align in a way that means you are a good fit for the Fast Stream.
You might be asked to draw examples from work, school/ further education, volunteer activities, hobbies, or home life. All experiences are valid. You will discuss specific examples of past behaviour to illustrate your strengths and how you handle different situations.
How to prepare for the Personal Development Conversation
Because the nature of this interview is to get a sense of who you are and what makes you tick, engaging in activities that allow you to increase your self-awareness is a good way to prepare.
To assist with this process, you could ask yourself the following questions:
Self
What kind of people or environments do I find energising or draining?
What types of projects or activities do I volunteer for?
What would I do if I had more time and resources?
When do I feel out of sync with what is important to me?
What are other people surprised about when they get to know me better?
Work preferences
What do I find easy that others find challenging?
What activities make me lose track of time?
What am I most excited to learn or try next?
When have I surprised myself with my performance – good and poor?
How do I react to setbacks or criticism?
When have I struggled to meet expectations?
What feedback have I avoided acting on?
Career and goals
What would I like from a future career and why? What does this say about what is important to me?
What would career success look like to me?
How do I see the Fast Stream programme fitting in with my career plans?
By having an appreciation of the purpose of the interview, and by reflecting on your strengths and motivators, you will be as prepared as you need to be.
Further Resources
There are some links below to further resources that you might find helpful:
Interview tips: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/interview-tips/strength-based-interviews – Prospects offers practical advice on how to prepare for different types of interviews.
Understanding Civil Service strengths: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles/success-profiles-strengths – review the strengths profile to find out more about the kinds of strengths that tend to be important in the Civil Service.
What not to do
It is very easy to over-think this type of interview. Although it might sound like a cliché, please just be yourself and let your passion for the activities you enjoy come through. Help us to see how your strengths, self-awareness and motivations suggest your readiness to benefit from the Fast Stream.
– Don’t over-prepare specific answers that you try to shoehorn into a question: avoid memorising answers to specific anticipated questions. We want to see your genuine reactions and thoughts.
– Don’t just focus on the behavioural aspects of any examples you provide: be prepared to be specific about the strengths that were revealed or utilised and what you learned. We want to understand you and not just what you may or may not have done in any one situation.
– Don’t feel you have to focus only on work or educational experience: feel able to use examples from all areas of your life. We value experiences from volunteering, hobbies and home life, as much as professional experiences.
– Don’t hide what you may see as weaknesses: be honest about your areas for development. We’re interested in how you manage and overcome challenges, not just your strengths.
Final points
Feedback from similar interview formats shows that candidates often appreciate the opportunity to discuss their true selves and feel genuinely “heard” during the process. Many candidates report they enjoy this kind of interview.
Our aim is for the interview to feel more like a genuine conversation than a test.
Our hope is that knowing that the Civil Service Fast Stream is interested in understanding you as an individual will only increase your interest and motivation to work for us.
