Article From: CareerOne.com.au
Applying for a job involving selection criteria is something of an art.
CareerOne Editor Kate Southam advises that there are specialist books on the subject that you can buy or ask your local library to get in for you.
The Selection Criteria Toolkit by Dawn Richards and published by Woodslane is a good example. A CareerOne contributor, Dawn’s latest book is Get that Government Job.
Amanda McCarthy of AJM Solutions is another CareerOne contributor. A few years back Amanda kindly wrote a detailed article on selection criteria that you will find below. It is very long but still relevant so take a look.
Background
In the private sector the resume is commonly used to cull and shortlist candidates for jobs. In the public sector, the most important thing is how well a candidate addresses the selection criteria.
If your written responses don’t address the requirements you may not get an interview even if you have the most dazzling resume.
It’s generally a requirement for public sector panels to use at least one “screening” and one “selection” tool to assess candidates against the selection criteria. The most common selection tools used in the public sector include the written application and the interview.
Selection criteria are standards that measure a candidate’s “abilities”, “skills” and “knowledge”. They are generally contained within the job description or may appear in the online advertisement. Both the selection criteria and job duties outline the minimum requirements necessary to do the job.
There are two types of selection criteria “essential” and “desirable”
