Key Selection Criteria: Writing Answers That Get Scored

Every Australian public sector process publishes a role description and a set of criteria, and often a candidate information pack that states the word limit and format. The panel scores against those exact statements, so mirror their nouns and verbs: if the criterion says stakeholder engagement, do not write talking to people. If a word limit is stated, exceeding it is a scoring risk, not a sign of effort.

Use STAR for each criterion, kept tight and evidence-first:

• Situation – one sentence: the organisation, your role and the constraint.
• Task – what you were accountable for, in one sentence.
• Action – what you personally did, in the first person, with the tools and stakeholders named.
• Result – what changed, with a number, a timeframe or an external confirmation.

Keep every answer in the first person singular. Panels cannot score “we” – they need to know what you did, not what your team did.

Criterion: Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities and deliver quality outcomes under pressure.

In my role as Project Officer at a state health agency, I was responsible for three concurrent policy projects with a shared two-person team and a fixed ministerial deadline (S). I needed to deliver two consultation reports and one briefing without slipping the date (T). I mapped each deliverable to its decision date, moved consultation scheduling into a single fortnight, drafted the template once and reused it across projects, and escalated scope decisions to the director in writing when a stakeholder asked for new content (A). All three deliverables were signed off on time, and the template was adopted by the broader branch for later projects (R).

Two documents, two jobs. The resume lists your history in reverse-chronological order and is read quickly. The statement of claims answers each criterion and is what gets scored. Do not paste criterion answers into the resume, and do not make the panel hunt through your work history for evidence they must score. If the process asks only for a resume plus a cover letter, use the cover letter to address the two or three highest-weighted criteria directly.