Selection criteria

Selection criteria or job requirements are a formal process which are used as part of the selection process for Government and major industry sector positions. They give candidates the opportunity to describe themselves by demonstrating they have the skills and knowledge, (or the potential to develop them) required for the position.

What are they

Selection criteria are an expanded version of your resume and in giving your responses to them you need to be specific in how you can meet the standards required by that particular job. In most instances an employer would have at least four to six selection criteria and be expecting at least a half page to a page length response to each. The challenge is to show an employer that you know more than just theory, that you are a well-rounded person and have been involved in things outside of study. You will need to demonstrate evidence of responsibility, leadership, maturity and commercial awareness.

Content and layout

Each criterion demands a separate page. Write the criterion at the top of the page in bold font. The criteria can ask you to provide facts on technical skills which can be responded to by clear statements of fact (such as driving ability, typing skills etc.). It may also ask you to demonstrate your knowledge of a topic or performance related skills. These are harder to demonstrate, and the employer is looking for evidence that your past behaviour will influence your future work performance.

Steps to addressing selection criteria

To demonstrate how well you meet the selection criteria you can progress through a series of steps:

• make a positive claim that you have acquired the skill or knowledge
• describe the skill or tell them where you acquired the knowledge
• provide an example of where you successfully used the skill or explain how you keep the knowledge up to date
• describe in detail how you applied the skill or how you may have used the knowledge in a past working situation
• say what the result was (make sure it was successful)
• relate the skill or knowledge to the new job and how you would use it to carry out your duties.

Tips

You may want to break up a selection criteria if it asks for more than one aspect, such as ‘well developed communication and negotiation skills'. Here, you may outline two examples, one for ‘communication' and one for ‘negotiation'.

In order to check that your selection criteria is set out appropriately and to make sure you have not missed anything out, you can refer to the Skills Model template (*PDF 37 k).

*This file is in Portable Document Format (PDF) which requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader. A free copy of Acrobat Reader may be obtained from Adobe. Users who are unable to access information in PDF should contact Katrina Vagg, telephone +61 4531 1823 to obtain this information in an alternative format.