How the Civil Service Judgement Test works
Part 1 is a self-assessment: you rate statements about how ambitious, motivated and flexible you are at work. It is worth 15% of your CSJT score, and you may be asked about your answers at interview.
Part 2 is the scenarios. There are three for each behaviour chosen for the job, at the level you applied for, and each has four actions. You rate every action Counterproductive, Ineffective, Fairly Effective or Effective. Several actions can share a rating. Scenarios for three of the behaviours are short videos and the rest are text.
Which behaviours you meet depends on the job advert, so the length of the test varies. It is used for jobs from Administrative Assistant up to Grade 7, and because each vacancy picks different behaviours, a CSJT score cannot be banked for other jobs.
How to rate the actions
The four ratings have official meanings. Use them, not your own sense of the words:
- Counterproductive: an unacceptable action that would make the situation worse.
- Ineffective: a poor action that would not help the situation.
- Fairly Effective: a useful action that would be of some help.
- Effective: a good action that would help to resolve the situation.
- There is no middle point. Decide first whether an action helps or not, then how much.
- Rate each action on its own. Do not rank them against each other, and do not assume only one can be Effective.
- Know which Behaviours your job advert lists, such as Working Together or Delivering at Pace, and ask what a good civil servant at your grade would do.
Worked example
You are an Administrative Officer in a correspondence team. A new colleague has been sending replies with the wrong reference number, and two members of the public have phoned in confused. Your manager is on leave this week.
Show your colleague where the correct reference comes from and offer to check their next few replies: Effective. It fixes the cause and supports them.
Email the whole team a reminder to check reference numbers: Fairly Effective. It may help, but it does not deal with the person making the mistake.
Quietly correct your colleague’s replies yourself from now on: Ineffective. The letters go out right, but your colleague never learns and you take on their work.
Tell the callers that a new starter caused the mix-up: Counterproductive. It blames a colleague in public and does nothing to fix the problem.
These ratings are our reading of the scenario. The Civil Service does not publish its answer key.
Tips for the real Judgement Test
- Find the Behaviours on your job advert and read what each one means for your grade in the Success Profiles.
- Answer the self-assessment honestly. It counts for 15%, and an interviewer may ask about it.
- Watch for actions that pass a problem on without comment or hide it. They are rarely Effective.
- Do the practice questions at the start of each section. They show you the real screens.
- The test closes after 25 minutes without activity, but you can relaunch it and carry on where you left off.
- Use the transcripts if the videos are hard to follow. They are always available.
Practise the Civil Service Judgement Test on CogniPrep
Our CSJT starts with 20 self-assessment statements, then gives you three scenarios for each behaviour you choose, four by default and up to five, at AA to EO or HEO to Grade 7 level. It is untimed and you move forward only. Video scenarios appear as transcripts. Each rating scores 1 if it matches our key, half a mark if it is one step away, and nothing beyond that. The score comes from the scenarios only, with your self-assessment shown back as a profile, because the Civil Service does not publish how it marks that part. Your result is a percentile against other CogniPrep users.