Well I finally got my TC, with GLD.
A brief description of how I made it:
2025 - applied. They have online verbal reasoning, SJT, and critical reasoning (WG) test. Verbal reasoning I was already good at, WG I have become good at with practice, and the SJT is much easier than the Amberjack ones IMO - you are a government
trainee, so the type of behaviours that you need to exhibit are pretty obvious.
I got to the VI and obviously didn't do well enough so that was the end.
2026 - same again. Knew I would pass the first three stages. Got to VI. The timer didn't work on the first question and I thought I'd failed.
But no, I received the invite to the AC.
The AC I found very good - there are a few dozen across a couple of weeks, and you can choose whichever date you like. It's fully online, and it's quite rigidly structured - just a written exercise, then an interview. So no group exercise, for example.
The system requires you to prepare STARs carefully structured to hit their points.
The points are standard across the Civil Service, and the details are here
www.gov.uk
Each job in government has a level, such as "executive officer".
My understanding from here is that trainee solicitor is EO level:
What they expect you to do at EO level for
Developing self and others
is:
- identify gaps in own and team’s skills and knowledge
- set and consistently meet development objectives
- seek learning opportunities
- support the development plans of all colleagues, recognising how diversity of experience/background can help to build an inclusive team culture
- consider the contributions of all team members and delegate work to aid the learning and development of all
- encourage and listen to developmental feedback from colleagues
whereas for HEO it's:
- identify capability gaps for yourself and your team
- ensure development objectives are set and achieved to address any gaps and enable delivery of current and future work
- take time to coach, mentor and develop other colleagues to support succession planning
- promote inclusiveness by respecting different personal needs in the team and use these to develop others
- reflect on your own work, continuously seek and act on feedback to improve own and team’s performance
Basically the higher level requires more thinking about others. AIUI to gain promotion within the civil service when you go to interview, you need to hit the relevant points to explain how you have done the expected things at those levels.
We were told in the prep pack for the AC that they wanted five of the standard civil service behaviours, plus also motivation.
If you search online you can find sooooo many examples of how to deliver an effective STAR for a specific question within those behaviours, at a particular level , such as EO.
They also only ask three STAR questions, and then follow up on those questions, so it's: "you give one STAR that responds to the question", and they then ask you several follow-ups asking you to reflect on that. I actually prepped five categories, but I think in fact two of the categories were assessed via your performance in the interview and written task, and the other three by what you related in the STAR responses.
I will not share what they asked me, but from what I can see there is a limited set of questions they can possibly ask, and two to four STARs per category can cover all of the possible questions.
You do need to avoid talking too much about the ST, as the marks come from A mostly. When prepping the STARs also think about how they might follow up. I used AI to help prompt me with questions they might ask.
It's really important that when you deliver your STAR answer that it's aiming to show how you hit the specific words in the "EO should do this" for that behaviour.
My guess is that in a regular law firm interview they might well mark you highly for doing the same thing, but the key advantage of GLD is that it's published, so you
know that if you hit those points, you will score highly.
I also should note that it's online and you can prepare notes, scripts (you're not of course allowed to use AI during the interview), so in my view this is MUCH easier than an in-person interview, as you can have everything cued up (I would avoid reading - it's an interview with three live humans, so you need to sound human yourself, but reading from notes while sounding fairly natural is something I'm reasonably competent at, so worked for me).
The first part of the AC is an online "analyse this hypothetical law and write answers to the questions" exercise, and there's not too much prep that's necessary, although understanding how to think like a lawyer is obviously helpful. You're asked to explain your answers in the first part of the interview.
While you can prepare STAR and motivation to within an inch of your life, there's a risk that you make a horrible blunder in the written exercise, especially as you have limited time to respond. Paying strong attention to detail is important, as well as giving practical, legally reasoned advice (legal knowledge isn't required, but lawyer-link reasoning is).
For the final part of the interview they asked you for your motivation for joining GLD and about the work they do. Again, I will not share what they specifically asked me, but I found questions by looking online, and my feeling is that every possible question is already out there, so if you look you can prep for it thoroughly.
The scores are given here
Civil Service interview scoring explained by a serving civil servant: the 1–7 behaviour scale, what each score means, pass marks, moderation and merit lists.
www.csinterviewcoach.com
and are again standardised.
1 = absolutely terrible 2 = considerably short 3 = just below pass 4 = pass, 5 = good 6 = excellent 7 = unicorn
From what i could see of the scoring that I received, there were multiple scores for each behaviour + motivation, and these are likely averaged.
I think across the ~45 subscores making up the six overall scores, a successful candidate would be lucky to get one 7 across all 45 subscores, so you can treat 6 as the usual ceiling
You MUST pass all six categories, which means receiving an average of 4 or above for each category. So for example scoring 6 on everything else but 3.9 for motivation is a fail, while a score of 4.8 across the board is likely to get you a TC. Individual sub-4 subscores are not an automatic fail - it's the overall score per category that eeds to get you across the line.
They strictly award places in score order, which means that for the 65 jobs, they are REQUIRED to choose the 65 top-scoring passing candidates.
There was a moment that threw me during the AC - they told us the assessors
might be able to see our departmental preferences, whereas in fact this was
WILL.
The specific format was to choose 3 departments and locations.
The available spaces appeared to be:
2027:
DfT commercial - 1 space in your choice of Bristol, Manchester or London
2028:
CMA - 2 spaces in London
NCA - 2 spaces in London
HMRC - 8 spaces, of which all could be in London up to 2 in Bristol and up to 4 in Manchester
GLD Commercial - 3 in London, 2 in Leeds, 2 in Bristol
DfT Commercial - 1 in London, 1 in Manchester or Bristol
GLD Generalist - 29 in London, 4 in Bristol, 6 in Leeds, 4 in Manchester
During the initial application you are asked whether you are willing to work in each of those four locations.
As can be seen, there were 8 roles in Leeds, 6-9 in Bristol, 4-10 in Manchester, 37-46 in London.
So I assume given the strict requirement to give roles to the top scoring candidates, that it might not be in advantageous to tick multiple locations if your heart is set on Bristol, say, as you risk being allocated into different city based on your flexibility.
Note also that HMRC pays a higher London salary, and NCA pays London weighting plus has a boosted 2nd year salary, while for CMA there was no choice, and for GLD Commercial/General you'll be worse off in London if you have to pay london rents as there's no weighting! (for DfT I'm unsure).
So in the interview you might select "1: CMA 2028 London", "2: DfT
2027 London", "3: HMRC 2028 London", and then you will need to explain why you chose those 3.
Because of the "top scorers get TCs" rule, you won't get a TC simply because you've chosen what you think are less desirable departments, so it's really simple here - just list the department/location pairs you prefer (you're absolutely not guaranteed to get one of your preferences, but they are used, so better choose something you'd prefer than make it random, plus you need to talk about why you chose the preferences).
Overall I definitely would have benefited from slightly more prep for the STARs as I did it all the day before the AC, but obviously that was good enough - structure and research were the key to getting the TC. Equally, for the VI preparing in a similar basis to exactly hit the civil service profiles and show motivation would have more effectively ensured my progress.
But that's all academic, I did enough!
