Civil service fast stream 2014/2015

The day itself is long and intense so I would concentrate on relaxing as much as you can in the situation! Good luck! X


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Hi Everyone,

I took my FSAC on 9th Jan. I flew out on holiday the following morning and just got back to a message that I've passed the FSAC (hooray!) and my DS status is now "Awaiting Invitation", which I guess means that I've got through to the DS assessment day. Anyone else in the same situation? Slightly paranoid that I'm misreading / misunderstanding it, that "awaiting invitation" actually means "awaiting decision" and I'll have to tell my friends that I haven't got to the DS assessment day after all!

For anyone who hasn't done the FSAC yet - I don't think that there's much that anyone can tell you to help you prepare: there's not much I could have done in advance. For what it's worth, the group of candidates on my assessment day were lovely - we started with the group exercise and there were a few people in that group that I really got on with and then chatted to over lunch. It really helped me relax.

My top tip would be to read the instructions carefully - in one exercise I missed that the instructions carried on on the other side of the page. Luckily, I took the right approach anyway, but that could have gone very wrong! For the interview, I had a lovely interviewer who made a point of telling me at the start to remember to use examples from all my career and times in the past, and not just rely on my most recent job.

Good luck to everyone going through it over the next few weeks. It's a long day, but genuinely really interesting - I felt like I learned a lot about my own strengths (and weaknesses!).

Liz

Awaiting invitation means you've made it to the next step.

Don't panic when working on your police exercise - you're going to have to skim through many pages and with the clock ticking it's easy to start panicking. Be aware that your answer will not be polished (I reserved last 5 minutes to read over it and run a spell check) but do spend some some time to think about the structure and make sure you addressed all the questions.

Obviously not going to go too much into detail as like others have said it would give you an undfair advantage.

I didnt really prepare for the FSAC other than thinking of examples for the various competencies assessed in the interview and even that was just on the train to the assesment centre. There is no point in my opinon over thinking what competencies you wish to display in each of the exercises as it is a long day and you will get caught out if you pretend to be soone you are not (plus if you lie about yourself to get the job I don't see how you will perform well at it).

What I absolutely need to know now is how much weighting roughly is given to the written excerise? I really, really want someone to say minimal because I think mine was terrible.... I suppose what I'm getting at is, if it is teerrible , do I have a decent chance of making it up with a strong performance at fsac?

Thanks.

I have just been through most of the stages so I thought I'd post my experiences to give you all some insight. I am on the analyst fast stream and had my FSAC on the 26th Nov. I then found out that I had been successful by the first week of December. I returned all the pre-appointment checks form the same week I found out my FSAC results and the checks were done by the the week before Christmas. As others have commented Parity are really efficient with things they are handling themselves, it is the things being done out of their offices (e.g. the Disclosure Scotland form) that take a bit longer - but mine was back within 10 days. Once the checks were all complete the status of the pre-appointment checks stayed as 'in progress' until I found out where I had been allocated to (last week), when it changed to 'successful'. At the moment all I have is a confirmation of where I will be allocated to, I am now waiting for an invitation to meet with the team to discuss the role and start dates. In terms of preparing for FSAC - look at the material they give on the application webpage, it is really comprehensive and I found that they way things were on the day matched up to what I had been led to expect. The tasks are very scenario specific - the main things you can revise in advance are the competencies that they are looking for you to demonstrate. I found that keeping these in mind help to shape how I did the tasks. Time is the biggest pressure on the day - so don't let yourself get bogged down in one part of an assignment, remember to keen an eye on the clock. Best of luck to everyone about to do their FSACs or waiting to hear their results!