How long does the home office take to give Interview outcomes?

Hi, I also interviewed for user research in October. I got the dreaded rejection email on Saturday after obsessively checking for 4 weeks. Totally ruined my weekend.

So maybe it's good news if you haven't heard Esther. I knew the interview hadn't gone amazingly as I was super nervous and the questions weren't what I expected so it threw me a bit and I forgot stuff I did actually know. I was kicking myself when i finished as I did so much prep for this interview. However I thought I still had a chance especially as some of the previous people on the scheme had no relevant education or work experience.

I got a really low score so I'm not even on a reserve list so I am clearly terrible at civil service interviews.

I was also surprised they were interviewing so many people as when I booked my interview I could only see 2 days.

How did you two get on?

Well done for getting on the reserve list. I think theres a chance people will drop out if they have applied for other things especially as it's quite a long drawn out process. I have heard there's a shortage or user researchers in the home office so you might get offered something else. Do they tell you where you are on the reserve list? I'm guessing they've put everyone in order and that's why it takes so long.

It sounds like there was a lot more competition than I was expecting. It's the first time I've applied for a civil service role so I really didn't know what to expect and lots of the advice online is about the behaviour questions so I wasn't sure if there is a structure to answer the technical questions. Now I've thought more about it and read the feedback I think i totally underestimated how much detail I needed to give for each answer. I was prepared to talk in detail about methods and when I've used each one and analysing and synthesizing data but then that didn't really come up. I know my answers weren't wrong but I'm guessing they weren't specific enough. The frustrating thing is I had actually tried practising a couple of the questions with a friend who works in UR but he said it was too advanced and wouldn't come up as it was a junior trainee role.

It also seems like I messed up the presentation by not doing it in the order of the brief. I covered all the points but they said I didn't and that I'd used the wrong structure. I did it more like a standard user research plan. Nerves totally got the better of me and I really struggled to get it all done and remain calm in the time given and it got me off to a bad start really with the rest of the interview.

Anyway fingers crossed you get offered a place. If you have any advice for answering this type of interview question I would be grateful. Have you done many civil service or other UR interviews?