Principal Officer competition 2022

Literally what you said.

In America?! Where it cost well over $100 for a single vial of insulin, until very recently? Your friends weren't all that efficient...

Anyway - this is a thread about the recent PO competition in Ireland, so maybe stay on topic.

Having gotten through this competition, I can testify to the privilege of getting to this grade and the hard work and talent (more perspiration than inspiration so far) that is needed.

@CP30 Listen carefully to the questions and really understand YOUR strengths for each competency. Best of luck.

I have just been called to interview for PO Higher. They must have gotten through the first panel-, as far as I remember 14 were interviewed and less than 10 made the panel. Anybody else called to interview?

I don't think there was any numerical reasoning for this competition, open to correction though.

Maybe I shouldn't be answering as I've also never gone for it (recently enough freshly-minted AP here), but is it the same test as the AP, or at least the same sort of tests? From memory, the maths were all questions about an imaginary company, with graphs and charts for things like sales of different types of goods, employee breakdowns, market share, etc.?

If they're those tests, then I found they quickly broke down into three types of multiple-choice question:

1) There isn't enough info on the tab/chart to be able to answer the question (which is a valid answer);

2) There is enough info. To get the answer, I will need to calculate X, (then possibly use X to calculate Y), and compare to the answers provided;

3) There is enough info. I will need to do multiple calculations to calculate part of the answer.

As you have limited time (you can work out the average time available per question), type 1 are a godsend. E.g., it'd be something like "Based on sales for the last two years, what will sales be for 2022" and you look at the chart, see it only goes up to the 2021 and there's no info to allow you to project sales, so you can tell in a few seconds it's a type 1 question. You immediately tick the "insufficient info" box and move on to the next question, saving 2 minutes.

Likewise, the type 3 questions - there might not be a total listed for some columns of 5 figures each, so you've to manually add those figures for column 1, note that, manually add them for column 2, subtract one from the other, etc. This will take way too much time. Leave the question, go on to the next one (you can come back to it later if you've finished all the others).

The type 2 questions, then, will take up most of your time. Look at the provided answers first after you've read the question. You often don't need to do all of the calculations, you can tell quickly enough that, say, answer A and C are out by orders of magnitude, and you can rule out E, "insufficient info", so you frequently just need to do enough to work out "Is answer B or D the closest" without fully doing the maths. Other times you will have to do the full calculation, but you'll have made up enough time, hopefully, to leave you comfortable.

This method left me with just about enough time to get through almost all of the questions, IIRC. I then went back to the ones I hadn't answered, and guessed answers - 20% chance of being right (I think there were five possible answers?), and no negative marking for wrong answers. People who were faster would possibly have had time to properly work out some of the type 3 questions.

Bloody stupid to be getting potential APs and POs to be doing stuff like this, tbh. We wouldn't have built up the required experience to be applying if we were innumerate, and in a work situation, I'd be using Excel to work out column totals, averages, etc., not a calculator!

Me too!

Also, I'd look for similar practice questions online. It's like any skill, practice does help with these; you spot patterns of kinds of question, you get faster. You don't need to get 100%, you just need to do enough of them to reach the pass mark. Through to the next round is through to the next round, and the maths/verbal reasoning, etc., have no bearing on the final order of merit within each batch.

Soon I hope - I need to be put out of my misery

My panel ran until today so there must be more than one panel for this batch. If they called roughly from no's 250 - 400 then approx 150 people were screened for interview. Based on interview times I calculated that around 25 were being interviewed on my panel and I thought that number seemed very low. May be a few weeks till results are out so...

Hopefully we’ll find out next week …

I got in touch with them yesterday and they said results out end of may / start of June so if they don’t release them tomorrow I’d say we’re looking at next Friday of the bank holiday weekend.

congrats to all who got onto the Order of Merit, I’m around 40 so probably near the bottom of our batch merit list. Not sure what my chances are of being offered a post any time soon…

Yeah I’m in the 40s too. Just delighted I made the panel tbh. Fairly confident they will reach me by March next year! Congrats to everyone who made it through.

I asked PAS this and they said it has been exhausted so they are moving to our batch. With location choices due a couple of days ago hopefully they will move a few to clearance in June before the summer shutdown

Nothing here. I emailed to ask when things are likely to get moving but haven't heard back yet.