2024 Assistant Principal in Civil Service

I'm sure this is a "how long is a piece of string" question, but any idea (maybe from the 2022/previous year's competitions) how many OOMs are pulled in a batch? I.e., Those in Batch 1 are currently having their applications assessed and will get a new OOM/be eliminated before they move on to Stage 3 Interviews for the successful candidates and I'm just curious roughly how many get pulled into Batch 1 of the overall 2,867 candidates who have passed Stage 1.

I assume it is a typo as well. The alternative is that they want to really hire lots of new APs in advance of the EU presidency and then let the numbers drop down by attrition after this year.

Got a score of 1,650 but failed SJ. Maybe I should have slowed down a bit for that one...

Apologies, yeah that's correct. A bit over 1,000 without numerical.

Very useful comment. To add to it, after getting Stage 1 result end of Jan 2023 with a circa 600 OOM, I got Stage 2 result the end of June 2023. So they got as far as 600 OOM within six months in the last campaign and, going by the above comment, as far as 1,200 OOM within 13 months. This should give people a general idea of how fast PAS gets through its shortlisting process for AP - 100 OOM per month … assuming they take the same approach and invest same manpower into the process as last time round.

wrong thread

Congrats all! I scored +1000 and got an OOM of 995 in Dublin, bit dissapointed with the score but happy to have passed. Can’t see how they just start sifting through 2,700 + application forms and doubt they’ll get to mine before year end. Can anyone confirm based on previous?

Thanks. Do you know if that 400 was all in the first batch? Or do you mean 400 people were called over the lifetime of the competition? Hopefully just Batch 1!

Also, are they going off scores (so everyone above a certain score gets called in Batch 1), or a decision to call the an approximate number for the first set of interviews, so the top approximate 400 (to allow for groupings of people on the same score) ranked by score regardless of what that score actually is?

Interestingly, judging by some of the disclosed scores here, a score of 1059 would give someone an OOM of around 6-700 on the Open competition this time round. So a score of 1059 this wouldn't necessarily be sufficient if they're only calling the first 400 people for Stage 3 (Batch 1) this time, while it would have been sufficient previously (but of course it could be sufficient for later Batches, I really don't mean to make anyone disheartened).

Very helpful, thank you. I will have a look at that thread again. I'm just trying to figure out if my score means my application will be considered as part of Batch 1 or not (looks like it will). Now all I need to do is worry about whether it will pass scrutiny and also start to prep for answering questions on it. If there is only a year for this panel to get people interviewed and assigned, they will probably be moving pretty quickly!

Yes, I'm aware that it's the assessment of application stage next and that this has to be passed to progress to Stage 3 Interviews. I am a tad worried about this stage as I'm afraid I took the wrong approach with Q1. But, on the off-chance I do make it through, no harm in starting to do some prep work already. Especially as it looks as though they will be moving quickly to meet the tight time-frame they've set themselves.

And by prep-work, I just mean thinking about the sort of questions that could be asked around each capability, going through my examples and making sure I have back-ups (they did ask me to alternative examples than the ones in my form in a previous HEO competition). That sort of thing.

Oh, I thought that where, for example, 10 people have the same score (Group A for the purposes of this point), they get the same OOM, but the next highest score's OOM would be "Group A + (10-1)". So if you have an OOM of 200, it would be approximately (but not exactly) 200 people on that point. I didn't realise it would be so widely divergent!

Im not sure if that is correct, i remember reading somewhere that if two people get same score, something is looked at to get a unique oom for everyone. Open to correction though.

I've worked on internal competitions, and where candidates had the same score after evaluation (rather than testing), we would give them both the same OOM, but then the next highest score's OOM would be "Previous OOM + (Number of people on previous OOM minus 1)". I thought PAS would do something similar.

I wonder if this is something they ever clear up for people if they email!

Hi, I received OOM of around 255 for the open competition. I put down Dublin as my county preference. This is my first time applying for a civil service job so I’ve no clue how the process works. I’m just wondering if 1) is approx 255 a decent score and 2) what sort of timeframe would I be looking at if I’m lucky enough to get called for an interview?

Hi,

I am not sure I fully understand the process and would love your input.

I have received my results last week and to be honest I thought they were not great (at the same time I was sick when doing the tests, so I knew I was not at my best).

I was not in the top quandrant for any of the tests. However, to my suprise, my OOM is 12! I am not in Co. Dublin and I am in the open stream. Were the answers from the application form taken into account for the OOM?

Is 12 high for outside Dublin? Or is there only usually veeeery few openings in the country?

When they decide who to call for an interview do they go by the test scores or the OOM?