2024 Assistant Principal in Civil Service

The responses on your form were not taken into account in generating the OOM you have received at this stage. Only your test scores. Also, as you applied for a county outside Dublin, your score only relates to the OOM in that specific county (each county, including Dublin, has its own specific OOM list). It'll depend on the overall number of vacancies and applicants in your county as to whether 12 is enough to get you through to interview stage before the competition ends.

Counties outside Dublin tend to have fewer vacancies, but it definitely depends on the number of offices/departments in your county, the overall number of AP positions and the number of retirements/people being promoted or leaving etc.

Stage 2 is an examination of application forms, this is usually done in batches (I can only really speak for Dublin). So they will pull the highest ranking number of OOM forms and go through them to assess how well they match the capabilities categories. Each form is graded and then the OOM for that batch of candidates is re-ranked. Stage 3 is the interview stage and candidates are called to interview based on this re-ranked OOM from stage 2.

I hope this helps and well done on your OOM and best of luck with your progress through the competition.

for anyone who's wondering - once the panel for this comp is established, it'll last up to 12 Dec 2025. Very short period!!

I think it will be mid-February before they call batch 1. They will start scoring the application forms, and then people will either move on to stage 3 or be eliminated if they don't get the requisite score. Another long wait! However given the tight year deadline, they might be quicker.

That's on the interdepartmental circular which isn't relevant to yourself?

Hello all! I had a look at the previous 2022 boards thread and I see that they began shortlisting around OOM 1000 about 12 months post-test results. I scored approximately 1100 OOM. Given that the competition expires in December, is it likely that this is the end of the road or should I still hold any hope of progressing further in this competition? I know that’s a little bit of a “how long is a piece of string?” question but just wondering if anyone is in the same boat?

For anyone in Kerry, Dept. of TCAGSM have appointed about 15 APs from an internal competition in the last month or so, so that reduces the potential vacancies.

Given that there appear to only be 21 AP positions in TCAGSM in Kerry in total, 15 seems exceptionally high - are they newly created posts, or just a mass exodus?

That's fantastic news for applicants in Kerry! Now if only the other regional areas would follow suit!... 🤞🤞

Hi all, does anyone know where can I find the competition information booklet? Thanks!

Has there been previous cases at this level of extending the panel for a further 12 months?

No. It pretty much means the exact opposite. It roughly means theyll only offer jobs up to that date.

Most competitions run for two or three years. One year as for this competition is rare, certainly very rare for a generalist grade by AP (or CO, EO, HEO) where demand is higher than in specialist competitions.

PAS can choose to extend a panel but again, I believe it is rare. Here is what the PAS Chief Executive had to say on the matter previously:

"The issue of extending or closing panels does not generally arise. A panel can be exhausted because we have been good at determining how many vacancies there will be and having that number of people on the panel, so within 18 months all those vacancies will be filled. Everybody will be gone from the panel. It could also be because, as Deputy Kirk mentioned earlier, some external events occur and the panel, effectively, becomes closed because we are not recruiting any more. There could also be an area where there is a particular demand for specialist skills. For example, we have had lots of requests for accountants across public service bodies. We will recruit and place people on a panel and wait for the sanctioned vacancies to become available. If, after an 18-month period, there are still people on the panel and we have not had requests to fill vacancies, we would ask if the panel is moving and look at our workload, the demands for the client and what is happening in the general environment. We would consider whether there had been other competitions in a similar area that would offer people an opportunity to join the public service and make an assessment on when to run a new competition. That is generally what happens.

The question of extending a panel does not really arise. We do not use the language of saying the panel is closed. It can be misconstrued by clients when we might advise them that given the last time a competition was held was two years ago, there might be more people in the market who would be interested in applying or qualified for this panel, it might be time to move on and have a new competition. We do not generally use language like "it is closed"."

Is mid 20s open stream for sligo good or bad?

Hi again. If anyone knows, I would like to clarify this: I have worked in civil service for 2.5 years, 1 as CO and 1.5 years as AO. Is it mandatory to have completed 2 years as an AO to be chosen as an AP in the interdepartmental stream? Does this time count from the application day or the selection day? It's probably a query for PAS, but it's no harm to check here before I send an email. Thanks!