Clerical officer in the civil service 2026 campaign

Oh my god the EXACT same thing happened to me! It's so annoying

Of course, huge uncertainty in the world public service is reasonably more reliable than the private sector

Got 71 for limerick, not sure if enough for interview or if I do it could take months i suppose, can people get bumped up or down the list depending on interview

I'm definitely curious because I know from reading the previous pages that the people who scored high (600+) only selected one or two good in total (they both work in the service already as TCO etc). So I'm really curious about why the other answers weren't good. I had one “good” in every one of my six responses.

It was actually the bloke who had the Loughlinstown weather attached to his signature that actually highlighted to me the fact that it was not a ranking exercise and that we could select multiples!

Yes, the threads are very helpful here. I definitely would not have passed if I hadn’t read here! I’m sure this thread will be really helpful for next year/2028’s applicants.

Like yourself, I had one 'good' for every question but I must have completely messed up with how I was ranking the three other options. I'm still baffled at how I scored so low though and what it was they marked me down for. In my own mind, I would have thought I had comfortably hit the 500 mark, especially with my experience as a TCO.

I'll really have to research this ahead of doing the next competition - clearly I'm putting responses to some of these scenarios that they are saying are the 'wrong' choices.

Mid 300s in Dublin. Am I in with a chance? How long for an interview if so?

Definitely getting an interview at some point this year. The last competition they got to around the 2000 something mark in terms of interviews. They usually take at least 800 for Dublin based on the screenshot from 2024 of applicants called by county.

Yep, there seems to be an oversaturation in the market of people seeking admin roles. I graduated with a BA in languages and I'm naturally a good communicator, but I'm being shunned by employers due to the large volume of people with marketing degrees, business degrees etc.

Entry roles are super competitive at the minute. Thanks for the info, really hoping to hear about an interview soon for Limerick.

If you do well in the interview do are you able to choose/ask where in your chosen county you prefer to work assuming there are CO jobs in different parts?

From 2024 panel

I was joking in fact about using AI, it would be rather unethical (and I wouldn't even trust it for a moment to give good responses for such a test).

In terms of where I went wrong, I felt I was doing the right thing in usually referring up to my line manager when faced with a dilemma and unsure what to do and gave this as a 'good' answer every time - and yet I scored poorly in both 2024 and 2026. That's why I was asking further up the thread if I should even be avoiding the 'good' option in future and saying that no scenario is a good one.

I will definitely research and research this before attempting the next SJT, it seems to be my weak spot.

Some people said that apparently for counties outside of Dublin, you could select which towns you wanted to work in within the application form, but this was not an option for Dublin (I assume because the majority of the offices are located within the city centre and they are accounting for lack of/issues for people commuting who don’t drive outside Dublin).

381 for SJ (and 588 for skills). I have a funny feeling it's the 'non good' responses where I'm losing points - putting weak instead of bad and vice versa, adequate instead of weak and so on. I'll definitely read up on and research this before attempting the next one - it's probably just very simple and basic errors. As you suggest too, you wouldn't necessarily have to get too many of these wrong to lose a load of points.

Depends on vacancies, last comp only 10-19 were employed but I know people who were 40 on the OOM but weren’t interviewed until over 14 months later.

My daughter only applied on the last day at the last minute, she got 3,000 or so on the list.

Was it based purely on the application form or were there other tests, my daughter said she doesn't recall doing any extra tests?