Hi All,
I have an interview with the EA this week for an Environment Officer job, and wondered if anyone on here works for them and could give me a few pointers on the role and the interview? Background is Fire service officer, wonder how to best bring out the skills i have from that job in the interview as traditionally i’m hopeless at interview! 😕

Cheers
James 🙂

Yep I am an E.O. where are you being interviewed?

All Civil Service interviews are supposed to be “evidence based” also known as “competency based”.Link

The job advert and description will state the requirements for the job e.g. teamwork, management etc. and they will probably ask you questions like ” Please tell us about a time when you used teamwork/leadership/problem solving etc to good effect in your work” or other similar guff.

The job description and advert is key to establishing what sort of questions you can expect.

The Civil Service is supposed to use a very fair interview system and all candidates will get asked very similar question and marked against them.

Cheers chaps, i’m guessing that the interview will be similar to fire service then with ‘PQA’ style questions..
Pigface- interview is in Sheffield, ideally i’d like to be based in Darlington

FFJA – I’ve just looked up “PQA” on Google.

I would say that is exactly the same, just prep as you would for a Fire Service interview and you probably won’t be far wrong.

Thanks, at least the style should be familiar even if the questions aren’t…

You will do a role play, a general interview about stuff. I would check out Water Framework Directive have an idea what it is and why etc. Then for the waste side of things look at ELV stuff WEEE stuff it is all on the E.A. website. Have a look for environment issues local to where you want to work.

They won’t expect you to know everything but be aware of the stuff I have mentioned.

With your background you should be fine.

I work for the EA and was an Environment officer for 5 years.

EO job interview are likely to be capability based, e.g. “Can think of a time when you’ve …”

Best advice would be to try think of example for stuff within the job spec / advert. Influencing skills, dealing with hostile situations etc. your examples won’t have to be the Oscar worthy but should demonstrate you meeting the capibility. Kinda like the STAR model the fire service use (or did when I applied!)

Knowing some legislation details would be in your favour but you won’t be expected to know it all!

Remember to answer the question, the whole question and nothing but the question! You’d be amazed how people go off point trying to sell themselves and don’t answer the question!

Hopefully that helps if you want anymore advise message me email in profile

Thanks for all the replies, i’ll have a good look on the EA site for the legislation side of things 🙂 Hopefully i can pull out some decent examles from the water squirting side of things for the interview.
While i’m asking, can anyone tell me a little bit more about the training? ie mix of on the job and residential stuff? The website is quite vague about it.
Thanks all
J

Drop me an email and when I’m back in the office tomorrow afternoon I’ll chuck you over some stuff.

About training and the likely categories for the capabilities

Boot camp has gone sadly, not sure what the new regime is.

If you get the job just be prepare to pull you’re hair out at times.

Whats vexing you at the moment then Kuco, with me its exemptions and taking the pi55, oh for a 10k spot fine 😆

“The website is quite vague” 😀

If you get the job just be prepare to pull you’re the manufacturers hair out at times.

Remove any common sense

Make a local policy that’s different to national EA

Justify forgetting to renew permitted exemptions when you change the permitting regime and then be too busy to sort it out

Apply a dogmatic approach to “waste” and prevent sensible uses

Practice trying to convince someone to give up an abstraction licence for nothing despite all your documents discussing abstraction licence trading

Remember your mission is to stop anybody doing anything

(none of this will help you get the job)

Don’t get me wrong I like my job but seeing most of our work going out to contract and then needing a ton of paper work to do the simplest job does wind me up.