Selection criteria · APS · ILS capability
How to Address 'Achieves Results' in Your Selection Criteria
One of the five core ILS capabilities — and the one most candidates address with vague descriptions of busy work. Here's what the framework actually asks for, what panels score against, and how to evidence it at every APS level from APS6 to SES.
In thirty seconds
- 'Achieves Results' is one of the five capability clusters in the APS Integrated Leadership System (ILS). Most APS, EL, and SES selection processes draw on it.
- The capability has four sub-components: building organisational capability, marshalling expertise, dealing with change and uncertainty, and ensuring closure on intended results.
- It means different things at different levels. APS6 is about delivering your own work; EL1 is about delivering through others; EL2 is about delivering at a branch level; SES is about delivering organisational outcomes.
- The most common mistake is using examples that demonstrate activity rather than outcomes. Panels score the result, not the effort.
- Don't conflate it with Shapes Strategic Thinking (planning) or Communicates with Influence (briefing). Achieves Results is specifically about the delivery — the work that actually got done and what changed because of it.
Achieves Results is one of the five capability clusters that sit at the heart of Australian public sector recruitment. It appears in nearly every APS selection process, in most state government recruitment, and in many local council and federal agency frameworks. If you're applying to government, you'll address it — and most candidates address it badly, because they don't actually know what it's testing.
The good news is that Achieves Results is one of the more concrete capabilities to evidence. The bad news is that the structure most candidates use to evidence it (a single STAR response describing a project they led) usually misses what panels are actually scoring against.
What Achieves Results actually means
The capability is defined formally in the APS Integrated Leadership System (ILS), which sits across the APS Capability Framework and is referenced in most APS, EL and SES recruitment. The wording varies slightly between APS1–6 and EL/SES levels, but the core is consistent.
From the framework
Achieves Results — the four sub-capabilities
At EL and SES levels, Achieves Results breaks into four sub-capabilities that describe what the capability looks like in practice:
- Builds organisational capability and responsiveness
- Marshals professional expertise
- Steers and implements change and deals with uncertainty
- Ensures closure and delivers on intended results
At APS1–6, the cluster is named the same but described in terms of "Supports" rather than "Steers" — i.e. supporting change, supporting team performance, contributing professional expertise, and seeing your own work through to completion.
Source: Australian Public Service Commission, Integrated Leadership SystemThe framing matters. Achieves Results is not a generic "I delivered things" capability. It's specifically about how you mobilise capability (yours and your team's), apply judgement under uncertainty, and convert plans into completed, quality outcomes. Each sub-capability gets weighted in selection criteria responses and behavioural interviews — and the strongest responses touch on more than one.
The four sub-capabilities, expanded
Builds organisational capability and responsiveness
Identifying what your team or business unit needs to perform — skills, systems, processes — and putting those things in place. At higher levels, this includes succession planning and capability uplift; at APS6 and below, it's more about contributing to team capability through your own work.
Evidence verbs uplift · capability building · resourcing · workforce planning · process improvement · systems implementation
Marshals professional expertise
Drawing on the right expertise — your own, your team's, external specialists', other agencies' — to solve the problem in front of you. Demonstrates judgement about where the right knowledge sits and how to access it, not just personal subject-matter knowledge.
Evidence verbs consulted · convened · drew on · brought together · sought specialist input · engaged subject-matter experts
Steers and implements change and deals with uncertainty
Operating well when the requirements shift, the resourcing changes, or the scope wasn't clear from the start. This sub-capability is where most strong APS work actually lives — almost nothing in government runs to plan, and panels know it. They're looking for evidence you adjusted, re-scoped, made decisions with imperfect information, and kept the work moving.
Evidence verbs adapted · re-scoped · adjusted plans · navigated · responded to · maintained momentum · re-prioritised
Ensures closure and delivers on intended results
The classic "got the work done" sub-capability. Sees projects through to completion, monitors quality, escalates risks, hits deadlines. This is the one most candidates instinctively reach for — and on its own, it's not enough. The strongest responses pair this with at least one of the other three.
Evidence verbs delivered · finalised · cleared · closed out · completed · met · achieved · finished
The strongest Achieves Results responses don't just describe what you completed. They show how you mobilised resources, made decisions under uncertainty, and converted that into specific outcomes panels can evaluate.
It means different things at different levels
This is the part most candidates miss. Achieves Results isn't a fixed capability — its meaning scales with the seniority of the role. An APS6 candidate writing about delivering a Branch-level reform program reads as overreach. An EL2 candidate writing about completing their own caseload reads as underqualified. The example must match the level.
Calibration check
If your example would be impressive at the level above the one you're applying to, you may be over-pitching — panels see that as misjudging the role. If it would be unremarkable at the level below, you're under-pitching. Both lose marks. Match the example to the work level standard for the role you're actually applying for.
Worked example: APS6 response
An APS6 in the Department of Veterans' Affairs addressing Achieves Results, around 280 words. Notice how the example sits squarely at APS6 level — substantive work, but not branch-level reform.
Capability: Achieves Results
APS6 Senior Advice Officer, Department of Veterans' Affairs
Situation
In late 2024, the Department of Veterans' Affairs experienced a 38% surge in claims correspondence following a public awareness campaign. As Senior Advice Officer in the Compensation Branch, I was responsible for a portfolio of 220 active claim cases when the surge hit and our team's response time targets started slipping for the first time in 18 months.
Task
I was asked by my supervisor to take the lead on improving the team's response time to incoming correspondence within four weeks, while continuing to manage my own caseload.
Action
I started by mapping the actual time spent on each correspondence type and identified that 60% of the volume was repeat-pattern queries that could be handled with pre-approved templates. I drafted six template responses, ran them past our subject-matter expert and the Branch's legal officer for sign-off, then trained the four officers in the team on how to identify which queries qualified for templated handling. For the remaining complex correspondence, I worked with my supervisor to introduce a triage step at intake so that complex matters reached experienced officers faster. I tracked the team's response times daily for the first three weeks and adjusted the template wording where pieces weren't landing well with veterans.
Result
Average response time dropped from 18 days to 8 days within the four-week window — back inside the Branch target. The templates remain in use for routine correspondence and have been adopted by two other Branch teams. Our Branch Head named the project as an example of "operational delivery under pressure" in the Branch's quarterly report. My own caseload remained current throughout.
What's working: the response shows delivery (response time dropped), marshalling expertise (consulted SME and legal officer), change and uncertainty (adjusted templates as feedback came in), and capability building (templates now used across Branch). It hits multiple sub-capabilities without trying to.
Worked example: EL2 response
The same capability evidenced at EL2 level looks fundamentally different. Here's an EL2 in the same Department, around 360 words.
Capability: Achieves Results
EL2 Director, Compensation Policy Branch
Situation
In 2024, the Compensation Policy Branch was directed to deliver a complete review of the determination framework for non-economic loss compensation following Royal Commission findings — a body of work covering 23 distinct entitlement types, with statutory consultation requirements across all states and an immovable Cabinet submission deadline of nine months. The Branch's senior advice cohort was simultaneously dealing with a 38% spike in caseload from a public awareness campaign, and three of the six EL1 team leaders in the Branch had been in their roles less than four months.
Task
As Director of the Branch, I was accountable for delivering the framework review on time, to standard, and through a workforce that was under significant operational pressure.
Action
I segmented the 23 entitlement types into three workstreams based on policy complexity and assigned each to one of my EL1 team leaders, paired with the most experienced policy adviser in their team. To address the experience gap, I established a fortnightly clinic with the Branch's principal policy lawyer to provide direct mentorship to the EL1 cohort on contentious determinations. I negotiated with the Deputy Secretary to defer two lower-priority pieces of Branch work into the following financial year, freeing approximately 1.2 FTE worth of effort for the review. When the awareness-campaign caseload surge hit four months in, I worked with the Branch's operational director to redirect contractor support to absorb the routine correspondence load so that policy staff weren't pulled off the review. I held weekly Director's reviews of progress and reported risks fortnightly to the Assistant Secretary.
Result
The Branch delivered all three workstreams to Cabinet on time. Of the 23 entitlement types reviewed, 19 recommendations were endorsed without amendment; the remaining four were endorsed after minor adjustments. The Cabinet submission was the first deliverable on the Royal Commission response timeline to land in scope and on schedule. The fortnightly clinic was retained as a permanent capability uplift mechanism for the Branch's EL1 cohort. None of my three less-experienced team leaders required performance management during or after the project.
The EL2 response is doing different work. It evidences building organisational capability (the clinic, the EL1 development), marshalling expertise (the principal lawyer, the contractor support), change and uncertainty (responding to the caseload surge), and closure (delivered to Cabinet on time and to standard). The scope is right for EL2 — branch-level work, multiple workstreams, named accountability to Deputy Secretary level.
Verbs that signal Achieves Results
One of the simplest tells of a strong response is the verbs the candidate reaches for. Achieves Results responses should lean heavily on delivery and outcome verbs — the kind that suggest the writer thinks about completion rather than effort.
Strong action verbs for Achieves Results
Compare that to the words that don't read as Achieves Results: words like discussed, considered, analysed, contributed to, was involved in, participated in. Those are perfectly fine words but they evidence different capabilities — Shapes Strategic Thinking, or Cultivates Productive Working Relationships, not delivery.
Common confusions with other capabilities
Achieves Results is one of five ILS capabilities, and candidates frequently overlap their evidence with adjacent capabilities — losing scoring on both because nothing is cleanly evidenced. The two most common conflations:
Achieves Results vs Shapes Strategic Thinking
Strategic Thinking is about the plan — analysing the environment, identifying options, framing the approach. Achieves Results is about the delivery — the actual work that converted the plan into outcome. If your example focuses on the planning phase and stops there, that's Strategic Thinking. If it focuses on the execution and what changed, that's Achieves Results. A strong candidate response evidences both, but in separate examples — not the same example doing double duty.
Achieves Results vs Communicates with Influence
Communicates with Influence is about the persuasion — drafting briefs, advising decision-makers, presenting options, influencing outcomes through communication. Achieves Results is about the delivery — what got done, by whom, with what outcome. A response that's mostly "I drafted a brief that influenced a decision" is Communicates with Influence even if a result emerged from it. Achieves Results examples should foreground the work itself, not the briefing about the work.
A few more things worth knowing
Use STAR consistently. Achieves Results responses fit cleanly into the STAR structure (Situation, Task, Action, Result). For the full breakdown of how to weight each section, see how to structure a STAR response for public sector jobs.
Quantify the Result. Real, defensible numbers always strengthen Achieves Results responses — but be careful not to over-inflate. AI-generated round percentages are now read with suspicion. See the metric mirage.
Use one strong example, not three weak ones. It's tempting to cram multiple short examples into a single response to "cover more capability." Panels prefer one substantive example that genuinely evidences the capability over a list of names and outcomes that don't show your judgement. One example, well structured, beats three thin ones every time.
If you're writing a 2-page pitch instead of separate criteria responses, Achieves Results is usually one of two or three capabilities woven into a body paragraph. The same principles apply, but the evidence has to be tighter — see how to write a 2-page pitch for APS roles for the full template.
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