WA Public Sector Selection Criteria Examples (PSO and SCO)

I act with integrity in my professional conduct, with particular care for situations involving the use of public resources (restate the criterion). In my current PSO Level 6 role with a WA regulatory agency, I administer a regional grants program that distributes around $4 million annually across approximately 40 community organisations (situation). During one grant cycle I was approached informally by a community representative known to my Manager seeking guidance on how to position their organisation's application (task).

I declined to provide guidance to that individual organisation beyond what was publicly available, explaining clearly that providing tailored guidance to one organisation would be inconsistent with the merit and equity principles. I documented the approach in a brief note to my Manager, including what was said and how I responded, so the record was clear if questions arose later. When the same organisation subsequently submitted an application, I declared the prior contact in writing to the assessment panel chair before participating in the assessment process. I made sure my participation in the assessment was substantive rather than recused on principle — declaring the contact and then assessing fairly is what the standards require, not stepping back from work where contact has occurred. I followed up with the broader sector by producing a public guidance document with the same questions answered, available to all potential applicants (actions).

The grant cycle was completed without procedural challenge from any unsuccessful applicant. The public guidance document was adopted as a standing resource for subsequent cycles, removing the underlying incentive for individual organisations to seek private guidance. My Manager referenced the handling of the matter in her annual review as the standard she expected from her senior officers (result).

I manage stakeholder relationships in industry contexts where regulatory and operational priorities can conflict, with particular experience in the WA mining and resources sector (restate the criterion). In my current role I am the regional liaison for our regulatory function across three Pilbara operations (situation). During the past year, two operators raised concerns about the consistency of regulatory interpretations between our regional office and the Perth-based technical team (task).

I met each operator separately at their site rather than calling them into Perth for a centralised meeting, which let me understand each operator's specific concerns in the context of their actual operation. From those conversations I identified that the underlying disagreement was less about regulatory substance than about the timeliness of clarification on technical matters — operators were making operational decisions before clarification arrived, which created compliance friction downstream. I worked with the Perth technical team to establish a 48-hour clarification turnaround commitment for routine technical queries, separate from the longer process for novel regulatory interpretations. I documented the new arrangement clearly and circulated it to the operators, including specifically what counted as a routine query and what required the longer process. I made sure the regional office knew when an operator was facing a time-critical operational decision so the technical team could prioritise accordingly (actions).

Regulatory friction in the region reduced measurably across the following two quarters. Both operators that had raised concerns participated constructively in the sector consultation on the next round of regulatory amendments. The 48-hour clarification commitment has been adopted across the agency's other regional offices (result).

I deliver complex work to required standards and timeframes, including in operational contexts involving genuine constraints — remote locations, limited staff resources, time-sensitive regulatory action (restate the criterion). In my current role I led a regulatory inspection program across six remote sites in the Goldfields region during a six-week window driven by external reporting commitments (situation). The team was three inspectors plus me, against a typical inspection program of this scale requiring six inspectors (task).

I sequenced the inspection program against the geographical realities rather than the team's preference, which meant pairing the longer-distance sites with the more straightforward inspection scopes so that travel time and inspection complexity didn't compound. I prepared each inspector's brief in detail before they departed each site, so site time was spent inspecting rather than orienting. I held a structured 30-minute Teams call with each inspector at the end of each site visit to capture findings while they were fresh and flag any issues that needed follow-up. I built in two contingency days at the end of the program rather than at the start, on the basis that contingency at the end is recoverable and contingency at the start gets consumed. I escalated to my Director at week three when one inspector reported safety concerns at a site that needed urgent follow-up — with a specific proposal for an additional team member rather than just flagging the concern (actions).

All six sites were inspected within the program window. The regulatory findings produced two formal enforcement actions and one improvement notice, with all formal documentation completed within the required reporting timeframes. The Director cited the program in the regional office's quarterly performance report (result).

I sustain effective performance in operational environments that involve sustained pressure and, in WA contexts, often remote conditions (restate the criterion). In my current role I spend an average of 14 working days per quarter on field-based assignments to remote regional sites, sometimes with limited connectivity or after-hours operational requirements (situation). Maintaining quality of analytical output and quality of personal interactions across these assignments requires deliberate self-management (task).

I plan field assignments with the same rigour I apply to office work, including identifying which analytical work can be completed in the field and which needs to wait until office return. I keep a tight separation between work hours and rest hours even when accommodated on-site — the temptation to work continuously through a remote assignment produces a downstream performance cost that is not visible at the time. I maintain communication with my home team on a fixed schedule rather than ad-hoc, so colleagues know when to expect responses and I'm not constantly task-switching between the field work and office matters. I take a structured debrief approach at the end of each assignment, including capturing learnings while they're fresh and identifying anything that should change in how I plan the next one. When fatigue or pressure starts affecting my work quality, I raise it with my Director early rather than pushing through — the operational and reputational cost of work produced under accumulated pressure is greater than the cost of recalibrating the schedule (actions).

Quality of analytical output on field-based assignments has been consistently equivalent to office-based work across the past two years. My Director has referenced the approach to self-management as part of the standards she expects from her regionally-deployed officers (result).

I communicate effectively with diverse audiences, including translating technical regulatory content for non-technical stakeholders (restate the criterion). In my current role I provide briefings on regulatory changes to industry representatives, community stakeholders, and ministerial advisers — three audiences with substantially different levels of technical familiarity (situation). The same regulatory change typically needs three different briefings (task).

For industry audiences I write in the operational terminology they use, focusing on what the change means for their operational decisions, compliance posture, and likely reporting requirements. For community audiences I strip out the regulatory technicality and focus on what the change means for the matters they actually care about — environmental outcomes, community amenity, safety. For ministerial advisers I keep the technical detail but lead with the political and policy dimensions, because that is what the adviser needs to brief their Minister on. I prepare the technical version first because it forces me to understand the change properly; the other versions are then translations of a piece of content I genuinely understand, not summaries of a position I haven't quite grasped. I send drafts to one colleague for a fresh read before delivery, particularly the community version, because I have learned my second-pass review catches less than someone else's first-pass read (actions).

Both industry and community feedback on my briefings has been consistently positive across the past 18 months. Two of my industry briefings have been adopted as templates for the agency's broader sector engagement. A ministerial adviser explicitly requested me to handle technical questions in a recent ministerial roundtable (result).

I manage and develop technical staff with a focus on building capability beyond their current technical specialisation (restate the criterion). In my current PSO Level 7 role I manage four direct reports, three of whom are SCO classifications with specialist technical backgrounds (situation). The challenge of managing technical specialists is building their capability in the broader public sector capabilities — stakeholder management, communication with non-technical audiences, contribution to operational decisions — without diminishing the technical depth that makes them valuable (task).

I established development plans for each direct report mapped to both the specialist progression in their technical area and the broader leadership capabilities expected at their level. For each, I identified stretch assignments that would build the non-technical capabilities in contexts where their technical expertise was still being applied — not asking them to do work outside their area, but giving them work where the technical content was familiar but the stakeholder dimensions were new. I held fortnightly one-on-ones with explicit space for them to raise issues that crossed the technical/non-technical boundary, because these issues often don't get raised in routine work conversations. I worked with my own Director to identify cross-team opportunities for my specialists, including secondments to other agencies and contributions to whole-of-government working groups. When one specialist was reluctant to engage with non-technical work, I addressed it directly through structured development discussions rather than letting the reluctance harden (actions).

All three SCO direct reports have taken on substantively broader work across the past 18 months, while maintaining their specialist progression. Two are now sought after for cross-agency working groups in their specialist areas. The team's annual engagement scores were the highest in the directorate (result).