Council recruitment has one gate that decides almost everything, and it is not the interview. It is the written response to selection criteria. Councils shortlist by scoring those responses criterion by criterion, often before anyone has looked closely at your resume. A strong candidate who writes a good general cover letter and never addresses the criteria directly will not be shortlisted. This guide shows you exactly what to write.

What are selection criteria?

Selection criteria are the specific skills, knowledge, qualifications and behaviours a role requires, listed in the position description. They are not the advertisement, and they are frequently in a separate downloadable document that candidates skip.

They usually fall into three groups. Experience and results: what you have done and what came of it. Qualifications and credentials: degrees, certificates, licences, registrations, professional memberships. Attributes and behaviours: communication, judgement, working with the public, conduct and values.

Criteria are also marked essential or desirable. Essential criteria are generally treated as pass or fail. Desirable criteria are where comparable candidates get separated, which is why leaving them blank is costly.

The STAR method, properly applied

STAR is the structure panels are trained to score against, and it has four parts in a deliberate order.

Situation sets the context: where you were, when, what was going on. One or two sentences, no more. Task states what you specifically were required to achieve, in one sentence. Action is the steps you personally took, in order, and this is where the answer lives: four to six sentences. Result is what happened because of those actions, in a sentence or two, with a number attached wherever one exists.

Most candidates get the proportions wrong. They spend half the answer explaining the background and two lines on what they did. The Action and the Result are where the marks are, and the Situation is just the runway.

Worked example 1: communication with the public

Criterion: "Demonstrated ability to communicate complex information clearly to community members, including in situations of conflict or complaint."

A weak answer: "I have excellent communication skills developed over eight years in customer facing roles. I am able to explain complex matters clearly and have always received positive feedback from the community. I am calm under pressure and enjoy helping people resolve their issues."

Nothing there can be scored. No example, no action, no result. Now the same claim as STAR:

"In my role as a Customer Service Officer at a metropolitan council, our waste collection contractor changed and the bin collection day shifted for approximately 4,000 households. In the first week we received 380 complaint calls, many from residents who had missed a collection and were angry.

I was asked to handle escalated calls and to improve the written explanation residents were receiving.

I began by listening to twenty recorded calls to identify what residents were actually confused about, and found the published notice led with the contract change instead of the new day. I rewrote the notice so the new collection day appeared in the first line in bold, with the reason below it, and cut the text from 400 words to 120. I had it reviewed by two colleagues who had not seen the original. For escalated calls I used a consistent approach: acknowledge the missed collection first, confirm the new day, then arrange a one off pickup where a resident had been genuinely disadvantaged. I also prepared a one page FAQ so answers were consistent across the three of us taking calls.

Complaint calls on the issue fell from 380 in the first week to 47 in the third. The rewritten notice was adopted as the template for subsequent service change communications, and my manager cited the escalation approach in my performance review."

Worked example 2: working with limited resources

Criterion: "Capacity to manage competing priorities and deliver to deadline with limited resources."

"As the sole Environmental Health Officer at a regional council, I was responsible for the annual inspection program covering 190 registered food premises, while also handling complaint investigations and immunisation clinic support.

Halfway through the financial year I was 60 inspections behind schedule with four months left to complete the statutory program.

I started by risk ranking every outstanding premises using compliance history and food type, so high risk premises were scheduled first instead of working alphabetically as the previous program had. I grouped the remaining inspections geographically to cut travel time, which in a shire that size was a significant share of each day. I negotiated with my manager to defer two non statutory projects until the following quarter, and documented that decision so it was a recorded choice and not a lapse. For the lowest risk premises with three consecutive clean inspections, I proposed and received approval for a desktop verification process in place of a full site visit.

I completed all 190 inspections with three weeks to spare, with no reduction in the standard applied to high risk premises. The risk ranking method and the geographic grouping were both carried into the following year's program."

The mistakes that cost people shortlisting

  1. Writing "we" instead of "I". The most common problem by a distance. A panel cannot award marks for work it cannot attribute to you. Describe the team context if you must, then be specific about your own contribution.
  2. No measurable result. "The project was successful" is unscoreable. "Delivered two weeks early and $18,000 under budget" is evidence.
  3. Ignoring the criterion's exact wording. If it asks for experience "in a regulatory environment", use that phrase and show it. Panels score against their wording, so use it.
  4. Repeating the resume. The criteria statement is not a career summary. It is a small number of specific stories.
  5. Reusing an answer that almost fits. A frequent reason good candidates fail at shortlisting.
  6. Skipping the easy criteria. "Current C class driver licence" needs one line confirming you hold one.
  7. Exceeding a stated word limit. Where a limit is published, treat it as a rule. Some councils reject on it.

A checklist before you submit

  • Every criterion has its own heading, in the position description's order.
  • Each response is a STAR example with a real situation behind it.
  • Each Result contains at least one number, date or measurable outcome.
  • You have used "I" throughout the Action sections.
  • You have reused the criterion's own terminology.
  • Your examples are from the last five years where possible.
  • You are inside any stated word or page limit.
  • Someone else has read it who does not know the job.

What happens after shortlisting

Your criteria responses keep working once you are shortlisted. Council panel interviews ask behavioural questions scored against the same criteria, frequently against the same framework, so the examples you wrote are the examples you will be asked to expand on. Prepare them as spoken answers too. The council interview questions guide covers the format and the questions that recur.

If you are still deciding which roles to target, our guide to council jobs in Australia explains how pay and classifications work, or go straight to current vacancies on Council Direct.