Can You Prepare for an SJT?

You’ve heard it from someone who sat the Executive Officer competition last year: the SJT caught a lot of people out. Not the maths, not the verbal. The situational judgement test. If you’re wondering whether you can actually improve your score, or whether paying for prep material is worth it, the answer is yes - but only if the material you practise with is the right kind.

Why so many candidates lose marks on the SJT

On boards.ie and in candidate reports from recent competitions, the SJT is consistently the single biggest elimination stage at Executive Officer level. The majority of candidates who fail the EO competition fail on the situational judgement component, not on verbal reasoning or the numerical test.

Most people walk in assuming the SJT is just common sense and they’ll wing it. It isn’t. Winging it, particularly by picking the “fence sitting” middle-ground answer when two options seem reasonable, is exactly what scores poorly.

The SJT isn’t testing whether you’re a nice person. It’s testing whether your instincts about workplace behaviour align with the values and behaviours in the 2024 Capability Framework: things like evidence-informed delivery, integrity, objectivity, and appropriate escalation. Those are the explicitly stated civil service values publicjobs.ie wants to see. If you don’t know what the framework expects, you’ll be guessing.

What the publicjobs SJT actually looks like

The online assessment for the EO competition includes a situational judgement test, a personality and work style questionnaire, verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, and a written exercise of 500 words in 30 minutes. These are all part of the same online sitting, so the written exercise surprises candidates who only prepared for the SJT.

The SJT itself presents workplace scenarios as paragraphs of text. For each scenario, you rate a series of possible responses on an effectiveness scale - roughly from bad/incompetent through to excellent. You’re not picking the single best answer; you’re rating each option. This format is important because it’s different from the most-effective/least-effective binary that UK-style SJT prep uses. Partial credit applies: the closer your ratings are to the expert-validated correct ranking, the more points you earn.

The number of scenarios in the EO SJT isn’t published officially by PAS. Prep providers quote varying figures, and the format has changed between competition years, so treat any specific count you see online as an estimate rather than fact. Check publicjobs.ie directly for the most current information on what to expect.

Only two tests count toward your Order of Merit

This is the piece of information that changes how you should allocate your prep time.

Only the SJT and the verbal reasoning test contribute to the Order of Merit score that determines what batch you’re called in for interview. The numerical reasoning test is pass/fail only - it doesn’t add points to your ranking. If you’ve been spending most of your preparation time on maths, you’re working on the component that has the least impact on when you get called.

The demand-led batch system means this matters practically: candidates with higher combined SJT and verbal scores are called for interview significantly faster as vacancies arise. Getting a top score on verbal and numerical but a lower third score on the SJT, which candidates in the 2024 competition described on boards.ie, means waiting much longer for a call, if one comes at all.

The real problem: generic SJT prep doesn’t fit the Irish format

This is where candidates hit a wall. There’s no shortage of SJT practice material online, but the vast majority of it is built for the UK Civil Service or for corporate employers using SHL or Cubiks tests. The scenarios involve pound sums, UK government structures, UK performance frameworks, and response formats that don’t match what publicjobs uses.

JobTestPrep has Irish civil service packs, but the content is adapted from UK material and doesn’t map to the 2024 Capability Framework. Careerservices.ie offers genuinely Irish courses but at around €199 per year for a single grade, and the format leans toward workbooks rather than practice scenarios you can actually sit.

The candidates posting in the 2024 competition threads said it plainly: there’s no real way to practise for the SJ test because the examples are specific to the Irish Civil Service and nothing out there closely replicates the actual format.

That gap - affordable, Irish-specific, rated-response SJT practice that reflects the real publicjobs format and maps to the Capability Framework - is what PublicServicePathway is built to fill.

What preparation actually changes

The first time I sat the SJT I ranked on instinct and it cost me. What I didn’t understand then was that instinct is unreliable when you haven’t internalised what the civil service values in each scenario type.

Preparation works on three things:

Recognising the scenario type. Escalation scenarios, deadline scenarios, integrity scenarios, and interpersonal conflict scenarios each have a pattern. Once you’ve seen enough of the right kind, you stop second-guessing yourself.

Learning the escalation logic. A common mistake is escalating too quickly or not quickly enough. Passing responsibility upward when you could handle it yourself tends to score poorly. So does acting entirely alone when a manager should be consulted. Practice helps you calibrate where the line sits for each scenario type.

Stopping the fence-sitting reflex. The middle-of-the-scale answer feels safe when you’re unsure. It isn’t. The scoring system rewards proximity to the expert answer, which is often more decisive than candidates expect. Seeing that pattern through repeated practice breaks the habit.

For a fuller look at the format, scoring, and what the test session includes, the publicjobs SJT guide covers all of it. And if you want to understand exactly how the framework translates into scenario types, the 2024 Capability Framework behind every SJT scenario goes through each dimension in detail.

Is it worth paying for prep?

That depends on your situation.

If you’ve already sat an EO competition, you know roughly where you landed. If you scored lower third on the SJT, targeted practice is the most direct thing you can do before the next competition. The cost of a month’s access at €39 is trivial compared to the difference in waiting time between batches, or the salary difference between Clerical Officer and Executive Officer grade.

If this is your first competition, the free taster gives you a realistic feel for the format before you commit anything. Try the scenarios, see how you rate the responses, and notice whether your instincts align with the expected answers. If they do, you may need less practice. If they don’t, you’ll know.

The full practice bank and the interview mock add-on are available at /pricing/ if you want to compare what’s included.

FAQ

Can you actually improve your SJT score through practice?

Yes, but only with the right material. Generic SJT prep built for UK employers uses different response formats and scenario types. Irish-specific practice that reflects the rated-response format and maps to the 2024 Capability Framework is what moves the score.

Does the SJT count more than the verbal test toward the Order of Merit?

Both contribute to the Order of Merit ranking. The numerical test is pass/fail only and doesn’t add to your OOM score. How the SJT and verbal are weighted relative to each other varies by competition - check the candidate information booklet on publicjobs.ie for the specific competition you’re entering.

How do I know what the right answer is when two options seem equally valid?

This is the most common frustration candidates describe. The answer comes from the Capability Framework: knowing which civil service values apply to the scenario and what behaviour each value rewards in practice. Fence-sitting middle answers, where two options feel close, consistently score below the more decisive expert-validated response.

Is the written exercise part of the same online session as the SJT?

Yes. The 500-word written exercise, a 30-minute timed response to a two-part management scenario question, is part of the same online assessment sitting as the SJT, personality questionnaire, verbal, and numerical tests. Prepare for all components, not just the SJT.

Try it before you commit

If you’re not sure whether practice would help you, start with the free taster. It’s a realistic sample of the format with no card required - you can work through a set of scenarios tonight and see where your instincts land.

Start the free taster at psp-taster.pages.dev

Can You Really Prepare for an SJT? (And Is It Worth Paying?)