You and Government
“I want to work for the government, but first I need to know…”
As recruitment consultants, we’re regularly asked questions about working in New Zealand’s public sector—everything from what to expect in a government job interview, to what the ‘senior’ in senior policy analyst really means. To help out jobseekers, we’ve decided to put together an archive of common questions about working in the public sector. We’ve also added some tips, advice, and FAQs for certain topics.
This area of our website is always expanding as we add more content and questions. If you have a question about working in government that you’d like us to answer, write to us at info@thejohnsongroup.co.nz and we’ll do our best!
How to prepare for your government job interview
There are a few things you can do before your government job interview to ensure that things go smoothly.
Competency-based interviews – government interviewing techniques
Competencies-based (also called ‘behavioural event’) interviews are based on the idea that past behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour. Generalized or hypothetical answers are not suitable!
Common job interview mistakes
Generalized answers – It is important to be specific in answering questions about your behaviour. Examples you give should be concrete examples from the past.
Seven tips on writing your government resume
There really isn’t any consensus on how to make the best eye-catching resume.
What are the benefits of working for the New Zealand government?
People choose to work in government for many different reasons. We spoke to some of our recruitment consultants about the reasons people give—here are their answers!
What does a policy advisor do?
There’s often some confusion about the difference between an advisor and a policy analyst—and for good reason, because the two jobs often have significant amounts of overlap.
What does a policy analyst do?
Simply, policy analysts develop government policies and provide advice and briefing to Ministers and Senior Management.
What do researchers and evaluators do?
The term ‘researcher’ is fairly self-explanatory—as you’d expect, researchers are responsible for doing the research to underpin government policy.
What do information and data analysts do?
Information and data analysts are concerned with quantitative research and putting explanations around the bare numeric facts.
What do managers and team leaders do?
Managers and team leaders are ‘the glue that binds a policy team together’—they manage policy groups and other analysts.
