How Many Examples Should You Prepare?
One example per Behaviour looks efficient until a follow-up question outruns it. What to prepare instead, and when reusing a story is fine.
“How many examples should I prepare?” is one of the most searched Civil Service interview questions there is, and it gets asked because candidates want a number they can hit and then stop worrying. Three examples. Five. One per Behaviour. Whatever the figure, once it is reached, preparation feels finished.
That instinct is understandable, and it is also the wrong question. A panel is not counting how many stories you arrived with. It is testing whether the stories you tell can survive being pushed on, and whether you have enough underneath each one to answer more than a single question without repeating yourself word for word. A candidate with three examples they know cold beats a candidate with six they can only recite once, start to finish, with nothing left if the panel asks anything else.
This post sets out why the obvious plan, one example per Behaviour, breaks down in the room, what to prepare instead, and how to check your own experience actually covers what your advert is asking for.
Why does one example per Behaviour fail in the room?
It fails because it leaves you with nothing in reserve the moment the panel does either of the two things panels routinely do: push further into an example you have already given, or ask two separate questions that happen to fit the same story.
The first case is straightforward. You give your one example for a Behaviour, the panel asks something more about it, a reason behind a decision, what you were weighing up, what happened next, and you discover you had only prepared the headline version. You are now inventing detail on the spot in front of the people scoring you.
The second case is less obvious and catches more candidates out. Two questions on the day, sometimes for two different Behaviours, can genuinely both fit the same real situation. If that situation is the only strong example you have, you either repeat yourself, which reads as thin, or you reach for a weaker, less-prepared story to avoid repeating yourself, which is worse. Either way, a plan built around one example per Behaviour has already run out of road.
What should you prepare instead of a fixed number?
A small set of experiences you know in real depth, not a long list of examples you have only skimmed once.
The Success Profiles: Candidate overview tells candidates to “think about examples you can give of times when you have shown the behaviours outlined in the job advert”, which is scoping advice, not a quota. Nothing in the official guidance ties preparation to a set count of stories. What the Success Profiles: Civil Service behaviours guidance does say is that “there is no expectation that you need to demonstrate every part of each example to be successful”, which points the other way entirely: depth within an example matters more than the number of examples you can list.
Fewer situations, understood properly, beats more situations understood thinly. A rich experience can usually be angled to answer more than one question. A thin one can rarely even answer the one it was written for once the panel asks anything beyond the headline.
What makes an experience rich enough to rely on?
One you can answer awkward questions about without inventing detail on the spot.
Two questions are a reasonable test of that. Could you answer “what would you do differently” without pausing to construct it? Could you answer “what was the hardest part” with something real, rather than a generic answer that would fit almost any story? If yes to both, the experience has the depth to survive a follow-up. If you are hesitating, it needs more thought before the interview, not during it.
The Behaviours guidance recommends structuring what you say with the STAR method, “which allows you to set the scene, show what and how you did and the overall outcome”. STAR is the shape of the answer you give out loud. It is not, on its own, proof that you understand the situation deeply enough to be pushed on. The two are different jobs: one is presentation, the other is preparation.
| A thin example | A rich example | |
|---|---|---|
| What you can say | The outline of what happened | The outline, plus why you chose that action, what the alternative was, and what changed as a result |
| What happens under a follow-up question | You repeat the same few sentences | You have more to draw on |
| Behaviours it can genuinely evidence | Usually one, from one angle | Often more than one, from different angles |
How do you know which Behaviours will actually be tested?
Your own advert names them, and it will not be all nine.
The Behaviours guidance states plainly that “you will not be asked to demonstrate all Civil Service Behaviours for one role”, and the Candidate overview adds that “not all of the elements are relevant to every role. They will vary depending on the profession, level and type of role.” That narrows the job considerably. You are not preparing for nine possible Behaviours in case one comes up. You are preparing for the specific, shorter list your advert names, at the grade it is recruiting for.
PublicServicePathway is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the UK Government or Civil Service. The quotes above are taken directly from the published Success Profiles guidance, not from our own reading of how any one campaign runs.
Where practice varies by department or by competition, and how a sift or interview panel actually applies the framework does vary, your own advert and invitation are the only reliable word on what your specific process involves. Treat the framework as the structure and your own paperwork as the detail.
How do you check your experience actually covers what your advert is asking for?
Build a simple grid, before you write a word of any answer.
List the Behaviours named in your advert across the top. List your candidate experiences, work, volunteering, study, anything genuinely yours, down the side. For each one, mark which Behaviours it could honestly evidence, not just the obvious headline one.
| Experience | Behaviours it could evidence |
|---|---|
| Leading a project handover under a tight deadline | Delivering at Pace, Leadership |
| Resolving a disagreement between two colleagues | Working Together, Communicating and Influencing |
| Redesigning a manual process that was not working | Changing and Improving, Making Effective Decisions |
Two things become visible once the grid is filled in. First, which Behaviours only have one experience against them, which is exactly where a follow-up question or a second question on the day would leave you exposed. Second, which experiences quietly cover more than one Behaviour, which is where your real flexibility on the day comes from.
Where a Behaviour has only one thin experience against it, go and find a second one deliberately, rather than discovering the gap live in the interview. It does not need to be dramatic. A smaller, well-understood example beats a bigger one you cannot answer questions about.
Is it ever fine to reuse the same experience for two questions?
Sometimes, but treat it as a risk you are managing, not a shortcut you are taking.
Reusing an experience is not automatically fatal if you genuinely draw out a different aspect each time, the judgement behind a decision in one answer, the way you brought other people with you in another. A single strong situation can honestly hold more than one Behaviour, which is exactly what the grid above is built to reveal.
It is risky all the same. A panel that hears the same account twice, especially if the two answers lean on the same three sentences, will notice, and it reads as a shortage of material rather than a well-chosen example. That impression, that a candidate has run out of road under questioning, is one of the reasons strong candidates still come away from a Civil Service interview having done worse than they expected, even with genuinely good experience behind them. If you can avoid reuse with a second option from your grid, avoid it. If you cannot, make sure the two answers earn their place separately rather than overlapping.
FAQ
Do I need a completely different example for every Behaviour named in my advert? Not necessarily. A single, well-chosen experience can often evidence more than one Behaviour depending on which part of it you draw out, so the same event can genuinely serve two different questions if you angle it correctly.
What if I only have one strong example for a particular Behaviour? Treat that as a gap to close before the interview, not a risk to carry into it. Look again across your experience, including work outside your current role, for a second option you can fall back on if the panel’s first question does not land the way you expected.
Will the panel notice if I reuse the same story twice? They can, particularly if the two answers sound close to identical. If you do reuse an experience, make sure each answer draws out a genuinely different part of it rather than repeating the same account with a different label on top.
Should I write my examples out in full and memorise them word for word? Know them well enough to answer honestly rather than so scripted that a follow-up throws you. The STAR structure the Behaviours guidance recommends is there to organise what you say, not to give you a script to recite unchanged.
Is it better to prepare more examples or fewer, deeper ones? Fewer, deeper ones. An example you understand well enough to answer an unexpected question about is worth more on the day than several you can only deliver once, straight through, with nothing left if the panel asks anything else.
Build the grid before you script anything
Stop counting examples and start checking coverage. Map what you have actually done against the Behaviours your advert names, find where you are relying on a single thin story, and go deepen or replace it before the interview rather than during it. From here, work through the interview preparation material for everything else the panel will test, from how a blended interview mixes question types to what happens once you are marked.