Federal and Government Job Applications Editing and Proofreading Services

A candidate with exactly the right background is scored out at the first sift. Their experience is all there, spread across a two-page statement that reads well — and the assessor was working through six criteria, awarding each a mark out of four, with nothing in front of them that said which paragraph belonged to which. Unmarked evidence scores zero.

We edit applications to government and public sector employers — selection criteria and competency statements, supporting statements against a person specification, behaviour and technical statements, application form free-text responses, secondment and internal transfer applications, promotion board submissions, and the CVs required alongside them. Our editors work on documents scored mechanically before anybody forms an impression.

The criterion-by-criterion response is what public sector recruitment actually assesses, and its failure is strong evidence submitted as continuous prose. An assessor scoring against a form cannot award marks for material they have to go looking for. We work through these so each criterion gets its own headed section using the wording from the specification, since matching the language is not gaming the process but making the mark findable; so every section contains a specific instance rather than a description of capability, given that "extensive experience of stakeholder management" is unscoreable and one negotiation with a named outcome is not; so the instance is structured so the situation, the candidate's own actions and the result are each identifiable, because assessors are trained to look for exactly those three and mark down when one is missing; so the candidate's actions are written in the first person singular, as "we" is the commonest reason a strong example scores low; so the result carries a figure or a decision, since assessors need something to distinguish two similar answers; so the essential criteria are all answered before any desirable ones, and none is left blank whatever the candidate's honest view of it; so the word or character limit is used almost fully but not exceeded; and so any eligibility or vetting requirement is addressed where the form asks. Applications written this way get past the sift.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including applications, employment history and material relating to security or vetting. We are editors rather than recruiters, assessors or civil service advisers, and we offer no view on eligibility, scoring or any competition. What we can do is put your evidence where the marks are awarded.