Hello my name is Nigel, I work for DFAT and I was one of three people who shortlisted,
interviewed and ultimately selected the policy graduates who began in the department this
year in 2015.
As part of that process for the first time we asked the candidates to record a short
video about themselves.
This was quite a hard thing to ask people to do, and we thought that if we were going
to ask you to do it, then we should step up to the mark and record our own video.
So this is our home made video.
And the purpose of this video is to talk you through the process that we use and also give
you a sense of what we are looking for in our candidates.
I should say that there is a parallel process for our management corporate graduates.
It is a very similar process but obviously they look for slightly different things.
And I should say also there is a slightly different process for people from an Indigenous
background or people who have a disability.
So the process itself, we took about 2500 completed online applications and we work
quite quickly to narrow that down to around 1000.
That last 1000 took a cognitive test, which is like an IQ test, and we used that to narrow
the numbers down to about 450.
The final 450 did an online video that I was mentioning, they also did an online written
exercise and we used that to narrow the numbers down to about 100 and so we interviewed about
100 people.
So we interviewed about five people per day for about a month, and speaking personally,
that was quite an exhausting process but pretty inspiring as well.
It was amazing to see some of the things that our candidates had got up to and it made me
wonder what I did when I was 25 because I never launched my own satellite or I never
fed gorillas in Rwanda or did any of those things.
The assessment centre, we interviewed five people per day.
We started off with the group exercise and then we did the individual interviews.
We asked people to do another written exercise and we also retested peoples cognitive testing.
By this stage we’d also done psychometric testing on our applicants and we used all
that information to make offers to around 40 people.
So the two things I think you can draw from the process 1.
It’s a very comprehensive process by the time we make offers we’ve got your application,
we’ve got a cv, we’ve got two written exercises, we’ve got a group interview,
we’ve got a one on one interview, we’ve got cognitive testing, we’ve got psychometric
testing, we test your referees (we check your referees) of course.
And then to actually start in DFAT you need to pass through a security clearance process.
It’s a very comprehensive process, and a very competitive process as well to get down
from 2500 down to around 40, you need to be in the top 1 or 2 percent.
So comprehensive and competitive.
What we are looking for.
Well starting off with academics we say we take people from a wide range of academic
backgrounds and that’s true.
This year we interviewed someone with a nursing background, someone who is an occupational
therapist.
But having said that, most of the people we interviewed came from academic backgrounds
that you would expect.
So international relations, economics, aid studies, law we get a lot of lawyers, humanities,
languages that sort of things.
As far as marks go, well we are not looking for the top 40 smartest people who applied.
You don’t actually need to be a genius to work in DFAT although that would come as a
surprise to many DFAT officers.
Having said that, when you go from 2500 down to 40 we can afford to set a very high academic
bar and that’s exactly what we did.
And all the candidates that we ultimately made offers to had excellent academic results.
Many had scholarships, prizes all sorts of pretty stellar academic qualifications and
many had post-graduate qualifications.
Work experience and internships, they’re very important for us too we look at those
very closely because they show us a couple of things.
They show us what your skills are, they showcase your skills, they show us what your interests
are.
Everyone says that foreign affairs is my passion, it’s great to be able to prove that with
your work experience and your internships.
And they show us if you are going to fit in with our work culture and that’s very important
to us as well.
Languages, the bottom line with languages is that they are useful but they’re not
essential.
The person who was our highest ranked candidate, that person didn’t actually speak a foreign
language.
I mean that person spoke english extremely persuasively, but that person didn’t speak
a foreign language.
That said, many of our candidates do speak foreign languages and the languages that we
are interested in particular are languages from key countries for us and languages that
are hard to learn.
So we are talking Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indonesian, languages like that.
Personal qualities, well I think that’s probably the most important thing of all and
I can list a few personal qualities but there are many more.
It’s important because we want people who are going to work in DFAT for five, ten, twenty,
thirty years so we are really looking for the right people who are going to fit into
our culture.
We are looking for people who are adaptable.
Work in DFAT ranges across many different areas foreign policy, trade, aid we want people
who are going to range across those areas and people who will work in those areas and
come to terms quickly with the work.
We are looking for people who are resilient, we ask people to do difficult things in difficult
places where setbacks are common, so we want people who aren’t going to be knocked off
balance by a setback of some kind.
We are looking for people who work well in teams, most of the work we do in DFAT is in
a team whether you are here in Canberra, or whether you are overseas on a posting.
And the point of our group exercise is to test to see how well you are in a team.
And when I was interviewing people I would be thinking would I want to work with this
person under pressure if there was some terrible consular crisis in an overseas post, or whether
we were working in Canberra on some high level special project would I want to work with
this person.
Would this person be a good team player?
We want people who have the highest level of personal integrity, we don’t want people
who are going to be tempted when they’re overseas to break the law or even bend the
laws.
We don’t want people who, we don’t want diplomats who are going to park their cars
in shopping malls, we want people who are going to live up to the highest levels of
personal integrity.
We want people who are proud to serve Australia, represent Australia overseas and people who
see that as an honour, and people who are unlikely to forget what an honour that is.
So there are some of the personal qualities we are looking for in our graduate process
and that’s true of policy graduates but it’s also true of the corporate management
graduates as well.
That’s a pretty tough process, I guess it’s a hell of a process but it’s a hell of a
career.
And it’s really important for us that we choose the right people because the people
that we are choosing now for a career in DFAT, they’re the ones that are going to be on
the front line of Australian foreign policy when Australia’s position in the world matters
more than it ever has before.
There the ones that are going to be running the embassy, they’re the ones that are going
to be the ambassadors, they’re the ones that are going to be running the big aid programs,
negotiating the big trade deals, they’re the ones that are going to be advising the
Ministers and they’re going to be doing all of this at a time when Australia’s place
in the world really matters and there are complicated, difficult decisions to make.
That’s the process, I hope I haven’t put you off, I hope you’re interested.
And if you do apply, good luck.
And hopefully I see you in the interview room.
Thank you.