Navigating the recruitment processes of the Australian Public Service requires a strategic understanding of the Integrated Leadership System. When applying for a new role or seeking a promotion, candidates are frequently asked to submit a cover letter or selection criteria response demonstrating how they meet the core ILS capabilities. We find that demonstrating personal drive and professional integrity is quite challenging to articulate on paper.
Many applicants fall into the trap of treating this criterion as a simple character reference. They write sweeping statements about their strong work ethic or their innate honesty, forgetting that selection panels cannot assess theoretical virtues – as will all parts of an APS application, we need evidence and examples! In the public service context, personal drive and integrity are not passive traits; they are active, measurable behaviours. To score highly, your application must provide concrete, structural evidence of how you apply these attributes to deliver tangible outcomes for the government.
This comprehensive guide explores exactly how to tackle this specific selection criterion, offering strategic advice on structuring your response, selecting the right examples, and writing with the authority expected of a high-calibre public servant.
Before you begin drafting your response, you must understand how the selection panel will evaluate your claims. The panel uses the ILS framework to look for specific behavioural indicators. To address this criterion successfully, your written response must weave together three distinct narrative threads.
Drive is fundamentally about initiative, and the strength of the evidence you need to provide will depend on how senior a role you are seeking. For example, your response could highlight a time when you identified an operational gap, anticipated a future problem, or sought out a way to improve a departmental process. You must show that you take ownership of your professional environment and actively push for better results.
Public service is complex and often subject to sudden shifts in policy, environment or structure. Resilience is your ability to maintain momentum when things change. Your pitch should demonstrate how you handle setbacks, manage your energy during long-term projects, and keep yourself or your team focused when faced with ambiguity or sudden machinery-of-government changes.
Integrity is the cornerstone of public trust. In a selection criteria response, this is demonstrated by showing professional courage and alignment with APS values. The panel wants to see how you handle sensitive information, how you manage conflicts of interest and how you take accountability. It is about proving that you adhere to the APS Values, even in tricky environments.
The strength of your response relies on the quality (and structure) of the examples you choose. A common error is selecting a scenario that is too routine. Completing your daily tasks on time is an expectation, not an example of exceptional drive.
When brainstorming examples for your application, look for situations where your personal values were genuinely tested or where you were required to actively demonstrate your commitment to the APS Values. The strongest examples are those where the right course of action required courage, judgement or a deliberate choice to uphold a standard that others may have overlooked. Consider the following prompts to unearth your best material:
To ensure your response is clear, logical and easy for the panel to score, you must use the STAR method. This framework prevents you from rambling and ensures that every sentence adds value to your pitch.
Begin by providing the necessary context, but keep it brief. The panel does not need a deep dive into the history of your branch. Focus on establishing the ethical or professional challenge that arose. For instance, you might describe a situation where a senior colleague was routinely bypassing procurement guidelines, placing your agency at financial and reputational risk, and you were faced with the decision of whether to escalate the matter. Alternatively, you might set the scene for a moment where you were asked to present data in a way that you believed was misleading to a ministerial audience. Establish the stakes early so the panel understands why this situation demanded genuine personal drive or a principled response.
Clearly articulate what you were required to do and what standard you were obligated to uphold. For example, you might explain that as the project lead, you were responsible for ensuring all procurement activity complied with your agency’s financial delegations and the PGPA Act, and that you had an obligation to escalate suspected non-compliance to your Director. This section should be one or two sentences and should make clear that you understood the ethical weight of your responsibility before you acted.
This is the most critical part of your response and should take up the majority of your word count. Here, you must detail exactly what you did, focusing heavily on the how and the why.
Conclude your example with a clear, positive outcome that is directly connected to your values-driven actions. For this criterion, a strong result does not need to be a financial saving — it might be that your escalation of a procurement concern led to a formal review that identified a systemic gap in your branch’s financial controls, which was subsequently rectified. Or it might be that your frank advice to a senior executive resulted in a communications strategy that was revised to better reflect the agency’s obligations under the Public Service Act. Where possible, reference any positive feedback you received from a supervisor or note any lasting changes that were made as a direct result of your intervention.
The ILS is a cumulative framework. The way you demonstrate personal drive and integrity at the APS 4 level is vastly different from how you demonstrate it at the Executive Level 2. You must tailor your written response to match the expectations of the level you are seeking.
At these levels, the panel is looking for evidence that you understand and actively apply the APS Values in your day-to-day work. A strong example at this level might involve identifying that a shared team folder contained personally identifiable information that was accessible to staff outside the project, and taking the initiative to flag the issue to your supervisor and work with your IT team to restrict access before a data breach occurred. Another strong example might involve proactively disclosing to your manager that you had a personal relationship with an applicant in a grants round you were assessing, and requesting to be removed from that assessment to protect the integrity of the process.
As you move into middle management, the panel expects you to not only uphold the APS Values yourself but to actively model them for others. A compelling example at this level might describe how you observed a pattern of low-level misconduct within your team — such as staff members falsifying their attendance records — and how you addressed it directly and fairly through your agency’s performance and conduct framework, rather than ignoring it to avoid conflict. Another strong example might involve how you provided frank and fearless advice to an SES officer that a proposed policy approach carried significant legal risk, and how you stood by that assessment even when it was initially met with resistance.
At the senior leadership levels, personal drive and integrity are about cultural stewardship. A strong example at this level might describe how you led your division through a significant restructure, and how you prioritised transparent and honest communication with your staff throughout the process — even when the news was difficult — because you recognised that candour was essential to maintaining trust during a period of uncertainty. Another compelling example might focus on how you identified that your agency’s whistleblower reporting mechanisms were not well understood by staff, and how you championed a targeted education programme to ensure your people felt genuinely safe to raise concerns without fear of repercussions.
Even highly experienced public servants can undermine their applications by falling into common writing traps. To ensure your pitch remains sharp and persuasive, avoid the following errors.
This criterion is particularly susceptible to vague, character-based writing. Statements such as “I am a person of strong integrity” or “I always act in accordance with the APS Values” are meaningless to a selection panel without supporting evidence. For example, rather than writing I consistently demonstrate honesty in my work, you might write “I identified that a data error in a briefing I had prepared would have led the Minister to significantly overestimate the programme’s reach, and I immediately notified my Director and issued a corrected brief before the scheduled meeting”. That single example communicates your honesty and drive far more powerfully than any character statement ever could.
Selecting a routine or low-stakes example significantly weakens your response. If your example centres on something like consistently meeting your deadlines or always being polite to colleagues, it is unlikely to convince the panel that you can uphold your integrity when it truly matters. The strongest responses involve situations where doing the right thing required genuine courage — such as reporting suspected fraud committed by a senior colleague, or declining a request from a manager that you believed would compromise your agency’s obligations under the Public Service Act.
While collaboration is highly valued in the APS, your selection criteria response is an individual assessment of your values and character. For example, rather than writing “the team agreed that the conflict of interest needed to be disclosed”, write “I identified that my involvement in the procurement process created a perceived conflict of interest and I took the initiative to disclose this to my Director in writing and remove myself from the evaluation panel”. Be explicit about the specific decision you made, the values that guided you, and the individual stand you took.
Your selection criteria response is essentially a written audition. The tone of your document serves as a demonstration of your communication skills and your professional maturity.
Ensure your writing is concise, formal, and free of bureaucratic jargon that obscures your meaning. Use strong, active verbs—such as spearheaded, navigated, resolved, and championed—to convey a sense of momentum. Finally, proofread your document ruthlessly. Submitting a pitch littered with typographical errors immediately undermines any claims you have made about your meticulous attention to detail and personal drive.
By strategically aligning your examples with the ILS framework, structuring your response with the STAR method, and writing with unashamed ownership of your achievements, you will present a compelling case to the selection panel. You will move beyond simply claiming to be a person of good character, proving instead that you are a highly effective, resilient, and ethical leader ready to advance within the Australian Public Service.
