How to Plan a 750-word Civil Service Personal Statement

A 750-word limit gives you enough space for evidence, but very little room for a generic career story. Start with the vacancy’s essential criteria and application instructions. This worksheet is an independent way to organise your own experience; it is not an official template or a model answer to copy.

The current HMRC Graduate Valuation Surveyor guide is one example of a role asking for this length. Other roles use different limits and questions. Do not carry its requirements into another application.

Make an evidence map first

Use a table before drafting:

Criterion from your advert	Your strongest example	What you personally did	Result or learning
Criterion one	A specific project or task	Your decision and action	What changed and how you know
Criterion two	A different task if needed	Your contribution, not just the team’s	Outcome and any limitation
Criterion three	The example that best fits	Why your approach mattered	Evidence of the result

Use the advert’s actual criteria. If an example supports two related criteria, explain that connection. If a criterion has no evidence, find a better example before polishing the prose.

Use a word budget as a starting point

This is an optional allocation, not a scoring formula:

• About 50 words: establish the relevant experience and why it fits this role.
• About 580 words: explain two or three strong pieces of evidence against the criteria.
• About 100 words: address any role-specific motivation or development requirement the instructions request.
• About 20 words of room: leave space for a final correction without breaking the limit.

Change the allocation if the advert asks for a different emphasis. A technical role may need more explanation of a method. A graduate programme may explicitly ask about learning and motivation.

Write evidence rather than labels

“I am a strong communicator” asks the assessor to trust a label. A more useful sentence describes the communication task, the people involved, the difficulty and what your action achieved.

Replace a claim about organisation with a real account of how you prioritised tasks, resolved a conflict and kept work moving. Use your actual experience and figures. Do not invent a result because an example feels small.

Within each example, give context briefly, then spend most of the space on your actions and reasoning. A team result still needs a clear explanation of your own contribution.

Keep personal statements and behaviour answers distinct

A personal statement often covers several criteria across connected examples. A separate behaviour answer may focus on one named behaviour with its own limit. Check personal statements versus behaviour statements before reusing text between application boxes.

You can use a situation, task, action and result structure to organise an example without putting those labels into every paragraph. The reader should be able to see what happened and why your contribution was relevant.

Run the final coverage check

1. Mark which sentence supplies evidence for each criterion.
2. Remove claims that have no supporting action or result.
3. Check that “we” has not hidden your own contribution.
4. Follow name-blind instructions and remove information the application tells you to exclude.
5. Count words using the application form’s rules and check the final pasted version.

If you cannot identify evidence for a criterion, adding a confident closing paragraph will not fix the gap. Read how the sift scores your application to understand why coverage and assessable evidence matter.

FAQ

Must I write exactly 750 words?

No. Treat the stated maximum as a ceiling. Use enough space to address the instructions clearly without padding.

Can one example cover several criteria?

It can when the example supplies relevant evidence for each. Make the connection explicit, and check that you have not left a separate criterion unsupported.

Should I use the same statement for every vacancy?

Use your evidence bank as a starting point, then select and shape the evidence for the new advert. Different criteria and instructions require a different coverage check.