Executive Officer Competency Examples: 6 Full Answers

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Executive officer competency examples have to show you running something, not helping with it, because the EO indicators are written around managing people, evidence and delivery. The constraint is the grade line: at EO the published wording expects complex problems and balanced recommendations, where the Clerical Officer wording expects the same work done with support. The indicators quoted here were read in September 2026 in the PAS Executive Officer competency model and on the Executive Officer capability framework page. Six full answers follow, one per competency, annotated line by line. Written by Mustafa Tarabya, who hired for his own company, read every application himself and now writes CVBooster's guides.

What separates an EO answer from a CO answer

The two models use near identical sentences with one word changed, and that word is the grade.

So an EO answer that ends with a task completed has stopped a paragraph early. It has to end with a decision taken, a person developed or a service changed.

People Management, annotated

Fiona Hegarty leads a customer contact team for an energy supplier in Sligo.

Complete Executive Officer: People Management example, 287 words, laid out as it would sit in the application form

Executive Officer: People Management, 278 words (287 words)

Situation. I lead a team of nine in a customer contact centre for an energy supplier. We take billing queries and hardship calls, and six of the nine had under a year of service when I took the team.

Task. In January 2026 our quality scores were the lowest of four teams and two of my staff had asked to move. My manager gave me a quarter to fix it and no extra headcount.

Action. I started by asking rather than telling. I held a short one to one with each of the nine and asked a single question: what makes a bad shift here. Seven of the nine named the same thing, which was being marked down on calls where the customer was in arrears and there was no answer to give. I took that to our credit team and agreed three concessions my staff could offer without escalating. I then changed how I coached. Instead of scoring recorded calls alone, I sat with each person and we picked one call a week together, one they chose and one I chose. I moved the two who had asked to transfer onto the hardship queue, which they had both said they preferred, rather than treating the request as a loss. When one team member kept missing the quality mark after eight weeks, I put a short written plan in place with dates and reviewed it weekly, because leaving it vague would have been unfair to him and to the team.

Result. Quality scores moved from the lowest of four teams to the highest by the end of the quarter. Neither of the two transfer requests went ahead. The three concessions were adopted by the other three teams.

What the sifter is scoring

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The word budget at EO

An EO box is usually 450 words. The difference from a CO answer is not length, it is what the Action paragraph contains.

PartWordsWhat an EO box needs that a CO box does not
Situation60The size of what you are accountable for, in numbers
Task60Who asked, and what the consequence of failure was
Action250A decision with options considered, or a person developed
Result80A number, plus what changed for other people afterwards

The publicjobs.ie interview advice page describes the Action step as: "Outline what you did to either resolve the situation or contribute to the success of the example."

Tip: Count the sentences in your Action that begin with I decided, I agreed, I refused or I proposed. If there are none, you have written a CO answer for an EO box.

Analysis and Decision Making, annotated

Arun Pillai is a procurement officer at a university in Galway.

Complete Executive Officer: Analysis and Decision Making example, 273 words, laid out as it would sit in the application form

Executive Officer: Analysis and Decision Making, 281 words (273 words)

Situation. I run procurement for the estates function of a university with about 14,000 students. I handle tenders and contract renewals from small works up to a value of around 500,000 euro.

Task. In February 2026 our cleaning contract was due to expire and the incumbent asked for a 19 per cent increase. Estates wanted to extend rather than run a tender, because a tender takes four months and the contract ends in June.

Action. I did not accept either the increase or the extension on the basis of who asked loudest. I pulled three sources: our own hours and coverage data, the published rate movement for the sector, and two comparable contracts held by other institutions that I asked for directly. The hours data showed we were paying for coverage in two buildings that had moved to hybrid working and stood mostly empty on Fridays. I costed three options. First, extend at the requested increase. Second, extend at a reduced scope with Friday coverage removed, which was legally possible within the existing contract terms. Third, run the tender late and accept a short bridging arrangement. I set out the risk on each, including the risk I liked least, which was that a tender might come back higher. I recommended the second option and said plainly which part of my evidence was the weakest.

Result. Estates and the finance committee took the second option. The revised scope came in 4 per cent above the old price rather than 19, and the tender ran in the autumn with the scope already corrected. The hours analysis is now done as standard before any facilities renewal.

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Delivery of Results, annotated

Ciara Fitzgerald is a service delivery coordinator for a waste management company in Carlow.

Complete Executive Officer: Delivery of Results example, 267 words, laid out as it would sit in the application form

Executive Officer: Delivery of Results, 272 words (267 words)

Situation. I coordinate collection services for about 19,000 domestic customers across two counties, with eleven crews and a small office team of four.

Task. In the two weeks after Christmas 2025 our missed collection reports rose from around 60 a week to over 400, because of holiday routes, weather and a truck off the road. Customers were being told a crew would return and often it did not.

Action. I stopped the promise we could not keep first. I told the office team to stop giving return times and to log the address with a next scheduled date instead, which was accurate even if it was unwelcome. I then worked out where the misses actually were rather than treating all 400 the same. Two of eleven routes carried more than half of them, both of them rural rounds that had absorbed the truck that was off. I split those two rounds temporarily and moved a crew from a short urban round for three weeks, which I cleared with the operations manager before announcing it. I rang the twelve customers who had reported three or more misses myself. I set a single measure for the office to watch daily, misses older than seven days, rather than the total, because the total was frightening people and told us nothing.

Result. Misses older than seven days went from 137 to zero in nineteen days, and the weekly total was back under 90 by the end of January. The daily measure has been kept. The two rural rounds were permanently resequenced in March on the strength of what the fortnight showed.

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Interpersonal and Communication Skills, annotated

Brendan Healy manages community services for a voluntary housing body in Dundalk.

Complete Executive Officer: Interpersonal and Communication Skills example, 262 words, laid out as it would sit in the application form

Executive Officer: Interpersonal and Communication Skills, 274 words (262 words)

Situation. I manage community services for a voluntary housing body with 640 tenancies across four estates. I deal with residents, the local authority, an addiction service and our own maintenance contractors.

Task. In spring 2026 we planned a fire safety upgrade that needed access to every flat in a 48 unit block over six weeks. An earlier works programme had gone badly and residents did not trust the notice on the door.

Action. I did not lead with the letter. I asked the two residents who had complained loudest last time to meet me first, on their own ground, and I listened without defending the previous programme. Both said the same thing: nobody had told them when the noise would stop. I built the communication around that. The letter gave a date, a time window and one named person, me, with a mobile number. I held two evening sessions in the community room because daytime sessions exclude people who work. I asked the contractor to send the same two operatives for the whole block, so residents met the same faces. For the four tenants who refused access, I went in person rather than issuing a formal notice, and two of the four let us in the same week.

Result. Forty six of 48 flats were completed in the six weeks, and the last two inside a fortnight after that. We had no formal complaint, against eleven on the previous programme. The local authority asked for the letter template, and our board adopted the named contact approach for all works over two weeks.

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The two competencies that decide close calls

Lucia Romero is a training officer for a transport and logistics company in Monaghan.

Complete Executive Officer: Specialist Knowledge, Expertise and Self Development example, 249 words, laid out as it would sit in the application form

Executive Officer: Specialist Knowledge, Expertise and Self Development, 266 words (249 words)

Situation. I run driver and warehouse training for a logistics company with 130 staff across two depots. I hold the certificate required to deliver driver certificate of professional competence modules in house.

Task. In 2025 we were outsourcing every module at roughly 180 euro a driver, and drivers were losing a full day to travel for a half day course. Our managing director asked whether we could bring some of it in house without dropping the standard.

Action. I checked what I could and could not deliver under my own approval before I promised anything, and I wrote the boundary down. I completed the additional module approval over the summer at my own initiative and kept the certificates on file. I redesigned two modules for our own fleet, using our own incident footage rather than the generic material, and I had my content reviewed by an external instructor before I used it. I coached two warehouse supervisors to deliver the manual handling refresher, which is inside their competence, so the knowledge was not sitting only with me. I kept a training matrix that shows every driver, every module and every expiry date, and I circulate it monthly to both depot managers.

Result. We now deliver four of seven modules in house. Course cost fell by roughly two thirds on those four and drivers lose a half day rather than a full one. Both supervisors deliver the refresher independently, and our audit in November found no gaps in the matrix.

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Seamus Duffy is an Executive Officer in the freedom of information unit of a state agency in Dublin.

Complete Executive Officer: Drive and Commitment to Public Service Values example, 250 words, laid out as it would sit in the application form

Executive Officer: Drive and Commitment to Public Service Values, 263 words (250 words)

Situation. I am an Executive Officer in a freedom of information unit that receives around 400 requests a year. I schedule requests, gather records from business units and draft decisions for the decision maker to sign.

Task. In 2026 a requester sought records that were awkward for one of our business units, and the unit told me informally that a file could not be found. The statutory deadline was four weeks away.

Action. I treated the deadline and the duty as fixed, not negotiable. I asked for the search in writing and asked exactly where it had been carried out, because an informal answer is not a search. When the reply named only one system, I asked for the shared drive and the email accounts of the two officers involved to be searched too, and I put the request through the head of unit rather than pressing an individual. The file came back. I flagged to our decision maker that a partial refusal on one page was arguable either way and set out both readings rather than only the one that suited us. I told the requester when we would meet the deadline, and I did not use the extension provision to buy time we did not need.

Result. The decision issued four days inside the statutory period with the file included and one page redacted. No review was sought. The written search request is now standard practice in our unit for every request that touches more than one system.

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The sentences that cost marks at EO

The grade below is covered on clerical officer competency examples. The form itself, box by box, is on publicjobs competency examples and competency based application form examples. For the board stage, see competency-based interview questions in Ireland. Health service equivalents advertised through HSE careers use their own competency names, so check the booklet before reusing an answer.

Frequently asked questions

Can you give me an example of a competency?

People Management is a competency in the PAS Executive Officer model. Its indicators include "Values and supports the development of others and the team" and "Actively shares information, knowledge and expertise to help the team to meet it's objectives". The competency is the heading, the indicators are what is marked, and your answer is the evidence. The contact centre answer above is one competency, evidenced once.

What are the 5 core competencies examples?

At Executive Officer level the model runs to six, and the five that carry the most marks in practice are People Management, Analysis and Decision Making, Delivery of Results, Interpersonal and Communication Skills, and Specialist Knowledge, Expertise and Self Development. Drive and Commitment to Public Service Values is the sixth and is often the tie breaker between two candidates with similar scores elsewhere.

Can you give me an example of a competency question?

"Tell me about a time you had to make a recommendation without complete information." That question targets Analysis and Decision Making, and the board is listening for the sources you used, the options you rejected and the evidence behind the recommendation. Answer it with one occasion, a date, the options you costed, and what was decided. The procurement answer above is built for exactly that question.

What are top 3 competencies?

The three your competition weights highest, which the booklet tells you. At Executive Officer that is usually People Management, Analysis and Decision Making, and Delivery of Results, because those three carry the most indicators and the board has the most to tick. Choose the three where you hold a dated example with a number in the result, not the three you find easiest to talk about.

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