Acing Your Civil Service Exams: All You Should Know

Civil service exams are conducted to uphold “merit and fitness” principles and ensure fairness in the hiring process. These examinations are conducted to assess the candidates’ various skills, knowledge, and abilities as relevant to the job they’re applying for.

Civil service exams attract a considerable number of applicants, and the competition is tough. For instance, in NYC,tens of thousands of candidates apply, whereas the vacancies are very few.

The competition will be even more challenging this year as NYC’s employment rate was reported at 11.4% last month. Furthermore, the postponement of NYC civil service exams last year due to COVID-19 means more candidates will be applying this year.

So, if you’re thinking of taking any of the civil service exams, you might want to be fully prepared to ace your exam and maximize your chances of appointment. Without further ado, here’s everything you need to know about acing your civil service exams.

Understanding the Different Types of Examinations

Before you can prepare for your civil service examination, it’s crucial to know and understand what type of examination you will be taking and which position you are applying for. Knowing what you’re preparing for is key to achieving excellent preparation and acing the exam.

Open-Competitive Civil Service Exams

According to the NYS Department of Civil Service, open-competitive examinations are available to anyone who meets the required qualifications for a particular job or department.

Continuous Recruitment Exams

As per the NYS Civil Service, continuous recruitment exams accept applications continuously, and there are no deadlines. These exams are conducted whenever any of the Civil Service departments require qualified individuals.

Promotion and Transition Exams

These examinations are a bit more exclusive and are only available to existing employees. As the name suggests, these examinations are conducted for promotions in various departments.

Preparing for your Written Examination

Once you know exactly what type of examination you will be taking on, your preparation begins! The good news is that the written exam is very much the same for most departments.

The primary purpose of the written exam is to evaluate your writing, reading, and comprehension skills. Depending on the department, you may also have to prepare for math and reasoning questions.

According to the official NYS Civil Service examination guide, the examinations comprise “a written, multiple-choice test.” The subject areas that will be covered on the exam are mentioned on the examination announcement list.

Once you know the covered subject areas that will be on the exam, it’s time to start prepping, and these are the three crucial steps you need to follow:

Set Aside Sufficient Time to Study

The first thing you need to do on your road to acing the civil service exam is to dedicate a sufficient amount of time to prepare for it. People often spend as much as twelve months preparing for the exam.

Of course, what matters is how many hours per week you spend studying for the exam, which should be proportionate to the difficulty of your exam. In any case, you should fully utilize the time between applying and the actual date of the exam.

Gather All the Resources

Finding all the relevant resources will be a challenge but don’t fret because you will find several helpful resources online. You can also find test guides online for specific examinations to help you focus better on your preparation.

You can also find sample questions online to understand better what your examination will look like. Once you’ve gathered all the resources, set aside the time to prepare, now the real hard work begins.

Brush up on your Knowledge and Skills

The chances are that you already know much of what the examination will cover. This is because every job has required qualifications, which means your preparation will be less about learning new skills and gaining new knowledge and more about brushing up on what you already know.

Pro tip: Don’t get overconfident and dismiss study topics because you’ve already covered them once before. Restudy and brush up on your existing knowledge to improve your preparation and increase your confidence!

Prepare by Taking Mock Examinations

Once you start feeling confident about your preparation, it’s time to put it to the test and take mock examinations. Try to attempt past papers in the allocated exam time to get a better idea of how prepared you are.

Since the examination time is limited, you also need to work on your speed of attempting questions.

Pro tip: First, attempt all the questions you already know and circle back to the ones you need to work on to utilize your time better.

Take the Help of Tutoring Experts

At Civil Service Success, we are aware that preparing for the civil service examinations can be overwhelming. The pressure is further elevated as these exams only come around once every four to six years. The lengthy duration between exams means that failing to ace your exam entails a prolonged wait.

So, it’s crucial not to take any risks and get the help of qualified experts to prepare for the civil service exams in NYS. We offer prep classes for civil service exams in New York City to help you ace the exams!

With our intensive study courses taught by expert instructors, you will maximize your chances of qualifying for the job. Furthermore, our courses are specifically designed for each exam, containing relevant materials rather than generic and taught by experts of the respective departments.

So, whether you’re looking for Suffolk County Police test preparation or NYC Sanitation Officer exam preparation, we’ve got you covered. If you want to ace your exam, contact us now to discover how we can help you.