How to Stand Out In Civil Service Exams

Civil service entrance exams fall into the DCAS exam category called open competitive exams. These exams are open to anyone who meets the basic eligibility criteria. However, federal departments only have limited seats, which means that the candidates have to compete with each other.

Before we get into improving your performance in the DCAS exams, let’s see why you need to stand out in the first place.

Why You Need To Stand Out In Your Next DCAS Exam

There’s usually a minimum grade that you need to pass the written exam. For example, the minimum grade required to pass the NYC Sanitation Exam is 70%. However, even scoring higher than 70% isn’t enough to ensure your recruitment.

This is because candidates who meet the minimum required grade are then ranked in terms of their performance on the exam. Depending on other steps in the evaluation process, people that rank higher are more likely to be recruited.

Scoring average grades is not enough. You have to stand out from the rest of the candidates if you want to secure your job. This is even more true for the upcoming Sanitation exam 2060 DCAS which is likely going to be more competitive than any NYC Sanitation Exam so far.

So how do you stand out in a civil service exam in NYC? There’s no single thing you can do to magically improve your performance. However, if you individually work on all the skills you need in the exam, you’ll have no weaknesses left and you’ll be guaranteed to perform better than the average applicant.

The written DCAS exams are more similar to aptitude tests than high school exams. These written exams don’t ask any questions about the technical aspects of the job. They don’t even use industry jargon. They’re designed to test your brain’s natural abilities. You can’t prepare for the upcoming Sanitation exam 2060 DCAS the same way you’d prepare for a math or a history test, but we’ve got you covered.

Here are 4 abilities they test for in civil service exams and how to improve them.

Logical Reasoning

Logical reasoning is an essential skill for police officers in NYC. Logical reasoning skills allow police officers and detectives to draw conclusions from the information available on the crime scene. This is why logical reasoning questions are a significant part of the Suffolk Police Exam. However, these questions are also common in the FDNY exam and the NYC Sanitation Exam.

You don’t need Sherlock Holmes level deduction abilities to pass a civil service entrance exam—but you can’t attempt these problems without any skills either. You can train yourself for logical reasoning questions by solving logic puzzles online. However, the best way to train for the exact kind of questions asked in your DCAS exam is by taking preparation classes.

Cognitive Abilities

Cognitive abilities allow you to process large amounts of information and drive new facts from the given ones. All DCAS exams test your cognitive abilities the same way. The exam gives you a passage that conveys basic information about some hypothetical scenario. The passage is followed by some multiple-choice questions. The answers to these questions are not directly given in the passage but can be extracted from the other given facts.

Your ability to solve these questions depends on your working memory, which we’ll get to in a moment. However, having experience solving these problems can also prove immensely useful. We recommend joining a preparation class where you can practice exactly the kind of problems they ask for in the exams.

High Working Memory

Your working memory is where you store all the information you need to process for a cognitive task. For example, you need to process this entire sentence at the same time in order to interpret its meaning. You won’t get anything if you process half a sentence at a time. You also need to keep all other important bits of information from the preceding sentences and paragraphs in this article for context. All this is stored in your working memory.

Some questions are directly targeted to test your working memory. However, almost all questions in civil service exams, including the NYC Sanitation Exam rely on your working memory in one way or another. The best way you can improve your working memory is by getting proper sleep every night.

Stamina

Stamina is clearly the odd one out on this list. The written exam is an important part of your evaluation—but if you’re applying for the upcoming Sanitation exam 2060 DCAS, you also have to give a physical exam. Also called the “superhuman test,” the physical part of the NYC Sanitation Exam consists of two phases where you have to perform rigorous tasks in a limited time. You need high stamina and endurance to finish earlier than others.

The best way to increase your stamina and endurance is by doing aerobic or HIIT (high-intensity interval training) exercises. If you smoke, you should try to quit because smoking has immediate effects on respiration.

At the end of the day, the best way to train for all the skills needed in DCAS exams is by joining preparation classes and working with a professional instructor. Being the only civil service preparation institute in NYC with over 45 years of experience, Civil Service Success is the most prestigious institute you can join.

Registrations are open in our preparation classes for the sanitation exam 2060 DCAS. We also host Nassau and Suffolk Police Exam Prep Classes and NYC Firefighter Exam Prep Classes.

Want to stand out in your next civil service exam? Enroll in prep classes now!