National Audit Office Interview Questions & Answers

-Online Application: Competency based questions about your experiences so far followed by a numerical test.

- One on One Interview held in their London Office: This was with a member of their HR department.
Questions: the questions asked strongly followed their online core competencies- one from each competency. Also followed by asking about your motivations for the role, and your experiences.

At the end you're able to ask any questions you have (recommended to find some to ask).
If successful the will email you two days later asking you to book an Assessment Centre slot, roughly the following month.

- Who are the stakeholders in the auditors?
- what differentiates us from our competitors?
- how does this role fit into your career path?
- how does this role fit within the organisation?
- what specifically do you have that would make you excel in this role compared to anyone else?

- make sure you have 2-3 examples from each competency on their website and make sure you can give background information as they will ask a lot of follow up questions. Its really helpful to follow the STAR (situation task action result) approach but make sure you try and make your answers succinct enough for HR to write down and record.
- Also make sure you have read up a fair amount on who the NAO are, what they have done recently, any news stories, their value for money reports, who their competitors are, how they fit in within the government- what their relationship with them is and why you think this role is important for your career.
- really make sure they know how much you want this position and what qualities you have that they are looking for.

Assessment centre takes place the following month.

This was a one on one interview with a very nice member of their graduate recruitment team and she was very good at putting me at ease. Even though I'd filled out a comprehensive application form which included a few competency questions these weren't referred to in the interview with my interviewer instead asking me a range of competency questions to asses if I met their core values.
There were also a few questions on why I wanted to work here, what the role would entail and what I hoped to achieve while working there. The interview slot was 45 minutes but my actual interview took about 30 minutes. The interview would ask follow up questions to the original question in order to help me to answer the question to the best of my ability.

Describe a time when you set a goal above and beyond what was expected for you.

Make sure you do plenty of research in the organisation and all the various functions that they do. You'll also need to have looked at some of the reports they've published as you will be asked to talk about what you've read (it is open ended so you can talk about the ones you've looked at.
Make sure you have plenty of STAR examples as you'll need a varied selection to try and show you have the key competencies that NAO are looking for. Also look at the ACA which is the qualification you'll be studying for while on the graduate scheme as they want to know you've done research into that.

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