APS5 sits above the more procedural APS4 level — you're expected to exercise independent judgement on issues that don't have an obvious right answer, coordinate the work of others on a task, and represent your team in dealings with other areas. Panels are looking for evidence of initiative and sound decision-making, not just reliable task completion.
| Typical Criterion | What Panels Are Looking For |
|---|---|
| Supports strategy and change | An example where you helped implement a change within your team — not just adapted to it yourself, but helped bring others along. |
| Achieves results | Evidence of managing competing priorities or an ambiguous problem, where you had to decide the best approach yourself. |
| Supports productive working relationships | An example involving negotiation, coordination, or resolving a disagreement — not just getting along with people. |
| Displays personal drive and integrity | A situation where you took ownership of a problem or mistake, or raised a concern, without being asked to. |
Criterion: "Achieves results"
I was coordinating a small project to migrate a shared team spreadsheet to a new case management system, with a hard deadline set by a system-wide cutover date outside our control.
I needed to complete the migration accurately while my team kept processing their regular caseload, without a clear precedent for how to sequence the work.
I broke the migration into batches by case type, ran a pilot batch with two team members first to catch data-mapping issues early, then used what we learned to write a short checklist the rest of the team used for their own batches.
The migration finished four days ahead of the cutover deadline with a data error rate under 1%, and the checklist I created was later adopted by two other teams migrating to the same system.
Criterion: "Supports productive working relationships"
Two team members I regularly worked with had a disagreement over how to divide a shared task, which was starting to slow down delivery and create tension in team meetings.
As the person coordinating that piece of work, I needed to get both of them working productively again without either feeling overruled.
I spoke to each of them separately first to understand their concerns, then brought them together to agree on a split of the task based on each person's strengths rather than an even 50/50 division, and documented the agreement so it wouldn't need revisiting.
The task was completed on schedule, both team members said afterward that the split felt fairer, and I used the same one-on-one-then-together approach successfully on a similar disagreement a few months later.
Use these as a guide for structure and depth — your own response should be built from your own situation, task, action, and result.
APS5 applications commonly ask for a combined pitch of one to two pages, though some agencies still request criterion-by-criterion responses of around 300–400 words each. Read the application instructions closely — some APS5 roles specifically ask for examples that demonstrate coordinating other people's work, and a response with no evidence of that will read as underqualified for the level.
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