Organisation: Department of Immigration and Border Protection
Job Title: Service Centre Officer
Word Limit: Max 3000 characters per point.
Location: Canberra
Achieves Results: Describe a specific situation in which you had to monitor and adjust the way
you were working in response to an unpredictable change in your working environment
Having successfully completed Trainer Certificates I, 2 and 3, I have demonstrated my ability to
promote effective and productive working relationships as well as lead, motivate and manage staff
to achieve quality outcomes, even within changeable environments. Within my current role, I have
supported and trained staff with the rollout of the new Customer First system after my own
training within the Customer Compliance Branch (CCB). In addition, I have provided training and
assistance to new Workload Management team members and have supported them through
being open for issues and questions and by supplying materials, such as the task cards, to make
their job easier.
Generally, staff who have been in their positions for some time tend to resist change. During my
acting role as Team Leader within Business Integrity Support Centre (BISC), I demonstrated my
ability to impart knowledge to staff, and manage some challenging staff members through times
of change for them. I am able to liaise and form productive relationships with staff members about
requirements and tasks required and often follow up with email to ensure my directions are fully
understood. This approach worked well with this team and also gave the staff members something
to reference when remembering their instructions, subsequently becoming more independent
within their roles.
I am confident in my ability to provide guidance and excellent leadership and believe in the
importance of leading by example, providing clear direction and assisting others to develop their
skills. My approach is to focus on achieving quality results by creating a harmonious work
environment where the team can openly discuss issues and subsequently resolve them. I
encourage mutual respect and request collaboration of ideas to improve processes and
procedures and maximise work goals.
As a Subject Matter Expert within numerous teams throughout my career, I have delivered quality
outcomes through using my skills as an experienced officer to review decisions made by others.
This involved reviewing decisions, having not been involved in the original decision-making
process, and ensuring the process has been accurate and unbiased. Similarly, I have worked within
the Customer Relations Unit (CRU) where customers can give feedback regarding staff. I have had
to resolve and coordinate the response to the customer after speaking to the staff member,
further demonstrating my ability to deliver quality outcomes.
Communicates with Influence: Describe an example of a time when you had to translate or
interpret technical information for an audience that was unfamiliar with this material
Within my role as Project Officer Workload Management within the Business Integrity Support
Centre (BISC), I was responsible for providing support to my EL1 manager as well as a large team of
staff on different sites with complex enquiries, prioritising workloads and ensuring productivity
was maintained. This required excellent liaison and negotiation skills and the ability to provide
quality outcomes to our internal customers.
My confident negotiation skills assist me to explain guidelines, rules or legislation to help people
understand the Department’s position in achieving a mutually beneficial outcome, but still within
lawful boundaries. I handle any situations requiring negotiation by planning my conversations
beforehand, clearly explaining the situation and listening to and considering different ideas
attentively. I always approach customers, stakeholders and staff with a clear understanding of the
key issues and reflect on the desired outcome. With that in mind, I can make a convincing
argument to persuade individuals to see the advantage rather than disadvantage in what we are
doing. When I have negotiated certain terms with a customer or staff member, I listen to their
differing views and approach the matter by explaining the situation and then present options that
sound more lucrative and beneficial to them.
On some occasions within my current role, the outbound dialler within our networks has stopped
working. During this time, my role is to ensure the networks have enough work to go on with,
given that telecommunications are inoperable. This involves explaining to the teams how to
undertake their work manually, as some staff have only ever worked with computerised systems. I
need to ensure the teams have plenty of paper processing work to go on with, giving them as
much notice as I can to the changed working requirements for that day.
Within previous roles in the Department, I have been responsible for the quality assurance of staff
members’ work to ensure they applied attention to detail when they were assessing customer
records and processing, and to ensure quality decision-making was based on customer
information. I then was responsible for providing feedback to staff based on my monitoring to
assist them in producing better ongoing results. This feedback was adapted, depending on the
staff member I was dealing with at the time, to ensure they fully understood both the feedback
and how they could go about improving their results.
Displays Personal Drive and Integrity: Using a specific example, describe a situation in which you
have made a particular effort to be professional when dealing with a particular problem or issue
With extensive experience working and managing within Centrelink and the Department of
Human Services (DHS) environment, I have considerable knowledge and technical expertise,
developed further during my current role, and can use this to deal with problems or issues. I am
currently responsible for monitoring and ensuring workloads are completed with minimal residual
work on a daily basis. My role includes the allocation of interventions to individual sites based on
staff availability and other factors impacting on each site’s workload availability. Responsible for
capturing daily intervention completions for Earned Income, Unearned Income, Relationships and
Tip Off interventions, I apply my technical skills in implementing and supporting the National Work
Load Management Framework. Maintaining a focus on improving productivity and consistency to
ensure targets are met and the correct resources are fully utilised by the staff in the network, I
have the ability to apply creative solutions to problems as is required in sites nationally.
My ability to interpret and apply relevant legislation to problems or issues has been demonstrated
on many occasions when requests and enquiries come via our service desk. These calls are from
internal customers and usually require the legislation or policy to be consulted in order to answer
the questions. The more complex enquiries are passed to me and I consult the relevant policy,
interpreting and applying the information to the situation given by the customer. If for any reason,
I cannot answer the query, I then escalate this to the policy Department and then feed their
response back to the customer with any further clarification they require. With an extensive
background in the processing areas of Centrelink, I have an excellent understanding of the
legislation and policy governing our work and am confident in my ability to research and
implement that information effectively, ensuring I remain professional at all times.
My ability to ensure professionalism in challenging environments is demonstrated best through
my acting role as Team Leader within BISC. Within this role, I managed some challenging staff
members and would typically liaise with them verbally about requirements and tasks required, but
also follow up with an email to ensure my direction was understood in full. As a team member in
Customer Compliance Branch (CCB), I provided weekly updates on the risks I was accountable for,
communicated on a daily basis with Team Leaders, Subject Matter Experts (SME) and Quality
Development Officers (QDOs) regarding workload issues, policies and processes, and have assisted
with the rollout of the BIIST.
Demonstrates Professional and/or Technical Proficiency: Provide an example of a time when
you recognised that others you were working with were misinformed about a particular
professional or technical issue
Within my current role, I not only manage my own workload and set priorities and practices, but
am also responsible for ensuring that staff across numerous sites are allocated an appropriate
workload to keep them productive, but not overwhelmed with work. I monitor this consistently
and top-up work as required, allocating around 80% of the overall workload to a range of sites to
complete. In addition to this, my role includes monitoring the percentage of work completed
within given timeframes and to ensure outputs meet targets. Since working in this role, I have
consistently met requirements and targets and have also successfully worked to support others in
their teams without reducing my own team’s productivity.
During my role as Project Officer within the DHS, I have demonstrated my ability to support staff
to deliver a range of programs and services in a compliant manner, particularly where they are
misinformed. Within the compliance part of my current role, I am required to make sure we
provide the right payment to the right person at the right time. Our main priority is to work with
people and help them comply with their payment requirements and other obligations. This means
educating people about what they need to tell us and how to avoid debts. To achieve this, we
provide information through various communication channels, including letters, our website,
mobile device applications, and the media.
Another key element of our compliance model is to quickly identify and contact people who need
to update their circumstances or may have received overpayments. We check information to
ensure there are no discrepancies in the details people give us. If there is a discrepancy, we
contact people to help them comply. As a result, we may stop payments, change the amount of
payment or recover a debt.
There are a number of assurance and compliance principles I work within, including payment
correctness, ensuring the integrity of program outlays that Centrelink delivers on behalf of
Government. My role includes the assurance aspects of payments to the right person, the right
program, the right rate and the right date. I am also aware of the Getting It Right (GIR) strategy,
enforcing minimum standards across the board.
Contributes to Strategic Thinking: Give an example of a time when you have had to deal with a
client service matter that had escalated or was difficult due to the complexity and/or sensitivity
of the issue
Within my current role, I gather information and evidence and use it to make decisions on a daily
basis. One example includes the receipt of information that suggests that a review might be
initiated on a customer’s file. This information comes from a range of sources and my role is to
look at the file in question, liaise with the data match team to gain advice and make a decision
about whether a manual review should be undertaken. Within this process, there are numerous
complications that may arise, including the number of times (if any) that person’s file has already
been reviewed, to avoid constant review of the same files.
Not only can I analyse information, solve problems based on that information and decide what is
important, but I have also coached and trained other staff to further their skills in this area as well.
Examples of this include my assistance with the rollout of the Customer First Program where I was
first trained in using the system so I could then provide training for current team members in the
Customer Compliance Branch (CCB).
Accepting responsibility and ownership for any decisions I make, I am passionate about my own
performance and the standard of my work. I am open to feedback and support, the need to
conduct ongoing assessments with high level communication to be sure that I am on the correct
path. My commitment to the Department is to represent my organisation in public and internal
forums within Commonwealth law. I trust I set a good example for others to commit and follow,
especially my quality of professionalism and communication and interpersonal abilities.
During the Sydney floods earlier this year, and the Queensland floods last year, I understood that
there was real need and sensitivity to issues outside of our customers’ emergency needs at the
time. For this reason, I was careful to ensure that people within the flood zone were not subjected
to a review as per our policy, adding to the stress they were already under. Any reviews that were
already underway in these areas before the natural disaster occurred were quarantined.
Supports Productive Working Relationships: Provide an example that demonstrates your ability
to consult and liaise effectively with internal and external stakeholders
In providing support to my manager, I often check in to determine if there is anything I can assist
her with; however, the best support I can give is in ensuring my job is performed effectively. With
the ability to step into most of the roles within my office, I have, on more than one occasion, kept
the level of productivity to a high standard when staff have had unplanned absences from work.
This was demonstrated recently when a staff member was away, having been diagnosed with
cancer, and I stood in for them and managed their portfolio, ensuring the team output was
maintained, all risks were covered and the team could continue to work in a business as usual
fashion. My manager has often commended me for my ability to maintain productivity in this way.
In addition to this, if a senior staff member is away I am responsible to provide data for the SME
report and Debt Shell activities.
On a daily basis, I provide support to the Maintenance and Initiation Team Leader with initiations,
error logs and in ensuring the correct information has been sent to the customer. This support is
important to ensure her team is following the correct processing procedures and requires tact and
negotiation skills to perform effectively. Through this support, I have developed a relationship
with this Team Leader’s staff and have both taught and learnt a lot from them in the process.
I have a high standard of autonomous problem-solving skills and am not afraid to use a risk
management approach. In using this method, I base my decisions on my knowledge and
understanding of the organisation’s objectives and consider the ramifications of issues and long-
term impact of my own work and that of the work areas. I am a strategic-thinker; however, if I am
in any doubt, I seek guidance or advice from my manager or supervisor. It is rewarding to make
decisions based on my experience and I am able to use my initiative, sound judgment and
common sense to overcome more demanding tasks within my role.
Within DHS, I have demonstrated my ability to communicate and negotiate, and I have a good
track record of providing new sites that have become a part of the Customer Compliance Branch
with all the tools they need to do their job efficiently. This includes communication about where
reviews can be found, coaching on the age and type of reviews, as well as building task cards to
assist them with processes. This assists new teams, cements our working relationship from the
beginning and allows me to use my communication skills to positively influence new staff
members. Within my current role, I communicate weekly updates on the risks I am accountable
for, communicating with Team Leaders, SMEs and Quality Development Officers (QDOs) regarding
policies and processes.
