Transport for NSW (TfNSW) Restructure: Interview and Application Support for Change-Affected Staff (2026)

by APS Interview Coach | Jun 18, 2026 | Uncategorized

Updated: June 2026

Estimated read time: 11 minutes

The TfNSW Operating Model Restructure Is Still Unfolding — and the Competition for Roles Is Fierce

Transport for NSW (TfNSW) is in the final and most consequential phase of its largest organisational restructure in a generation. What began as an announced reduction of 950 corporate roles in mid-2025 has expanded significantly. By May 2026, approximately 1,600 TfNSW employees had entered the agency’s mobility pool — with the Public Service Association (PSA) warning that figure was expected to exceed 2,000 as further branch determinations finalised.

For the staff affected, the experience has been disorienting and, in many cases, deeply stressful. Roles abolished. New structures announced. Competitive processes opening with little notice. Case managers stretched thin. Voluntary redundancy timelines unclear. And throughout all of it, the clock running.

If you are a TfNSW employee in the mobility pool, designated into a competitive selection process, or navigating the internal placement system, this guide explains what you are actually facing — and what targeted preparation will give you the best chance of securing the role you want.

APS ILS Core Capabilities: How to Use the Integrated Leadership System to Self-Assess and Succeed in Government Interviews

by APS Interview Coach | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

Updated: June 2026

Estimated read time: 14 minutes

The Integrated Leadership System Is Not Just a Reference Document. It Is a Scoring Guide.

Most APS candidates know the Integrated Leadership System exists. Very few use it the way a selection panel does.

When an APS panel member sits down to assess your written application, or prepares the question set for your panel interview, they are not working from intuition. They are working from the ILS capability descriptors at the classification level of the advertised role. The language in your pitch statement, the structure of your interview responses, the examples you choose to lead with — all of it is measured against a framework that is publicly available, classification-specific, and consistent across the APS.

That means the ILS is not just a background document about leadership expectations in the public service. It is, effectively, the scoring guide for your interview. Candidates who read it that way, and prepare accordingly, are at a structural advantage over every candidate who does not.

This guide explains what the ILS is, how it works at each classification level, how to use it to honestly assess your own capability evidence before you apply, and why it should be the foundation of your APS interview preparation — regardless of the role, the agency, or the classification level you are targeting.

What Is the APS Integrated Leadership System (ILS)?

The Integrated Leadership System is the Australian Public Service Commission’s (APSC) official capability framework for the APS. It was developed to provide a unified, consistent description of the leadership behaviours, management capabilities, and professional qualities expected of public servants at every classification level — from APS 1 through to the Senior Executive Service (SES).

The ILS is described by the APSC as “integrated” for a specific reason: it connects individual capability to organisational performance. Rather than treating leadership as a set of abstract virtues, the ILS defines it in terms of observable behaviours — what a capable public servant at a given level actually does, how they communicate, how they make decisions, how they manage relationships, and how they operate within the APS Values and Code of Conduct.

Importantly, the ILS is not a fixed list of boxes to tick. It is a behavioural framework — meaning it describes patterns of action and judgement, not credentials or experience. A candidate with 10 years of private sector experience and no prior APS employment can score strongly against the ILS if they can demonstrate the described behaviours through their professional history. Equally, a long-serving public servant who cannot translate their experience into structured behavioural evidence will not score well against the same framework.

The ILS is used across the APS for:

• Structured recruitment and panel assessment
• Written application and pitch statement evaluation
• Performance assessment and development planning
• Promotion and reclassification processes
• Career development conversations and training needs analysis

For job applicants, the ILS is the most important document to understand before submitting a single word of an APS application.

The Five Core ILS Capability Pillars Explained

The ILS organises all APS capability expectations into five core pillars. Each pillar contains a cluster of related behavioural indicators that are calibrated differently at each classification level. Understanding what each pillar is actually measuring — and what distinguishes a strong response from a weak one — is the foundation of effective APS application and interview preparation.

1. Supports Strategic Direction

This pillar assesses your capacity to understand the broader context in which your work sits — to see beyond immediate tasks to the policy intent, organisational goals, and government priorities that give your work meaning. It includes your ability to think analytically, scan the environment for emerging issues, shape and communicate strategy, and align your team’s or your own effort to organisational direction.

At lower APS levels, this pillar is assessed primarily through your demonstrated awareness of how your work connects to your team’s and agency’s objectives. At senior APS levels and above, it is assessed through evidence of strategic contribution — how you have shaped thinking, anticipated change, identified risk or opportunity at an organisational level, and influenced direction beyond your immediate function.

Why it matters in interviews: Panels use this pillar to distinguish candidates who think about their work from those who simply perform it. If every example you provide is task-focused and self-contained, you are unlikely to score well against this pillar — even if your task execution was excellent.

2. Achieves Results

This is the pillar most candidates feel most comfortable with — and where many still underperform. Achieves Results is not about listing your achievements. It is about demonstrating the behaviours that produce those achievements: planning, prioritising, managing resources and risk, working through ambiguity, delivering within constraints, and holding yourself and others accountable for quality outcomes.

The critical distinction this pillar makes, particularly at APS 6 and above, is between completing assigned work and taking genuine ownership of outcomes. Ownership means identifying what needs to happen before being asked, addressing risk proactively, making judgement calls when circumstances change, and delivering through — not despite — complexity.

Why it matters in interviews: This pillar generates the highest volume of behavioural questions across most APS processes. Panels probe specifically for individual accountability, judgement under pressure, and delivery in ambiguous or resource-constrained environments. Candidates who describe what happened rather than what they personally did consistently underscore against this pillar.

3. Supports Productive Working Relationships

This pillar assesses interpersonal effectiveness — not interpersonal warmth. The behaviours it targets include building and sustaining professional relationships, working collaboratively, engaging stakeholders effectively, managing conflict, and supporting others’ development and performance. At senior levels, it extends to managing complex stakeholder networks, influencing across organisational boundaries, and representing your agency in sensitive external relationships.

A common misconception is that this pillar is about being a good team player. That is part of it at lower levels. At APS 6 and above, the pillar expects evidence of strategic relationship management — deliberately investing in stakeholder relationships to enable outcomes that would not otherwise be achievable.

Why it matters in interviews: Panels use this pillar to assess whether you can work effectively in the genuinely complex, politically sensitive, multi-stakeholder environments that characterise public sector work. Candidates who describe positive team cultures without demonstrating their individual role in creating and sustaining them score poorly against this pillar.

4. Displays Personal Drive and Integrity

This pillar is frequently underestimated in interview preparation, but it is one of the most important — and one of the most difficult to fake. It assesses your professional motivation, ethical grounding, resilience under pressure, self-awareness, and commitment to the APS Values and Code of Conduct. It also covers your capacity for continuous learning and your ability to maintain high performance when circumstances are difficult.

In practical interview terms, this pillar generates questions about how you have handled setbacks, navigated ethical dilemmas, received critical feedback, managed your performance under sustained pressure, and acted with integrity when it was inconvenient to do so. At senior levels, it includes how you model values-based leadership for others and how you create cultures of integrity and accountability in your team.

Why it matters in interviews: Panels use this pillar to assess values alignment and professional character — not just capability. Candidates who describe challenges without genuine reflection, or who cannot articulate a specific situation where they acted with integrity under pressure, will not score well against this pillar. It is also increasingly used as a gateway in security-sensitive agencies and roles with significant probity requirements.

5. Communicates with Influence

The final pillar covers the full range of communication effectiveness — written and verbal, formal and informal, internal and external. It includes your ability to listen actively, present ideas clearly and persuasively, tailor communication to different audiences, facilitate productive discussions, and produce high-quality written work. At senior levels, it extends to representing the organisation externally, negotiating complex outcomes, and influencing without authority across organisational and sector boundaries.

This pillar is frequently treated as self-evidently demonstrated by the quality of your interview answers. It is not. Panels assess this pillar specifically — looking for evidence that you have deliberately used communication as a strategic tool to achieve outcomes, not just evidence that you can articulate clearly in a structured interview setting.

Why it matters in interviews: Strong communication in the interview room is necessary but not sufficient. Panels look for examples where the quality of your communication specifically changed an outcome — where the way you wrote a brief, facilitated a workshop, managed a difficult conversation, or presented a complex issue made a material difference to what was decided or delivered.

How the ILS Capability Descriptors Differ Across APS Classification Levels

This is the point where most candidates’ ILS knowledge runs out — and where it matters most.

The five pillars are consistent across all APS classification levels. But the behavioural descriptors within each pillar are calibrated to reflect the different levels of autonomy, complexity, scope, and leadership responsibility expected at each classification. An APS 4 and an EL2 are both assessed against Achieves Results — but what that pillar expects of each is fundamentally different.

Understanding these differences is essential for two reasons. First, it tells you what level of example to use in your application and interview. Second, it tells you whether you are genuinely operating at the level you are applying for — or whether your evidence is landing at the level below.

APS 1 to APS 4: Foundation Level Behaviours

At these levels, the ILS expects evidence of reliable, values-aligned work within defined parameters. Candidates should demonstrate that they follow direction, complete work to a consistent standard, communicate professionally with colleagues and clients, and contribute productively to team outcomes. The autonomy expected is limited — panels are not looking for strategic thinking or independent leadership at APS 2 or APS 3 level. They are looking for competent, dependable, collaborative contributors who understand what they are responsible for and deliver it.

The most common failure at these levels is over-claiming — providing examples of initiative or strategic contribution that are either implausible at the classification level or that actually describe the team’s or supervisor’s contribution rather than the candidate’s own.

APS 5 and APS 6: Developing Professional Autonomy

The APS 5 and APS 6 levels are where the ILS begins to expect genuine independent professional judgement. At APS 5, candidates should demonstrate the ability to manage their workload independently, identify and address problems within their area of responsibility, contribute meaningfully to team direction, and communicate with clarity and purpose. At APS 6, the expectation steps up significantly — panels look for subject matter expertise, proactive problem-solving, meaningful stakeholder engagement, guidance of less experienced colleagues, and the ability to operate effectively with minimal direction.

The critical distinction between APS 5 and APS 6 in practice is the difference between responding to problems and identifying them, and between contributing to outcomes and taking ownership of them. An APS 6 who cannot provide examples of proactive initiative, stakeholder navigation, and independent delivery will not score at APS 6 level.

EL1: The Leadership Threshold

The Executive Level 1 classification represents the most significant capability threshold in the APS classification structure. The ILS shift from APS 6 to EL1 is not incremental — it is qualitative. At EL1, the framework expects candidates to demonstrate genuine team leadership, including how they set direction for others, manage performance, develop capability in their team, and navigate the political and stakeholder complexity that characterises executive-level work.

EL1 interview questions consistently probe for evidence of leadership under pressure — not just strong individual performance. Panels are specifically assessing whether you think like a leader rather than a high-performing individual contributor. The most common failure at EL1 level is exactly this: candidates who have performed outstandingly at APS 6 but cannot provide examples of genuine leadership impact — of situations where the outcome was materially different because of how they led, not just what they individually delivered.

EL2 and SES: Executive Complexity and Strategic Accountability

At EL2 and SES level, the ILS expects the full range of executive leadership behaviours: whole-of-division or whole-of-agency accountability, ministerial and senior external stakeholder engagement, strategic direction-setting, workforce management, resource stewardship, and the capacity to represent the organisation authoritatively in high-stakes contexts. Candidates applying at these levels who cannot provide examples of executive-scope complexity — decisions with significant whole-of-organisation, policy, financial, or political consequences — will not demonstrate merit at this level.

Why the ILS Is Central to Every APS Panel Interview

APS panel interviews are not free-form conversations. They are structured assessments conducted against a pre-determined question set, each question mapped to one or more ILS capability pillars at the advertised classification level. Panels are required to score each response against defined criteria and document their comparative assessment of all candidates.

This structure has important implications for candidates. It means the panel cannot depart from their question set based on what interests them about your background. It means your relationship with the hiring manager is irrelevant to the formal assessment. And it means every question you are asked in the interview room is an invitation to provide evidence against a specific ILS capability — whether or not the panel makes that explicit.

When a panel asks “Tell me about a time you managed a complex stakeholder relationship under pressure”, they are not making conversation. They are assessing Supports Productive Working Relationships at your target classification level. When they ask “Describe a situation where you identified and resolved a significant problem in your team or work area”, they are assessing Achieves Results. When they ask “Give me an example of a time you acted with integrity in a difficult situation”, they are assessing Displays Personal Drive and Integrity.

Candidates who know which ILS pillar each interview question is targeting can structure their response to deliver precisely the evidence the panel needs to score that capability. Candidates who do not know the framework are providing evidence at random — sometimes hitting the target, often missing it.

How to Use the ILS to Self-Assess Before You Apply

The ILS is a genuinely powerful self-assessment tool — not just a document to reference in your application. Used systematically before you apply, it can tell you whether you have sufficient evidence to be competitive, which capabilities are your strongest, which represent genuine gaps, and whether your experience is actually calibrated to the classification level you are targeting.

Here is the self-assessment process that produces the most useful results.

Step 1: Download the ILS Profile for Your Target Classification Level

Go to the APSC’s ILS page and download the capability profile for the specific classification level you are targeting. Do not read the general ILS summary — read the classification-specific profile. The behavioural descriptors at APS 6 are meaningfully different from those at EL1, and the self-assessment only works if you are comparing your experience to the right benchmark.

Step 2: Work Through Each Capability Pillar Methodically

For each of the five pillars, read the behavioural descriptors at your target level and ask yourself an honest question: can I point to a specific, real example from my professional history that demonstrates this behaviour at this level of complexity and autonomy?

Not a general answer about what you usually do. Not a team achievement. A specific example — a real situation, a real decision, a real outcome — where your individual action demonstrated the described behaviour at the level the descriptor is written for.

If you can identify an example immediately, note it. If you have to think hard, note that too — it tells you this is a capability that needs more deliberate preparation. If you cannot identify an example at all, that is critical information: either you have a genuine capability gap that needs to be addressed before you can competitively apply at this level, or you have the experience but have not yet recognised or articulated it in behavioural terms.

Step 3: Rate Your Evidence Quality, Not Just Existence

Having an example is not the same as having a strong example. Once you have identified examples for each capability, rate them against three criteria:

• Specificity: Is this a clear, distinct, individual situation — or is it a generalised account of what you typically do?
• Individual attribution: Does the example clearly show what you personally did, decided, and delivered — or does it describe what the team achieved?
• Level calibration: Does the scope, autonomy, and complexity of this example genuinely reflect the Work Level Standard for your target classification — or is it actually a strong APS 5 example being used to apply for an APS 6 or EL1 role?

The third criterion is the most revealing. Many candidates discover through this exercise that their best examples are authentically strong — but at one level below the role they are applying for. That is not necessarily disqualifying, but it is information that needs to be addressed in preparation before the application is submitted.

Step 4: Map Your Evidence to the Advertised Capabilities

Once you have assessed your evidence across all five ILS pillars, cross-reference against the specific capabilities called out in the job advertisement. Most advertisements do not list all five pillars equally — they emphasise the two or three capabilities most critical to the role. Your strongest evidence should be reserved for these high-priority capabilities, both in your written application and as your lead examples in the interview.

Identifying and Closing Your ILS Capability Gaps Before the Interview

A structured self-assessment against the ILS frequently reveals that candidates have strong evidence for some capabilities and thin or absent evidence for others. This is not unusual — most professionals develop uneven capability profiles based on the roles they have held, the challenges they have faced, and the development opportunities available to them. The question is what to do about it.

Why Gaps Matter More Than You Might Think

In a competitive APS process, a single weak capability response can cost you the recommendation — even if your other responses are strong. Panels assess all candidates across all capabilities and construct a comparative merit ranking. A candidate with four strong responses and one weak one will generally score lower than a candidate with five solid responses, even if no individual response from the second candidate is as impressive as the first candidate’s best.

This means addressing your capability gaps before you apply is not just about self-improvement. It is about competitive performance in a comparative assessment.

The Difference Between a Capability Gap and an Evidence Gap

Before investing effort in addressing a gap, distinguish between two different types:

An evidence gap exists when you have the capability — you have genuinely demonstrated the behaviour — but you cannot identify a specific, strong example from your history that articulates it clearly. This is a framing and recall problem, not a capability problem. It is resolved through deliberate reflection, deeper mining of your professional history, and structured articulation of examples you may have taken for granted.

A capability gap exists when you have genuinely not had the opportunity to demonstrate a behaviour at the required level — when you have never led a team, never managed a complex stakeholder relationship, never operated at the required scope of complexity or accountability. This requires a more considered response — either seeking out experiences that can build the capability before applying, or being realistic about whether the target classification level is genuinely appropriate at this stage of your career.

Most candidates who believe they have capability gaps actually have evidence gaps. The capability exists — the professional history is there — but it has not been recognised, labelled, and articulated in ILS terms. This is the most common and the most readily addressable issue in APS recruitment preparation.

Using the ILS in Written Applications and Pitch Statements

The ILS should inform every aspect of your written application — not as a checklist to be ticked, but as a lens through which you select, frame, and present your evidence.

Aligning Your Pitch Statement Language to the ILS

One of the clearest signals of an underprepared APS application is language that is inconsistent with the ILS descriptor at the advertised level. A pitch statement that uses APS 4-level language to apply for an APS 6 role — task-focused, team-attributed, low-autonomy — communicates to a panel immediately that the candidate either does not understand what the level requires or cannot demonstrate it.

The solution is to read the ILS behavioural descriptors before you write, and to consciously use language that reflects the level of the role. At APS 6, that means language of ownership, expertise, and proactive contribution. At EL1, it means language of leadership, direction-setting, and strategic framing. At EL2, it means language of executive accountability, whole-of-organisation impact, and strategic leadership.

This is not about using jargon. It is about demonstrating — through the nature and complexity of the examples you choose and the way you describe your role in them — that you are operating at the right level.

Addressing All Five Pillars Without Losing Coherence

A well-constructed pitch statement does not feel like a five-part checklist. It feels like a coherent professional narrative that happens to provide evidence against multiple capability dimensions. The craft is in selecting examples that are rich enough to speak to more than one pillar simultaneously — an example that demonstrates stakeholder complexity (Pillar 3), judgement under pressure (Pillar 4), and clear strategic framing (Pillar 1) in a single narrative thread is far more effective than five separate examples, each addressing one pillar in isolation.

Using the ILS to Structure Your APS Interview Preparation

Knowing the ILS pillars is necessary but not sufficient for interview success. The next step is using that knowledge to build a structured, deliberate preparation approach that puts the right evidence in front of the panel at the right moment.

Mapping Your Evidence Bank to the ILS Pillars

Before your interview, build an evidence map: a simple document that lists each of the five ILS pillars, the specific capability indicators most likely to be tested at your target classification level, and your best example for each. Ideally, you have a primary example and a backup example for every pillar — giving you a total of ten distinct, structured examples you can draw on in the interview room.

The reason for a backup example is straightforward: panels sometimes probe a capability from an unexpected angle, or your primary example may have already been partially deployed in a response to a different question. Having a second, equally strong example in reserve means you are never in the position of repeating yourself or delivering a weaker response than you are capable of.

Structuring Your Responses Against the ILS

Every interview response should follow the STAR or STAR-L structure — but the content of each STAR component should be consciously calibrated to the ILS pillar being assessed.

When answering a question targeting Achieves Results, the weight of your response should be on the Action component — what you personally decided, the judgement you applied, the risk you managed, the constraints you navigated. When answering a question targeting Supports Strategic Direction, give more weight to the framing — how you identified the strategic context, how you connected your actions to broader policy or organisational intent, how you thought about long-term consequences rather than immediate outputs.

This is not a mechanical formula. It is a way of thinking about which parts of your experience are most relevant to the specific capability being assessed — and deliberately leading with that evidence rather than providing a general account and hoping the panel extracts what they need.

Why the ILS Is Also the Framework for Understanding Interview Feedback

If you receive feedback from an unsuccessful APS interview, that feedback will almost always reference the ILS — either explicitly (“your response to the stakeholder question did not demonstrate sufficient complexity at EL1 level”) or implicitly (“we were looking for stronger evidence of leadership impact”). Reading that feedback through the ILS lens tells you precisely which pillar your evidence was insufficient for and at what level the panel expected your examples to land.

This makes the ILS not just a pre-interview tool but a post-interview learning instrument — a framework for converting interview outcomes, positive or negative, into targeted preparation for the next process.

Does the ILS Apply to State Government Recruitment?

The ILS is the APS-specific framework and does not formally apply to State Government recruitment. However, the underlying logic — structured, behavioural, capability-based assessment against a defined classification-level framework — is consistent across all Australian government sectors.

Each state jurisdiction has its own equivalent framework:

• New South Wales: The NSW Capability Framework, organised around five capability groups (Personal Attributes, Relationships, Results, Business Enablers, People Management) with level-specific indicators from Foundational to Highly Advanced.
• Victoria: The Victorian Public Sector Commission’s capability framework, aligned to VPS Work Level Standards.
• Queensland: The Leadership Competencies for Queensland, covering Vision, Results, Accountability, and Relationships.
• South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, ACT, NT: Each jurisdiction maintains its own capability model, broadly aligned to similar principles of behavioural, evidence-based assessment at defined classification levels.

The preparation principles that apply to ILS-based APS recruitment — understanding the framework, self-assessing against it, building level-calibrated evidence, and structuring STAR responses to address specific capability dimensions — transfer directly to State Government processes. The language changes; the logic does not.

If you are preparing for State Government interviews alongside or instead of APS processes, our State Government interview coaching services are specifically tailored to each jurisdiction’s framework and assessment approach.

Common ILS Mistakes That Cost Candidates APS Interviews

These are the ILS-related errors that experienced APS panels consistently identify in unsuccessful applications and interviews. If any of these describe your current approach, addressing them before your next process is where your preparation effort should go.

• Using the ILS as a label rather than a lens. Stating “in this example I demonstrated Achieves Results” adds nothing to your application. Providing an example that genuinely shows the behaviours described in the Achieves Results pillar at the right classification level is the only thing that scores. Never name the pillar — demonstrate it.
• Reading the ILS once and not at classification level. The ILS framework is commonly known. The specific behavioural descriptors at each classification level are not. Candidates who read the general ILS summary without reading the classification-specific profile are missing the most important part of the document.
• Treating all five pillars as equally weighted in every process. Different roles emphasise different capabilities. An EL1 Policy Adviser role will weight Supports Strategic Direction and Communicates with Influence more heavily than a program delivery role. Read the advertisement carefully to understand which pillars will dominate the interview question set — and prepare your strongest evidence accordingly.
• Confusing activity with evidence. “I regularly engage with stakeholders across the organisation” describes activity. “I identified a significant misalignment between two senior stakeholders prior to a critical decision point, initiated a structured conversation to surface the issue, and facilitated agreement that prevented a significant delivery risk” demonstrates behaviour. The ILS assesses behaviour, not activity.
• Pitching evidence at the wrong level. This is the most consequential error. An APS 6 example used in an EL1 interview will not score at EL1 level, regardless of how well it is structured. Always calibrate your evidence to the ILS descriptors at the classification level of the role you are applying for — not the level you currently hold or the level at which the example occurred.
• Neglecting Displays Personal Drive and Integrity. This pillar is frequently underprepared because candidates assume it will be self-evident from their overall presentation. It is not. Panels ask specific questions targeting integrity, values, resilience, and professional motivation — and they assess responses against the ILS descriptor, not general impressions of the candidate’s character.

The ILS Is Publicly Available. Very Few Candidates Use It Properly.

The Integrated Leadership System is one of the most useful tools available to any APS job applicant — and one of the most underutilised. It is published by the APSC, freely accessible, and it describes exactly what a selection panel is assessing you against. That is an extraordinary preparation resource. Most candidates acknowledge its existence and continue preparing without it.

The candidates who consistently convert APS applications into interviews, and interviews into merit recommendations, are not necessarily the most experienced or the most credentialed. They are the ones who understand the assessment framework, who have genuinely interrogated their own experience against it, and who can articulate that experience in the structured, individual, level-calibrated language that panels are trained to recognise and score.

Knowing the ILS pillars is the starting point. The preparation that follows — self-assessment, evidence building, level calibration, and structured practice — is where the competitive advantage is built.

Frequently Asked Questions About the APS Integrated Leadership System

What does ILS stand for in the APS?

In the Australian Public Service, ILS stands for the Integrated Leadership System. It is the APSC’s official capability framework describing the leadership behaviours, skills, and knowledge expected of APS employees across all classification levels — from APS 1 through to the Senior Executive Service. The ILS is the primary framework used by APS selection panels to assess written applications, pitch statements, and panel interview responses.

What are the five ILS capability pillars?

The five core capability pillars of the APS Integrated Leadership System are: Supports Strategic Direction, Achieves Results, Supports Productive Working Relationships, Displays Personal Drive and Integrity, and Communicates with Influence. Each pillar contains a cluster of behavioural indicators that are calibrated differently at each APS classification level, from APS 1 through to SES Band 3.

How does the ILS differ between APS 6 and EL1?

The transition from APS 6 to EL1 represents the most significant capability threshold in the APS framework. At APS 6, the ILS expects independent expert contribution, proactive problem-solving, and meaningful stakeholder engagement. At EL1, the framework expects genuine team leadership — setting direction, managing performance, developing capability in others, and navigating the political and stakeholder complexity of executive-level work. An EL1 candidate who provides examples of strong individual performance without demonstrating leadership impact will not be assessed as meeting the EL1 capability standard.

How should I use the ILS to prepare for an APS interview?

Start by downloading the ILS capability profile for your target classification level from the APSC website. For each of the five pillars, identify a specific, real example from your professional history that demonstrates the described behaviours at the described level of complexity and autonomy. Structure each example using STAR or STAR-L format, with the emphasis on what you personally did, decided, and delivered. Ensure your examples are individually attributed, specific, and calibrated to the level of the role — not the level you currently hold.

Does the ILS apply to State Government recruitment?

The ILS is the APS-specific framework and does not directly apply to State Government recruitment. Each jurisdiction has its own capability framework — the NSW Capability Framework, the VPS Work Level Standards, the Queensland Leadership Competencies, and equivalents in other states. However, the underlying assessment logic is the same: structured, behavioural, capability-based assessment against a defined framework at a specific classification level. The preparation principles transfer directly. For State Government-specific coaching, see our State Government interview coaching page.

Can private sector experience demonstrate ILS capabilities?

Yes. APS panels assess behavioural evidence, not sector of origin. Private sector experience can demonstrate every ILS capability pillar — provided it is framed in terms of the behaviours the ILS describes, not in terms of private sector outputs or metrics that have no public sector equivalent. The critical translation is from delivery language to capability language: not “I delivered $5 million in cost savings” but “I identified a significant operational inefficiency, built the case for change with senior stakeholders, and led implementation of a revised approach that materially improved both cost and quality outcomes.”

What is the most important ILS pillar for APS interviews?

There is no single most important ILS pillar — the weighting depends on the specific role and the agency’s priorities. However, Achieves Results generates the highest volume of interview questions across most APS processes and is the pillar where the quality of evidence most clearly differentiates candidates. It is also the pillar where the distinction between individual and collective achievement — between “I delivered” and “we delivered” — has the most direct impact on assessment outcomes. Prepare your strongest, most specific, most individually attributed evidence for this pillar.

Where can I find the ILS profiles for each APS classification level?

The full Integrated Leadership System, including capability profiles for each APS classification level from APS 1 through to SES, is available on the APSC Integrated Leadership System page. Download the profile for your specific target classification level — not the general ILS overview — and read the behavioural descriptors carefully before drafting any application or interview response.