u/DonB0nn

Hey everyone, hoping to get some advice from people who've made the jump from APS4 to APS5.

I'm currently an APS4 and really want to push for that next level - I've been at this classification for about 2 years now (moved laterally to a new team about 6 months ago) and I'm starting to feel ready for more, but I'm hitting a wall when trying to write applications.

From what I understand, the APS4 to 5 step-up is all about demonstrating things like leadership, mentoring others, working independently on complex tasks, and having solid stakeholder engagement both internally and externally. The problem is neither of my APS4 roles have really given me opportunities to do any of that stuff, and now I'm stuck trying to come up with examples that don't feel like I'm just making mountains out of molehills.

Both of my roles have been pretty repetitive task-based work. I do my thing, check in with my manager when needed, but I barely talk to other internal stakeholders let alone external ones. My old team was super structured with APS5s and 6s above us handling all the more complex stuff, so there wasn't really room to step up even if I'd wanted to. My current team is the opposite extreme - we all just report to one manager and work pretty independently. We don't interact as a group much at all. I've built up enough knowledge that colleagues come to me for help sometimes, but it's just informal one-on-one stuff like helping someone figure out a process or troubleshoot something. I honestly don't know if "I helped Sarah fix her spreadsheet" counts as leadership or mentoring for an APS5 application?

I have tried to take initiative where I can. I've identified some procedural improvements and raised them with my manager, but because of complicated circumstances and recent changes in the team, none of them have actually been implemented yet. Some of them might never be. So I don't even have results to show for those - just "I identified a problem and suggested something" which feels pretty weak.

I know one of the standard pieces of advice is to look for developmental opportunities or EOIs to get that experience, but those are really limited in my agency. The agencies I'm eyeing for APS5 roles don't seem to have many of those opportunities either, or when they do come up they're super competitive and realistically go to people who already have more runs on the board than I do.

So I guess my questions are: How do you demonstrate APS5 capability when your current role just doesn't create those opportunities? Can informal help to colleagues actually count as mentoring? How do you write about initiatives that got nowhere? And did anyone else make the jump without having formal leadership or stakeholder engagement experience, or do you basically need to wait until you luck into a role that gives you those opportunities?

I really don't want to get stuck at this level but I'm worried my situation is just working against me and I'm not sure how to get around it.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated!